So you are a lawyer. Big freakin' deal. That does not define you in the practice of law. I am a lawyers. My father in law is a lawyer. My wife is a lawyer. My brother in law is a lawyer. My sister is a lawyer. My oldest daughter is in law school. My youngest daughter wants to go to law school. Nobody but your immediately family cares that you have a law degree. It certainly is not a great marketing device. I as a member of the general public do not need a lawyer so much as I have a problem or an issue for which I need a remedy. If the remedy that you wish to provide to me is simply that you are a lawyer, you already do not share my values.
New attorneys tell me all of the time that they do not know in what area or niche to limit their practice. They blame this for the lack of business, and more importantly their new found dislike for clients and the practice of law. I think the bigger problem is that these attorneys do not accurately project their values, and as a result they are not attracting clients that share their values. It is simply hard to represent people everyday that do not share the lawyer's values. It makes the lawyer apprehensive. It makes the relationship potentially adversarial apart from the legal issue at hand. That tension will flat wear anybody out.
The first step for new attorneys, especially, is to define for themselves their values in the practice of law. What is it for which the lawyer stands? What remedies does the lawyer provide to people, companies, entities or organizations?
In a more personal sense, how do you approach a case? Regardless of legal procedures, is your word to other attorneys your bond? Are you a sly devil that likes to surprise the other side, or do you believe in getting the whole case out in the open and let the chips fall where they may? Are you a gamer? I am not being judgmental, but you need to understand yourself.
Think carefully about how, exactly, do you define zealous representation. I guarantee that it will define your values. There are some attorneys who take this concept to the nth degree. I knew an attorney that almost got disbarred when asked about his apparently overly zealous representation of a client against the IRS when he informed the court multiple times that he did not, as a result of this concept, owe a duty of candor to the court.
I can guarantee you that whether you have had a good look in the mirror or can define yourself, that your colleagues will size you up pretty accurately and quickly.
You have to understand yourself before you can project yourself. And, the way you project yourself will determine what types of people make their way to your office.
I recently got the new phone book delivered to my office. I put it in the recycling bin, but I first looked at all of the lawyer ads. What a hoot that was. Almost all of the lawyers with ads were pictured looking angry. It was if photographers say to lawyers when taking their pictures, "Ok, now give me your best impersonation of Clint Eastwood".
Look, there are people out there that want an attorney that projects the anti-hero, or that has the personality of Clubber ("I pity the fool") Lang in Rocky III. I am just saying that, apart from the entertainment of these characters in the movies, if this does not represent your values in the practice of law, you will be loaded up with clients for whom you do not care, and do not appreciate your approach to their case.
The other day, for example, I was presented with a case in which a major financial institution continued to send monthly statements to a debtor in bankruptcy. Just looking at the Court's record of electronic notice, it seemed clear that we had the Bank dead to right as to liability. Obviously, the account had not been coded property and the regular monthly statements kept coming. I did not have a problem suing the Bank to get the action stopped and to recover some money for the inconvenience to the debtor. The client, however, was personally aggressive and was demanding at the outset that he would not settle for anything but an unusually high recovery. That was not likely to happen given that there was very little in actual damages other than attorneys' fees, and it was not within my values to prosecute a case beyond reason. My firm spent some time attempting to get the person's expectations under control. When that did not seem possible, we cut them loose despite the certainty of some recovery. The reason was that this person needed an attorney that reflected his values and I did not. In the long run, I was not going to act in the way this person wanted in the litigation, and I was not going to achieve the result demanded.
The problem with proceeding with clients whose values you do not represent, is that the lawyer and the clients will become resentful of each other during the course of the litigation. In prior years I have learned how troubling it is to achieve a good result in settlement to prevent trial, only to have the entire case fall apart after all of the work because the client is not satisfied. I have tried cases in which the client lost or was not awarded as much money as was on the table before the trial began. There are clients that will take an unreasonably high risk, or who like to play chicken with equally desperate drivers. But, I do not represent those values.
I had an experience once in which I had to convince my client to take a rather large settlement in a case in which the litigation was at risk due to the debtors failing to list in their bankruptcy large amounts of property they owned amounting to tens of thousands of dollars. The issue arose because the lender had completed the foreclosure of a home being surrendered before the debtors had moved out and in which the motion to do so had not yet been granted by the court. The debtors were surrendering the home in their bankruptcy. This constituted a clear stay violation. The debtors claim that as a result they had lost a substantial amount of expensive personal property. The lender denied it, and speculated that the property did not exist since it was not listed in the debtors' bankruptcy as required. To prove the lender wrong, the debtors produced both pictures of the property situated in their home before it was lost, as well as detailed appraisals of the property they had previously submitted to their prior homeowner's insurance carrier so as to add the property as a rider. The property was not exempted by the debtors. At that point my concern changed from recovering money to keeping the debtors out of jail for bankruptcy fraud. That represented my values. We managed, however, to settle the case for the value of the missing property as well as the attorneys' fees expended. The debtors agreed to the settlement in open Court. The Court agreed to allow the settlement provided the money, other than attorneys' fees, be paid over to the Trustee given the non-disclosure. The clients then changed their minds and wanted the Bank to agree to pay a substantial amount more in punitive damages. I recall the client yelling at me, when I refused to move forward after they had already settled, stating that they had thought they had "hired a pit bull, but it turns out they just hired a poodle". The end result was that the Court denied all recovery, including my substantial attorneys' fees, denied the debtors' discharge and referred the matter to the U.S.Attorney. I might have avoided this loss of time if I had recognized that these clients did not meet my values or I theirs.
I got a kick years ago when a newly minted attorney from Big Law showed up in bankruptcy court and started introducing herself as a "bankruptcy litigation attorney". An attorney friend of mine named Rod Scott in court at the time said, "Oh, nice to meet you, I'm Rod Scott and I'm a bankruptcy settlement attorney".
It is vitally important to define yourself, even subtlety, in everything you do, and to do it accurately. For the truth of the matter is that it takes a lot of time getting referrals, but it takes even more time working through prospects. To make this experience profitable, as well as enjoyable, it is better that the prospective clients understand and meet your values.
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