If you want to contact a financial lawyer you are going to need to disclose details to get an estimate quote for your case as well as some details in how they work.
If you want to do an initial screening of different lawyers you may send a number of emails to a bunch of different firms. I was thinking that it would be better to send an initial one anonymously without doxing yourself, just enough data to get an offer, if it is of your interest then you would disclose your details (full name, address, phone, specific amounts of assets, company details, and so on)
So basically, could you use Tor to send the emails first (with something like Tutanota or Protonmail), and then if you are ok with what they saw, reveal your dox? Or it doesn’t work that way? Should you get a VPN instead?
Basically, what you don’t want is your dox attached to your assets and tax records within a bunch of different lawyers’ emails, only the ones you really want to work with. This seems like a sane approach, judging by how many people get their stuff hacked and leaked, you want to minimize this from happening, so I was thinking how would one go about this properly.
This is not a good idea. No professional law firm is going to respond to you if you don’t disclose your names and your willingness to speak with them over the phone. They may simply consider your email as spam and move on.
What are you even trying to achieve here? Please explain why you’re even trying to do it this way. The context will help.
Yeah of course one would use at least name and willingness to speak on the phone, but you don’t want tax records sent to a bunch of emails with your dox and IP, so first you send initial emails safely, the question was how to do this properly.
An increasingly common example with financial lawyers would be:
Client bought 1 BTC in localbitcoins 10 years ago, or obtained it on faucets or other non-KYC means (all legal obviously), has trading history of a dead exchange (MtGox) and so on. The client is then trapped with this 1 BTC and needs a cashout structure. This client will need to pass an audit of the coins in order to check that everything is legit and prove him a banking structure and source of funds documentation.
This person shouldn’t be sending emails to a bunch of lawyers about how he owns 1 BTC with no KYC with your full dox for security reasons. Their emails may be hacked and now you are a target. Or the lawyer/firm may have an audit and now your 1 BTC ownerships shows up here. Think long term. 1 BTC may not be a lot now, but within 5, 10, 20 years? Do you want your IP and dox attached to this communication? Even mentioning you own any BTC without encryption in the process (including IP) is not a good idea, let alone next to your dox, because these records may be hacked eventually. It is already enough risk dealing with serious exchanges with KYC/AML, even they get hacked, let alone sending a bunch of screening emails to different lawyers. The more different people you send this information, the higher chance there is a leak of your dox, IP address + “hey I have BTC” message.
What you want is first find the right lawyer and if they give you a good solution and everything sounds legit then you escalate the relationship with them. Hope it makes sense.
No reputable lawyer wants you to send your tax records before they even speak with you about what you expect from their services, etc. Usually all they want up front is a brief overview of your situation so they know going into it if it even makes sense for them to take you on or if they should e.g. refer you elsewhere.
“Help needed with source of funds documentation for long-term cryptocurrency holdings without original sources available to provide their records” is something that should be enough to get you on the phone with someone in the example you gave. Then after that point and you are sure you will be working with them you send them all your records.
Once you’re working with them you need to send them whatever is relevant to your case. That’s why they’re there and your communications are extremely well protected legally against disclosure.
I know a first screening with a lawyer does not need specific details, my main point was that this:
Is already too much info to be attached to your IP address. You disclosed you own cryptocurrency since a long time ago, which means the value is probably relevant. While this data is reasonably protected by law, it depends on where you live, but there’s also the problem of their emails being hacked, or a client of them being investigated for something and then they get a raw dump of all emails and your email is there. Let’s say that you send this to a number of lawyers and none of them sound convincing (it’s not uncommon to get like 5 different interpretations of the law for the same situation) and you end up not sure about things and decide to just keep holding the funds until laws improve or there is a better opportunity in general. You sent to a bunch of lawyers that you own these funds coupled with your IP and name so you are now not sleeping as relaxed since (while unlikely) there does exist a scenario when your email can end up in someone else’s hand for some reason.
Depends on jurisdiction. Also like I said there’s always the risk of a leak. Look at how many exchanges and enterprises have been leaked with people’s infos. Hardware wallet manufacturers’ files got leaked and now people have the full dox of the owners plus the info of knowing they own hardware wallets. Great. Now you are constantly worried about some $5 wrench armed fella showing up.