I’m reading a lot recently about how the role of a lawyer has gone beyond legal services and moved into the realm of “how you should run your business and your life”.
Principally this comes up in relation to disputes, where lawyers are more and more encouraged (if not forced) to tell their clients to avoid court at all costs, and settle their matters.
As someone who has worked in litigation for more than 20 years now, I’m usually the last one to encourage anybody to throw a pack of money at a protracted Court dispute.
But the more I see people telling me that I should be “making” my clients settle matters, conduct themselves in particular ways, and generally change their entire perspective on everything I am forced to ask these two questions:
- How much influence do I actually have over my clients in those things; and
- How much influence should I exert over my clients in those things.
Here’s the deal, everyone: we’re not life coaches, we’re not business advisors, we’re not ethics tutors, and we’re not hired philosophers.
We’re lawyers. We do law. We’re “law-takin'” folk.
And while we might have very high opinions of ourselves, most of our clients have not come to us for much more than legal advice. They want to understand the system, they want to understand their prospects and options, and they want to have an idea of what’s going on.
Now it’s true, of course, that we can reasonably explain to clients about:
- the costs and risks of litigation;
- the benefits and likelihood of settling at mediation (or other alternative dispute resolution procedures);
- the emotional/business/opportunity cost of litigation, based on our experience.
But we need to tread cautiously about how far we take this for a number of reasons.
We’re Not Experts in Other Stuff
See above. We’re lawyers.
We usually have no expertise in counselling, emotional toll, despression, financial advice or the many other areas that lawyers are being encouraged to weigh into.
We Can Exert Unreasonable Influence
For some types of clients who put a lot of trust in their lawyer, there is every chance that you can convince your client to do something they shouldn’t using clever words and persuasive language.
But should you?
What of the potential that leaning too hard on your client actually puts you in a position where you are not just persuading, but manipulating? What if your cajoling and convincing of a vulnerable person to take a bad deal ends up unspooling later?
We need to ensure that our clients are making free and informed decisions – otherwise they might as well not be there, and frankly we might as well not be their lawyers.
It’s Disrespectful and Annoying
Let’s say you have diligently set out the pros and cons, risks and benefits of various paths and your client is adamant that they wish to litigate “to the end”.
If you spend the next 40 weeks daily telling your client that they made a bad decision then how do you think that’s going to go?
Not only will it be quite annoying for your client, frankly it’s also rude. You’ve informed them properly and let them make a decision in their own best interests… and now you’re telling them over and over that you think they’re stupid. You might not use those words, but that’s what you’re saying.
How would you like it if your house building told you over and over that your chosen colour scheme sucked?
We Don’t Have the Full Context
In the vast majority of cases we have no clue about 90% of what’s going on in our client’s lives or businesses.
Which means, we have a very limited perspective on what is actually right or wrong for them, unless they choose to tell us all the gory details (which most don’t).
That, in turn, means that what we think is a great idea or sound advice is only one part of a much larger puzzle that our clients are trying to figure out. As a result we shouldn’t over-emphasise the relative weight of our recommendations over all the other factors in play.
Advise, Don’t Influence
Our job is to give our clients advice.
That advice should be useful, helpful, expertly given and ultimately a guide to making good decisions.
It is not, however, our job to make our clients’ decisions for them, or constantly tell our clients to do something they have already decided not to do.
We might raise options again for them from time to time about different directions, but absent their instructions being unethical or unlawful our job is to put those instructions into action.