Clients and lawyers

Here's another collection of LinkedIn posts that I've done in the past, this time about the relationships between clients and lawyers.

I’ve just come across an old quote by Erich Fromm on my Kindle:

“To be concentrated in relation to others means primarily to be able to listen. Most people listen to others, or even give advice, without really listening. They do not take the other person’s talk seriously, they do not take their own answers seriously either. ... To be concentrated means to live fully in the present, in the here and now, and not to think of the next thing to be done, while I am doing something right now.”

I often read articles by in-house counsel complaining that external advisers are not “commercial” enough. I think that frequently the subtext is that those advisers don’t listen to their clients properly.

In dispute resolution, listening is an essential skill for an arbitrator. And one of the reasons why?mediation?is successful is that it compels parties to listen to each other properly.

I have recently been involved personally, via a close relative, in a court case.

If your career involves dealing with other people’s disputes it is a shock to see your own surname on a claim form.

But it is also a valuable experience.

When working for a client it is important to maintain a professional distance. Being distant, however, may mean you do not really understand what your client might be feeling: the stress and anxiety; the personal investment of time, energy and money; even, sometimes, frustration with?lawyers.

Seeing a dispute up close brings understanding and encourages sympathy. It makes you more ready to offer a helping hand to a client in need.

Someone said to me this week that the relationship between lawyer and client is based on mutual respect. I think that’s right.

Both lawyer and client need to listen to each other carefully in order to work out how a dispute may best be resolved. There is no monopoly on wisdom and each brings a valuable perspective to the discussion: the lawyer from experience elsewhere, the client from experience of their business.

But both lawyer and client also need to challenge each other. Agreement without question is mere pandering, not respect. I’ve seen many cases which have been lost because the client has blindly followed the lawyer, or where the lawyer has prioritised getting paid for a whole?arbitration?over questioning whether the client is really going in the right direction.

Around four years ago, I was sacked by a client.

The reason? I told the CEO that the company should not start?arbitration?because it would most likely lose. He contacted another?law?firm, and told me he was going to them “because they have more faith in our position”.

I was reminded about it this week when I read the court judgment relating to the final arbitration award. The client had lost the arbitration. The court challenge also failed. The client was facing a costs bill, for the arbitration and the?litigation, of nearly US$ 2 million.

I don’t tell this story in order to highlight that my prediction was correct. I can’t claim to be right every time, and there is always a chance even a bad claim might succeed. And a client has the right to change their counsel at any time.

What has stuck with me, though, was the fact that the other law firm had told the client what they wanted to hear. I don’t think “having faith” that the client might be right is enough. We need to analyse arguments properly.

The legal market is competitive but we cannot prioritise winning work over giving clients good advice.

Pictures by kraken images, Kyle Smith, Youssef Naddam, Charles and Wesley Eland, on Unsplash.