Legal Research

"Don't Criticize or Blame Others Until You Look in the Mirror"

Posted by Allison Shields: "Niki Black did a great post recently on her Sui Generis blog entitled, "Live and Let Live" all about her choices in her legal career and the reactions of other lawyers who disagreed with those choices. The entire post is a great read, but she begins with the premise that the law is often a difficult and frustrating profession. As Niki notes in that post,

Clients, the very heart of our business and without whom we would have no income, can make our job all the more frustrating. In many cases, however, the high frustration levels are not the fault of our clients, rather they arise out of the circumstances that lead those clients to retain us in the first place.

In the same post, Niki related an old lawyer joke about two men who get lost in a hot air balloon and ask a person on the ground where they are...

The joke demonstrates the tension that often exists between lawyers and clients, and the preconceived notions that each brings to the lawyer-client relationship. But although lawyers bemoan the fact that their clients seek quick or low cost solutions to their problems which are often created due to the client's lack of planning and failure to request help earlier, perhaps it's time for lawyers to look in the mirror and realize that in many ways, lawyers behave similarly.

How many lawyers approach their practices with a lack of planning about how they are going to attract clients, or even what kinds of clients they want to work with? How many lawyers are willing to expend significant resources or request help with those issues?

How many law firms are technologically far behind other businesses because they don't want to hire help to determine what technology would work best for their practice and to get the necessary training to maximize the technology they have?

How many lawyers are willing to accept help in refining their client service, or to embrace innovative ways of doing business to improve client retention?

How many law firms seek help BEFORE they run into problems with clients or staff? How many are willing to plan appropriately and to manage resources effectively to ensure that the client's expectations are realistic and the lawyer and client are working toward a shared goal, with a shared understanding of value and fees?

Too often, I see lawyers who complain once they've run into staffing problems, when their clients refuse to pay for work performed because the lawyer failed to establish value and payment terms before the engagement commenced, or when business stops coming.

Lawyers who complain that clients fail to avoid risk, don't contact lawyers in a timely manner and then expect the lawyer to work miracles should examine their own attitudes about the business side of their practices to determine whether they should take their own advice, plan ahead and seek help before problems arise."

Full text and active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Legal Ease Blog, 22 September 2009 

Full post as published by Stark County Law Library Blawg on September 22, 2009 (boomark / email).