What industry are we in?
Wrong.
We are not in the legal industry; we are in the service industry. When we work with clients, we try to do just one thing: Make their lives easy.
I’m not going to tell you to return clients’ phone calls promptly and meet clients’ deadlines. If you don’t know that instinctively, you shouldn’t be working here. I’m going to give you the advanced class in client relations.
When we send a client a draft brief to review, what are we sending?
No, not a draft.
We are sending a perfect, cite-checked, ready-to-file, final version of the brief. We put “draft” in the corner as a little inside joke.
Why?
First, the client is busy. The client has no time to review a poor draft of the brief, a fair draft of the brief, a good draft, and then a final draft. The client has time to review one draft—the letter-perfect final version that we send for review.
Why do we do this? It’s partly to make the client’s life easier; if the client is forced to review only one draft, then the client has less work to do. But we also do this for our own benefit. If we send only perfect briefs to clients, then clients begin subliminally to think that we’re perfect. Perfect lawyers get re-hired.
When do we send the so-called “draft” brief to the client?
Never at 5:00 p.m. with a request for comments at 9:00 a.m. Never on Friday afternoon when the brief is due on Monday. We ruin our own lives; we protect our clients’ nights and weekends.
We also never send the draft at noon when the brief is due by five. A half-dozen other law firms are also sending the client draft briefs at noon for filing at five in other cases; how can the client review all those briefs simultaneously?
We send our “draft” briefs to clients three business days before they’re due. If the brief is due on Thursday, the client gets a draft bright and early on Monday morning. That way, when the client is traveling on Monday, in meetings all day Tuesday, and reviewing other draft briefs that arrived Wednesday morning for filing Wednesday afternoon, the client still has time to review our brief before it’s due. We don’t cause problems for our clients; we solve them.
When we win a motion, how do we inform the client?
Telephone is good for starters. It’s quick; it’s personal; and if the client’s not in, we can leave a voice mail message.
But we also report the victory to the client by email. We naturally attach the decision as a pdf attachment to the email. But we don’t send an unexplained icon in an email message. The subject line of the email reports the important news:
“Re: Smith v. BigCo: Summary judgment granted!”
The text of the email then succinctly describes the issue and the key aspects of the ruling in a way that would be informative to someone completely ignorant of the case.
If our in-house contact is intimately familiar with the case, why is the cover email so basic?
Because the in-house lawyer may want to alert other in-house lawyers or business people to the result. Those people need a basic description of the issues. We don’t force our in-house contact to write his own cover email; we write it for him. When he gets our email, he can either forward our email on to others or copy our message into the text of a new email that he appears to have written. We’re not offended when the client takes our words and passes them off as his own. We’re flattered; we made his life easier. That’s what we’re paid to do.
When our cases are calm for a while, we reduce our client contact. We call or email very occasionally to report that the case is calm and that we’ll tell the client immediately if anything happens; this keeps the client comfortable.
If there are events in other, related cases, or if we learn industry-wide news, we pass on that information to keep the client informed.
If we learn confidential information from some other client that might interest (or entertain) this client, we do not whisper a word of it.
I mean it.
Really.
Incredibly, I have seen lawyers regale one client with stories that involve disclosing other clients’ confidences. We don’t do this. Ever.
It is not cute to reveal one client’s secrets to another. It is not funny. It is not sociable. It is not ethical.
Moreover, it will in the long run cost you business. If I tell in-house counsel at BigCo the amusing secrets of LittleCo, the folks at BigCo may be interested, but they will not be impressed. Rather they will think: If Curmudgeon is disclosing LittleCo’s secrets so freely, which of our secrets is he blabbing when we’re not in the room?
This is not good for business. Keep secrets secret.
What do we do when the client is about to make a bad decision?
Correct her. Steer her to the right course.
What do we do when she’s dead-set on making the wrong decision?
Correct her more loudly. We do not let our clients take ill-advised action.
What do we do when she overrules our advice and says she plans to proceed anyway?
So long as it’s lawful and ethical, we help her implement her plan in the best possible way. She’s the client; she has the last word.
When we’re making legal decisions for the client in esoteric areas where we have expertise and the client does not, do we simply decide the appropriate course and tell the client how to proceed?
Never. We solicit client input into every significant decision, even when we know what’s best for the client.
Why?
First, it’s a matter of simple respect. I have heard senior business people complain that “the lawyers all huddle up in a corner and then come over and announce the decision. It’s our company; why don’t they talk to us?”
I’ve heard a Texas billionaire CEO on a conference call make a suggestion that was blithely ignored by counsel, who assumed that the layman’s input was ill-informed and so not worth considering. The billionaire was not happy: “I formed this company. I built this company. Why do the lawyers think I don’t know anything about it?” We solicit client input as a matter of respect.
We also solicit client input because only the client knows its goals. Litigate or settle? Settle at what price? Suffer damage in the marketplace to prevail at trial? Or concede the legal dispute to avoid public relations problems? Virtually all legal issues fit in a broader business situation, and only the client knows the overall situation.
Finally, we solicit client input because, you’ll be surprised to hear, clients actually know things. Some nonlawyers have a fine legal sense; others have a fine business sense; others are simply aware of relevant facts that are new to you. Clients improve the process, so we make them part of it.
Clients also mess things up. They do stupid things that increase their legal costs and hurt their cases. They do stupid things even after you’ve advised them not to.
Like what?
We have clients who underestimate their influence on us. If an in-house lawyer with a background in mergers and acquisitions suggests voluminous, generally silly, changes in a brief, we will, against our better judgment, make some of the changes. We can’t tell the client that he’s out of his field of expertise and ruining the brief; he might be insulted. Instead, we reject the utterly stupid suggestions and make enough of the rest so that the client can see we appreciated his input. The brief may be worse, but the client will be happy. Clients often don’t appreciate that, when they speak, whether it helps or hurts the cause, outside counsel listens.
We have helpless clients:
“Curmudgeon, I know you’re not working on the Smith matter. But I have to write a letter in Smith explaining our settlement posture. Can you write that letter for my signature?”
Why in God’s name would someone ask me to ghost-write a letter about something I don’t know? All I can do is question the client about the situation, write down the words, and send a draft letter to the client. The client will then complain that I’ve missed some nuance and re-write the letter anyway. Clients should do some things for themselves.
We have clients who turn me into things that I’m not:
“Curmudgeon, I know you’re not an insurance lawyer. But your colleague who’s giving us insurance advice talks too much, and I don’t understand him. I’d like you to talk to your colleague and then give me the insurance advice.”
Very flattering. But very moronic. Insurance coverage work is a specialty; I don’t do it. I cannot efficiently serve as a conduit from one of my colleagues to the client. All I can do is shuttle back and forth, turning a reasonably priced two-person conversation into an expensive three-person one. We can find the client a replacement lawyer who actually knows insurance law; don’t make me something I’m not.
We have clients who insist on using too many lawyers. Some clients ask several of us the same question, to cross-check the answer and seem well-informed. Some clients insist on using four specialists to resolve an issue when one generalist would suffice.
We have clients who insist on using too few lawyers. When a small product liability matter transmogrifies into a mass tort, we’ll need several well-informed lawyers, not just one.
We have clients who distract us:
“I know you’re working on Project A. I want you to put that aside for a week while you work on Project B.”
We have clients who unreasonably demand immediate attention:
“I know you’re on a lunch break during trial. I know that I haven’t asked you to help with any legal work in more than a year. I need your advice on some settlement papers by tomorrow morning.”
And we have clients who ask us to do things that are illegal or unethical. Those are the easiest clients of all: Insist that they do what’s right. If they won’t, fire ‘em.
It’s easy to be ethical in this firm. With hundreds of lawyers, we have plenty of business collectively, even if we must occasionally fire some of our clients. A sole practitioner, starving and wondering how he’ll pay next month’s rent, sometimes has real ethics issues. We never do; we’re not living near the edge.
Here’s our code of ethics: If it turns your stomach even a little bit, don’t do it.
Period.
We make life easy for our clients; that’s our business. We try to teach clients to use us efficiently and effectively; that improves our relationships. And we absolutely refuse to act unethically or unlawfully on behalf of our clients. As the criminal defense lawyers say, “Be sure that, at the end of the day, it’s your client who’s going to jail—not you.”