Is this a favor?

I have a former colleague who has been helpful over time because of his prior experience in business. I have helped him, and he has helped me. Recently I referred someone to him for a job. I didn’t even know if he was hiring, but this person was a perfect fit for where I saw his business going, so I made the introduction and it worked.

Today, without warning, he forwarded me four emails with tons of attachments and asked for some legal work in a complicated practice area. I’m all for helping people, but I will not learn an entire area of law for you. Sorry. I called to tell him this (yep, I’ve definitely grown up from a couple of years ago) and our conversation went as follows:

Me: I got your email, and I don’t know anything about that area of law. I can tell you what questions to ask an attorney, but I can’t help you with the specific question. I can even ask around and see who might be the best person to talk to.

Him: [After a long introduction] I know you can figure it out.

Me: [Having only thirty minutes left for lunch, had to make it quick and to the point:] I have no doubt that I could figure it out. But I have limited free time, and I won’t spend it this way. The decision not to be a lawyer was a long and hard one (and expensive), so I’m not going to “dabble,” especially when I should be working on my own projects. Why don’t you hire an attorney to look at this?

Him: Because it isn’t worth it to me to pay an attorney. And anyway, I did you a favor by hiring your friend.

I didn’t know I felt this way until the words came out of my mouth: I think maximizing your networks is a good thing. However, while I do like my friend, someone hiring him is not a favor to me. In fact, in this case, I felt it was a favor to freelegalworkboy because this person is a fricking amazing worker. In any case, free legal work over fifteen minutes is not asking for a favor. It is asking me to work for free in my (once) profession.

I’m not saying I would never do it, but it should not be mistaken for a favor. I am happy to trade favors. I will not trade legal work for anything but dollars (unless it is for family/friends and requires a reasonable amount of time). That’s all there is to it. I would never ask someone to sit down for 20 hours on demand to read the driest fine print and think as hard as they possibly can to come up with a solution for me, as a favor. Skim this, for example. Run of the mill attorney shit, not even anything complicated. It’s crazy boring and the fact that the entire world is cross-referenced makes it highly inconvenient reading.

We left off with him saying I should be careful about burning bridges.  If he means I’m going to miss out on future unpaid legal opportunities in my spare time, I’m not going to worry about it.

I hate to sound like a total opportunist, but I think this amount of work should not be required to avoid “burning a bridge.” I tried to think about it like a very old school person would, to see how wrong I might be. Maybe I could do this work, make a good impression, and he would hire me in the future. Oh wait, I’m trying to avoid this kind of work in my life entirely, and why would he pay me when he got it for free the first time. Maybe I could do this work, he’ll be so happy, and he will do something equally big for me later. Oh wait, he already thinks I owe him for hiring my friend, so this is just payment. Maybe I should do it because in the grand scheme of things, it isn’t that big of a deal. That just doesn’t sit well with me.

On the other hand, maybe I’m missing the point simply because doing a favor is exactly that. It is going to be inconvenient, but ultimately, this is how relationships are built.

I don’t know. I think asking someone to do their normal job for free just because you know them from somewhere else is a touchy area. Where is the line between a favor and attempting to take advantage of someone?