Before Avvo was even a twinkle in the eye of Mark Britton, he practiced law.  Having sat in the GCs chair at Expedia, and now in the Big chair at Avvo, he’s got a bird’s eye view of the other side of client relations, giving rise to two complementary posts, beginning with Law is a Jealous Mistress.

I came to understand the stress of a philanderer. Every time I was satisfying the needs of one client, inevitably another would call needing an emotional rescue. When it rained it poured – a juggling act often requiring 2, 3, 4 flaming swords in the air at once. It was as if there was a Batman-like light in the sky, telling all clients to call their attorney. So many times, buried in work and lack of sleep, I sat looking at a ringing phone wondering whether I should pick it up. This wonderment was often accompanied by regret that I had yet to buy that cot for my office.

Can you hear the shrieks of the work/life balance crowd echoing from every Starbucks?  When you achieve that busy practice you so desperately desire, you realize the downside very quickly.  Clients need you.  Clients want you.  Now.  Contrary to what anyone will tell you, clients are not particularly concerned with your personal happiness, free time and relaxation.  This was true of Mark’s civil clients, and is even more true of clients facing prison for a very long time.  Clients can be funny that way.

Mark goes on, in an Avvocating post, to offer some guidelines for maintaining client communication, and, when necessary, dealing with one client too many.

• Don’t pretend to your clients that they are your only client.
• If you don’t know something, tell your client.
• If you love your clients, set them free.

One of the “tricks” being prominently promoted these days is to make clients believe that they are your best friends.  Make them think you love them like your own children.  The notion is that people want to be loved and cared for, and if you convey that sense to your clients (or potential clients), they will rush to hire you.  Whether it’s true and scores the case, it can serve as the creation of an unrealistic relationship between lawyer and client (and client’s family) and become the source of enormous problems, anger and misunderstanding later.

Clients, like most people, want you to be concerned for them.  But that concern should be as their lawyer, not their wife, mother or therapist.  If you create the belief that they are the center of your universe, then don’t blame them for expecting you to live up to that belief.  Calls in the middle of the night, on the phone for hours at a stretch, discussions of feelings, angst, frustration, will become your stock in trade rather than providing the defense they’ve retained you for.  There aren’t enough hours in the day to do it all.

Then multiply that by every client you have.  Most clients know that they aren’t your only one, but the realization that your time must be divided up amongst your clients isn’t their first concern.  Creating honest expectations, telling the client that as much as you appreciate their concerns, you have another client who, at that moment, needs your time more than them, may not endear them to you, but also won’t mislead them.  When you make promises that you can’t or won’t fulfill, it will come back to haunt you.  You may forget about it as you move on to your next bit of work, but the client won’t.

There are some obvious things to consider to avoid the creation of false expectations that lead to miserable, and angry, clients.  Don’t take on work that you can’t competently handle.  This has two components, the first being volume.  Hours in the day do not expand with the number of clients you take on, no matter how much you want their case or the fee.  The give back for being retained is providing the representation required, and you can’t do it when you take on more clients than time allows.  This is often a problem for newer lawyers, for whom being busy is of paramount importance and are too inexperienced to realize the consequences of an excessive workload.  They mean well, but don’t realize they’ve gotten themselves into a jam until it’s too late. 

The other component is taking on a case that you’re not yet competent to handle, whether because you’ve never done it before or its simply way outside your skillset or level.  Not only will it take far longer to handle the representation when you have to go to school to figure out what to do, but your work will, in all likelihood, be far inferior to that of someone with experience and competency.  It’s great that you want to do that type of work, but don’t mislead a client into believing that you have a clue when you don’t.  Consider sending the case to someone more capable and working with that lawyer to learn how to handle it. 

There’s no shame in learning.  There is shame in telling clients that you know something when you don’t.  Hard as it may be to admit, no lawyer knows everything, even though clients may assume that “you’re the lawyer; you should know.”  Rather than seeing this as a challenge to your competence, see this as an opportunity to explain that there’s an awful lot of law out there, an awful lot of variables caused by the human condition, and no one has all the answers.  If we did, there would be no reason to build courtrooms, since we would already know the outcome.

The most important point that permeates Mark’s posts is that communication, whether for good news or bad, or just to let the client know he’s not forgotten, must be maintained.  Once your clients learn that you are working on their cause even when they aren’t watching, and you will call them, immediately, as soon as there is any news on their case, chances are that they will not only appreciate you (love being an inappropriate emotion or word to describe a proper lawyer/client relationship), but leave you alone to work, secure in the knowledge that you are working hard for them and will reach out to them whenever there’s anything to know.

Honesty and communication let us work better, and breath easier.  And clients like it too.  It’s the best way to show them that you “love” them.