Dear clients:
Maybe you’ve hired the wrong lawyer. It’s a question of goals that makes me say this.
I want to get you to the best possible resolution of your case. You want that too, of course, but sometimes I think that goal is relatively low on your priority list. What you ACT like you want most is for everyone in the world to join you in directing a firey anger that burns with the heat of a thousand furious suns towards the other party. You don’t need me to say “Fish you” to the other side; you’re obviously capable of doing that all on your own.
When I give you advice to compromise your case and you accuse me of being afraid to fight, that’s actually quite insulting to me on a number of levels.
If a doctor gave you a diagnosis you disagreed with, you wouldn’t accuse her of cowardice. You might reasonably say, “I want a second opinion.” And like that doctor, I invite you to go get one. If the opinion is different than mine (hint: it isn’t likely to be) and you like the other lawyer better for whatever reason, go ahead and fire me and hire that other lawyer. It’s not going to bother me all that much.
I appreciate and understand that you have white hot rage because of the outrageous behavior and incredible lies of your enemy, but I do not share that white hot rage. In my opinion, I ought not to. You have hired me in no small measure to NOT be possessed by volcanic fury and instead to deploy my experience, education, intelligence and good professional judgment on your behalf. By all means feel free to vent your spleens. My great preference is that you vent them outside my presence. Either way, though, when your reservoirs of bile, piss, and vinegar are exhausted, then please follow my advice because I’m not giving it to you for my own benefit.
Yours truly,
/s/
The exhausted Burt Likko.
P.S. Please pay your bill. I didn’t take your case pro bono.
Space awesome.
I strongly feel I owe a much greater debt to two different attorneys then their rather high fees turned out to be; they really helped turn my younger sprout’s life about.
One, in particular, helped explain the incentives a county had in such a manner that it was a wonderful education into how systems don’t always work on a right/wrong basis, something I could have tried to explain until I was blue in the face, and only be met with, ‘that’s stupid.’
I still get frazzled that women need to be told to dress demurely, the calico dress with the lace collar is better then the power suit, but a good lawyer will explain that in a way that helps her client despite the institutional insult.
So yeah.
It feels better to write these, doesn’t it?
Oh yeah. I could never actually do this in real life.
I once knew a lawyer who switched from criminal to divorce for a few years, then switched back out of sheer disgust. She observed it was easier to paint a villain in a good light, take a bad man and make him seem better — than to contend with the supposedly Good People, the veneer peeling off, at their very worst.
One of my lawyer friends in L.A. once explained the difference between divorce and criminal law like this: “Practicing criminal law, you see bad people on their best behavior, whereas practicing divorce law, you see good people at their worst.”
I’d say that between my husband’s divorce, still ongoing when I met him, and the divorces I’ve worked on as a lawyer, you get to see a lot of assholes acting even more vindictive and assholish than usual. If I were going to write that letter to a client, it would likely be a divorce client, although others would have qualified.
My apologies, Michelle; I’ve forgotten if you are an active or inactive member of the Guild.
Did you find that the amount of money in the marital estate had any relationship with the degree of assholery exhibited by (one or both) the divorcing spouses? The people who inspired this fantasy letter are a quartet of eviction clients, for whom the largest claim for back rent is under $3,000.
Sometimes it was money, but even when money was involved it usually masked a desire to punish or control the other person. And, unfortunately, a lot of it involved women using their kids as pawns (not that men don’t use their kids as well) to hurt the ex-husband.
Some clients are just plain vindictive and will turn on their lawyers as quickly as they turned on the person or organization they’re suing.
We’ve moved around so much the last few years that I’m not actively practicing right now, and am not sure I want to go back.
I have a friend who offered a generous settlement to the spouse, but the spouse chose to be vindictive and dragged the process out so long that ultimately s/he got less in the final settlement simply because they’d both exhausted a large portion of their wealth. And of course having been so vindictive for so long didn’t really bring the spouse the satisfaction s/he was seeking.
Outstanding. You should do another post along the lines of, “You are about to go into a mediation. Here’s what not to do…”
1. Sit in the lotus position and chant “Om”.
You have hired me in no small measure to NOT be possessed by volcanic fury and instead to deploy my experience, education, intelligence and good professional judgment on your behalf.
This might make a good effective line in the initial, “So you want to hire me to represent you in a legal dispute?” conversation.
I’d like to write one of these to the governmental body that oversees my agency. It would appear they need to be reminded of exactly what their role does, and most importantly does not, involve.
Law related but not related to this letter Qs. I am just shameless and curious:
1. What do you make of the recent law school bust in applications and people having serious trouble finding jobs?
2. Do you think Paul Campos is doing good work with his Behind the Law School scam stuff or not?
3. Do you think some or many law schools need to be shut down? If yes, how do you do it without hurting non-corporate law and graduates of now defunct schools?
My law school went from being Tier 2 to Tier 3 this week. We dropped almost 40 spots. I liked my law school intellectually and emotionally. But the last few classes have been all over the bored about finding jobs. I am doing okay (but my position is still officially contract) but only one person from my class got a traditional big-firm job offer. Those who have law jobs are like me, working at small or medium sized firms, working for their parents, or working in really rural California.
Dude. You’re anticipating the upcoming symposium. I invite you to write and submit a guest post based on the experiences and observations you describe above. More than invite. “Solicit.” I would like to see that guest post, particularly from you, and on those subjects, very, very much.
I was considering doing a defense of the liberal arts but I will also consider writing about these issues.
And that should be all over the board when it comes to jobs.
Meh. Be insulted. The reason that they say you are afraid to fight is that oftentimes you are afraid to fight. The truth hurts.
Also, the next time you use doctors as an analogy, you might want to mention that they are doing good useful work, and lawyers are generally blood sucking parasites.
Strike two. (See here for strike one, and subsequent warning.)
There were dozens if not hundreds of different ways you could have expressed this opinion without resorting to personal insult. I don’t care about the opinion; I didn’t need you to remind me that lawyers are unpopular. I care about the tone. If you want a forum where this kind of comment is tolerated, go look for it elsewhere: it’s a big Internet.
You will mind your manners here henceforth, or you will be banned.
As for the substance of your opinion, it’s a bit hard to separate from the venom. But let’s say, hypothetically, my client is owed $1,000 by the defendant. The defendant then offers to pay my client $1,000, today, in exchange for a dismissal of the case. Why does advising my client to take the money — everything that they have coming to them — constitute cowardice? Why should you incur the risks and expense and delay of trial when you can have everything that a trial would give you, for certain, right now? In such a situation, shouldn’t the lawyer at least advise the client, “You can effectively win right now, all you have to do is say ‘yes.'” Can’t the lawyer at least dispense that advice without earning the sobriquet of “coward”?
As for (medical) doctors doing good useful work, yes indeed, many do and I’m very pleased to count several doctors amongst my circle of friends and clients and many more of them have more than earned admiration and respect. There are doctors, however, who are quacks and charlatans and candymen and still others make good livings doing things like plastic surgery which may be lucrative and in high demand but are nevertheless of questionable if not dubious social utility.
As an aside, my wife could get a job today doing minor cosmetic surgery. This should not be case because she has exceptionally little background in that arena. (Yet she’s delivered over 1,000 babies and performed hundreds of c-sections and she can’t get a job as a straight obstetrician at most hospitals.)
(rolls eyes)
Lighten up, Francis.