They can have a conversation without being representation and should connect OP to someone who can represent them.
How would the lawyer even know, without conversation, that there was a conflict?
They might but in many cases wouldn't even do that because they still wouldn't get paid for it. Doesn't matter, you don't need them for that.
As for the latter, that's why i said "when they know of a non waivable conflict".
Emphasis being "know of".
Here, they know they have a conflict - they have a client, it's not this person, and they know their client will be adversarial to this person. They aren't even part of a law firm that represents multiple clients regularly or something like that where sometimes the conflicts might be waivable (often not, but still)
This is a very very easy case.
If they don't know they have a conflict, sure, they can have a conversation for the purposes of understanding if they have a conflict.
That's not this case though!