Full disclosure… I am not an attorney. I have never been, nor will I ever be, an attorney.

Now that that is out of the way, I have a family member in the legal field and over lunch today, I mentioned a tragic story of a 20 year old worker at an industrial facility in my town that had been killed in a workplace accident.

Without going into the details, it sounded completely avoidable, at least on the surface.

She asked if I knew anybody connected to the family.

Turns out that I do and I ended up communicating with a family member of the deceased and arranged a consultation with a well known personal injury/wrongful death attorney in our state. Phenomenal attorney that I’ve known since I was a child (I’m now in my 30s).

I was happy to make the referral and I hope they represent the family to the best of their abilities.

My question, is their etiquette involved in providing a referral fee in instances like this? While it was literally 5 minutes of my time, I did provide them an in with a case that is very likely to generate a 7 figure plus settlement. I contacted the family member of the deceased completely cold, and she responded. I then, in a very sympathetic way, did a brief pitch on the merits of using the attorney I ultimately referred. Not hard (I’m in sales), but without me the opportunity doesn’t exist.

Thoughts?