Unless you’re completely ignoring opportunities to gain practical experience, there will come a time in your law school career when you will finally be allowed to work with clients; either as an intern with a firm or a prosecutor’s office or as a student attorney in one of your school’s clinics. In the interest of helping you avoid the temptation to shank your clients ensure courteous and professional service during your first interaction with clients, I’ve prepared some advice for common client situations.
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Every lawyer has the type of client who is unreasonably demanding, annoyingly stupid, or practically worthless—and likely all three. The sooner you recognize you have one of these clients from hell the better. Because if you at least recognize that the client is the problem (isn’t that always true?), you can try to isolate the problem to make your day-to-day practice a little less hellish. At least that’s the theory.
Here are five types of clients from hell. We bet at least two of them are in your client portfolio right now.
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My doctor friends tell me that of all the medical television shows that have aired, Scrubs got it right about doctors. In one particular episode, the general theme is that the patients have fifteen seconds to talk with their doctor before the doctor starts tuning out no matter what the patient may say. For me, this is at least five seconds more than I need when I am talking with a potential client to determine whether or not there is an actual case to be prosecuted.
In all honesty, I can usually predict within the first sentence they utter if they have a legitimate case or not. Like 90% (or better) as soon as they open their mouth. I’ve got it down to a pseudo science. If it is over the phone or in person, every aspect of the communication process is taken into account in my knee jerk analysis. Typically, if they sound smart, I’ll listen past the first three words, unless the words are:
“You a lawyer?”
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Time and time again I am reminded that lawyers are supposed to counsel their clients on the randomly stupid shit that they do to prevent them from getting into trouble. What we need more of is lawyers counseling lawyers on how to react when they have the opportunity to do something stupid. My gut reaction in most of these situations is to (1) swear loudly or (2) point and laugh. Unfortunately this is not always the advisable nor professionally prudent plan of action.
For the purposes of this column, I present you with several real life situations that I have found myself stuck in. I then give you a hint as to what I think I should have done… instead of what I did.
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I recently bought a condo. [Pause for applause]
The process, from looking to offering to buying, was anything but smooth sailing. My search for a place began in November. I quickly found a place that I wanted the offer was accepted. That was the first week of December, and I just moved in the last week of May.
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