ARE CLIENTS THEIR OWN WORST ENEMIES?

When we win difficult cases, my wife jokes and says that we succeeded because the clients left it to us; did not interfere. Afraid there is a lot of truth in that. Overwise clients are their own worst enemies.

Another problem, I repeat myself, is that clients are not always honest. They only tell us what they wish us to know. Advice taken, they go to another lawyer, ask advice with another story. It is similar to forum shopping.

The trap they fall into is to latch onto the one who paints the rosiest picture. Then pay through their nose because, “ ...... the lawyer knows the judge”, or “The judge’s son is his friend”. Etc., Etc.

They deserve to lose.

A neat trick for explaining the loss is to call the judge dishonest.

My school friend once send me a plaint, about 50 pages thick. His instructions: “Read paragraph 14 only”. He kept on repeating that I need to read Paragraph No. 14 and nothing else. On closer examination, Paragraph No. 14 had just quoted him, his lame excuse. All else was detrimental to his cause. We still joke about Paragraph 14 syndromes.

Clients may tell us the truth, but rarely the whole truth. They wish us not to know. We need to grill our clients more than we cross-examine the opponents. Moreover, clients expect us to lie in court; it’s a given with them.

A few days back, a friend asked me to take his case because his lawyers asked him to approach a Parsi lawyer. Because the judge would be a Parsi! I refused sayng that that was the very reason why I would not take his case. Advice him, we did. Only to tell him that he was wasting the court’s time and his own, not to mention the money he had already spent.

And why did he land in the mess? Because someone had suggested that he should file a case through a certain lawyer.

And we are asked to clean up the mess.