Matt Brown at  Tempe Criminal Defense posts about clients who find him from a distance, as opposed to those referred by other lawyers or clients, and the “interview” process.

Whereas the majority of people only care that someone they trust told them to call me and that I have a nice office, suits that fit (more or less), and a bar number, some people need numbers. They want numbers about my experience, my practice, the system, and their case. It’s because numbers make an unscientific decision like hiring a lawyer seem somewhat scientific. It’s a complex decision, and the idea of boiling the process down to comparing statistics comforts some people.

Unfortunately, a little knowledge can be a bad thing. A numbers-obsessed prospective client can easily end up worse-informed than someone who doesn’t ask any questions. The problem isn’t the information, but their perspective. Information, especially numbers, can be misleading without context.

Matt writes of an “interview” where the potential client’s final question pushed the envelope:

They wanted an exact number, so I told them. At the time, the number was fourteen. I immediately realized they weren’t going to hire me.

The number startled them. They asked me how I kept them all straight. Fourteen seemed like a huge number to them. Without a frame of reference, I might as well have told them I was too busy to handle the case.

Chalk this up to the wags who have nothing better to do than post lists of questions on the internet that people should ask lawyers before retaining them.  A well educated consumer researches such things.  And ends up worse off than they began.

The phenomenon Matt describes didn’t exist ten years ago.  Rarely did people run around interviewing a dozen criminal defense lawyers whose names they found online.  They sought recommendations and then acted upon them.  Weeks and months weren’t lost to interviews, not to mention many hours of both lawyer’s and potential client’s lives, in this strange new process.

These lists are asinine.  Even assuming, as was the case with Matt, that the lawyer answers honestly — which those who are desperate may not be inclined to do — it remains what the answers to inane questions mean to the potential client. 

Common questions, such as how many such cases have you done, have become the norm, inevitably followed up by how many did you win.  Except the former ignores that each case is different, and the result in past cases means nothing to future cases.  Still they ask.  Still we answer.  And they walk away worse for knowing.

In Matt’s case, the question about how many cases he had clearly related to whether he has the time to give the potential client the close, personal contact the client demands.  There was a problem with the prior attorney, who Matt describes in glowing terms, not being constantly available to the client. 

The irony is that the client wants the lawyer who has done the particular type of case in question a thousand times before, with great success, but now only carries a couple of cases on his docket.  And while it isn’t mentioned, likely charges of fraction of what others would charge to defend the same case.

Every client seems to dream of the once-a-mega-volume lawyer with an unbelievable amount of experience who decided to pare his practice down to a select few cases. Although that’s not completely unheard of, it’s unusual. I’ve yet to see it on such a grand scale and in under a couple decades of experience.

A little math would’ve made them see that fourteen isn’t that much. A little math would’ve made it clear that thousands of clients in a decade, something indicative of the experience factor most people consider very important in a lawyer, is a lot more than fourteen.

Don’t blame the client.  They don’t do the math.  They don’t think it through.  The don’t add up the experience they want, plus the availability they demand, with the price they can afford.  Sure, they have the capacity (well, some at least) to make sense of the craziness of their interviewing process, but they’ve learned from the internet, from the blogosphere, that they must ask a list of questions or they will make a bad decision.  They read blog posts, and are stupider for having done so. They just don’t realize it. Yet.

In Matt’s case, the potential client left a great lawyer, interviewed Matt, and ended up elsewhere.

Curious, I looked up the lawyer I think they hired. They didn’t stick with the one they had, who’s actually great. The guy they chose had a great website. That’s about it. It boasts that he’s handled “thousands” of cases in ten years of practice. Assuming “thousands” means at least two thousand, I calculate that to be over two hundred cases a year.

Matt doesn’t bad-mouth the lawyer they hired, though the statement that he had a great website suggest more sizzle than beef.  If there’s any good news in this scenario, it’s that this isn’t the client that anyone really wants, as they will flee the next lawyer as well for not being available 24/7 for hand-holding, or not producing the huge win in the impossible case. 

This is the product of those who pretend transparency comes from a grocery clerk’s list, and that everything in law can be comoditized.  The claims of doing it for the client is nonsense.  It doesn’t serve the client. It doesn’t serve the honest lawyer.  The only person who benefits is the lawyer who will say anything to score a case, the one who really wants to get clients from a website who know nothing about him and believe that he’s truly “experienced, aggressive and caring.” 

And even he will end up ruing the day he answered these inane questions, because these are the clients from hell.