The art of managing client relationships as a lawyer

All of us service-based professionals, lawyers and others, know that the key aspect of the job is about pleasing the clients.

And one of the hardest aspects of the job is how to handle it when you disagree with your client but you still want to maintain a good relationship with them.?

When I was practising as a family lawyer for high net worth clients, it was one of the things I struggled with. Is it OK for me to be forthright with clients? Can I tell them what my real opinion is? Or do I need to keep them onside at all costs?

It would be easy for me to sit back now and say you should always be honest with your clients. That you have a duty to do so. But that would be ignoring the realities. We all have a need and a desire to maintain good relationships with our clients and to keep them as clients if we can!

What I think these days is that any good client relationship needs to involve a fair bit of ‘being on their side’ accompanied by a healthy dose of gentle challenging when needed. If you’ve built a good, respecting relationship to start with then it’s easier to then question your client a little or challenge them down the line.

There’s a concept in therapy called being a ‘fair witness’ to someone. The theory goes that we have the most confidence in people who don’t always tell us what we want to hear (we tend to suss that out quite quickly) nor do we want to be around people who challenge us constantly (that’s mega annoying). What is ideal is someone who can be somewhere in between. So, because they’ve had the confidence to challenge us on occasion, we start to develop more confidence in them.

What do you reckon? Is this something you’ve struggled with in law?

I’d be interested to know in the comments!

#clientrelationships #managingexpectations #fairwitness?