January 3, 2007

the lawyer’s client manifesto

3 Comments

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Thanks to Matthew Homann for this one, which was ori­gi­nally published here:

The Lawyer’s Client Mani­festo
1. You have wants. You have needs. Focus on the needs first. Wants are bonus.
2. If you are seeing a law­yer because your dis­pute is “not about the money, but about the prin­ci­ple of the thing” don’t be sur­pri­sed if your law­yer runs away. You can never be satis­fied. Also, it’s really about the money.
3. Your case/matter is the most impor­tant thing hap­pe­ning to you right now. It is not the most impor­tant thing hap­pe­ning to your law­yer right now. It may not even be in his top ten.
4. If you think your law­yer is trying to kill your deal, remem­ber this: though there may only be a “one per­cent” chance your deal will go bad, your law­yer sees that “one per­cent” over and over again. She’s loo­king out for you. She cares about you and your busi­ness. She also doesn’t want her mal­prac­tice pre­miums to go up.
5. You want to buy results, not time. Most law­yers sell time, not results. Make sure you both unders­tand the dif­fe­rence before your first bill arri­ves. You will cer­tainly unders­tand the dif­fe­rence after.
6. If you want to find a law­yer who sells results, look hard. There are a few of them out there. They are the ones who can still smile because they get to see their chil­dren before 9:00 at night.
7. Big firm law­yers are not more effi­cient. Or smar­ter. Or chea­per. They are cer­tainly not chea­per.
8. Make sure your law­yer unders­tands your busi­ness. If your law­yer doesn’t unders­tand your busi­ness, find out if he’s going to learn about it on his time, or yours.
9. You are your lawyer’s boss. You are not her only boss. She has hun­dreds of other bos­ses too. Each one of them thinks their mat­ter is more impor­tant than yours.
10. How messy is your lawyer’s desk? When they bill you for thirty minu­tes of “file review,” how much of that time was spent loo­king for your file?
11. When you call a law­yer for the first time, how long does it take for him to return your calls? After you hire that law­yer, expect it to take at least three times as long. Same goes for e-mails.
12. Does your law­yer have repu­ta­tion for being a “bull­dog?” That pro­bably means they are an asshole. To ever­yone.
13. Look for a law­yer with a tech­no­logy IQ no more than fifty points less than yours. If you live in e-mail and your law­yer doesn’t, learn to like your mail carrier.
14. If you hate your law­yer, fire him. He pro­bably deser­ves it, and you aren’t get­ting his best work any­way.
15. You wouldn’t auto­ma­ti­cally marry the first per­son you date, so don’t auto­ma­ti­cally hire the first law­yer you see. A great lawyer-client rela­tionship can last a life­time. Your law­yer can be your advi­sor, coun­se­lor, con­fi­dant, and friend. Find one you like, stick with him or her, and spread the word. Oh, and stop telling law­yer jokes. They aren’t really that funny. ;-)

[Mani­festo sub­mis­sion gui­de­li­nes are here.] [Mani­festo archive is here.]

3 Responses to “the lawyer’s client manifesto”

  1. afterlife says:
    January 4, 2007 at 8:43 am

    I would add another one:
    “Law­yers charge by the hour and thus will explain an infi­nite amount of detail on any topic. They need to pay off their law school bills where they were trai­ned to research and talk for long amounts of time. Limit them to just the infor­ma­tion neces­sary to make a busi­ness decision.”

  2. gabor says:
    January 4, 2007 at 3:50 pm

    For my day jobI’m a law­yer. I like this mani­festo.
    Point 5 is hugely sig­ni­fi­cant, and needs to be fully unders­tood by both sides, law­yer and client. Law­yers need to be able to con­trol the time spent, and that really is not always easy. Clients need to unders­tand that if they make demands on the lawyer’s time, the bill will reflect that. I regu­larly find myself telling clients that the con­ver­sa­tion, or series of con­ver­sa­tions, is going round in circ­les and will lead nowhere except an inc­rease in fees.
    And point 7 is so true. I’m a big firm law­yer. That chan­ges in a few weeks’ time!

  3. basquette says:
    January 10, 2007 at 2:16 pm

    after­life: not neces­sa­rily true. Many law­yers — myself inc­lu­ded — charge flat rates whe­ne­ver pos­si­ble and use value-based billing, not time-based billing. And I don’t know about any­body else but while I was schoo­led in the art of research, NOBODY ever taught me to talk for long amounts of time. In fact, we were brow­bea­ten into suc­cinct cla­rity over those three years — no pro­fes­sor wan­ted us was­ting class time on a ram­bling expla­na­tion of sub­ject mat­ter juris­dic­tion. I mean — who would, really?