Honesty, Expectations & Solid Ground

I met this morning with one of the first clients I signed up after starting my solo practice. This was our third in-person meeting and things went well. We talked about her medical treatment, how her life was progressing since her car accident, and some other things that were relevant to her case. Then came the question that I have found to be one of the most difficult, if not the most dangerous questions clients can ask.

“So, how are we gonna do?” The question takes many alternate forms, usually asked with hesitation as if coming from a child asking a parent if they can stay out past curfew. The question is difficult because it places me, the lawyer, in the role of expectation setter. There are few things more dangerous to a relationship, any relationship, than setting up expectations. It reminds me of the well-known advice of witness examination: never ask a question for which you do not already know the answer.

Obviously, there is no way I can know the answer to my client’s question. Without a doubt, my own expectations are high; I wouldn’t have taken her case if I didn’t think she had a good chance of success. And believe me, the words she wants to hear are sitting on my tongue prying open my mouth and trying to jump free.

“You have a great case.” “I cannot see us losing.” “Don’t worry about a thing.” And then there is my personal favorite, which I have lived to regret several times, “Everything is under control.”

The simple truth is that every client walks through my door with a life in turmoil. It doesn’t matter if it was a car accident with only minor injuries or a relative who is old enough to drink and old enough to drive, yet can’t seem to do one without the other. I know enough now that when a new client is sitting across from me they are unsure, they are usually angry, and whether they let you in on it or not, they are scared.

As their attorney, they are looking for you to make things better. Human instinct dictates that you are up to that task. Human ego convinces you of that fact. After all, as their attorney, I am the one being asked for help. And whether I admit it to myself or not, being asked for help is like a mild narcotic pushed into a vein. It just feels good.

My responsibility, I have learned, is to fight the instinct to say anything to make things okay right now. As much as I want my client to feel confident with their situation in my hands, I work hard to fight the urge to make our conversation easy, to do whatever it takes to bring forth a smile from this person who is paying me to do just that. It would be too easy to set the expectations sky-high and let my client walk out feeling as if everything, you guessed it, is under control.

In this battle between what is right and what is easy, experience has taught me that choosing what is easy is hardly ever right. There is no doubt I want my clients to like me. But even more so, I want my clients to respect me. When all is said and done, I believe people want you to tell them the truth.

My clients may not always walk out happy but they will never walk out unsure of where they stand. For people whose lives have been turned upside down, maybe it is enough right now just to be placed on steady ground.

Learning From a Baby How To Ask For Help

My brother, well actually his wife, had a baby last week. I spent Saturday helping my mom babysit. The situation got me thinking about a subject that comes up often for me as I work through the early stages of my solo practice. The subject is asking for help. I was looking at this one week old human being, who would be absolutely helpless without my mom and I there to assist, and it dawned on me how very quickly we lose our ability to ask others for help. The interesting thing is that as we grow, we don’t really ever lose the need for others to help us. We just no longer feel comfortable reaching out.

In my office Monday morning, faced with very real clients with very real problems, I thought about how they had put their faith and in a sense their lives in my hands. And, for a moment, I felt like that one week old baby must feel, with tons of things that just have to get done, and no real idea how or what to do.

“I’m a professional” I said to myself. And, forgetting that, I am getting paid real adult money to do the job. So one way or another, it is my responsibility to do the job right. And for that to happen, in most new situations, we need someone else to help us. Most of the time this comes in a book, or a speech, or some other impersonal method of communication where we can get the value of the information without making ourselves personally vulnerable to the person doing the teaching.

Why are people so afraid to admit to others that they simply don’t know something? In an arena as competitive as personal injury law, it takes a real moment of trust to ask another attorney, someone who would probably rather have your case than advise you on it, to help. Maybe I am just cynical and my take on human nature needs some spiritual rehabilitation. But there is some good news.

I have come to terms with the reality of my situation. There are some things that we know and some things that we don’t. There are very few things that we cannot learn. And when learned, there are very few things that we can not do well. This is the progression of pretty much any situation where we face the virgin landscape of an untested act. Perhaps this is what being human is all about.

As someone whom others have placed their faith in, I have made a commitment to embark on that journey, again and again if that’s what it takes. And staring at my nephew, five days old and helpless, in some way I think I may have it easy.

There are some things I have already learned how how to do.

The Butterfly Effect: The Joy of Consequence

I think people traditionally associate fear with things such as horror films, family illnesses, near-miss car accidents, and the occasional nightmare of falling. What may be scarier than these traditional examples is when real life is slowed down to a crawl, magnified like a frame in photoshop, and examined without a filter or special effects. What is possibly the most terrifying of all is when life is examined and it comes to our attention that, whether it has existed before or not, a safety net no longer exists.

This is the predicament I find myself in now that I have made the choice to go on my own, start a law firm, with one and only name on the door, mine, and leave my success or failure up to only one person, me. When I was with my former firm, a mid-size, extremely successful plaintiff’s litigation shop, it was easy to hide amongst the masses. Sure there was work to be done, but the hierarchy and unique flow-chart of positions and responsibilities made it quite difficult to screw up and be blamed for it. In fact, one could develop a false immunity to failure, a sort of superhero “force-field” that could take the most powerful screw up and send it on its way like a fastball turned into a Barry Bonds home run., steroid-aided or not.

Even the most conscientious worker developed a reliance on this safety net and, as such, it became much too easy to just get by, make the money that was offered, and watch year after year pass through with no real sense of accomplishment or growth. And the realization of this, I believe, was the first catalyst in my decision to make the move to going solo.

When those around you, their actions and their reactions to you, clearly are not affected by what you do, you slowly realize that you have little, if any, impact on your world. This is a sad state to find yourself in. When you realize that your paycheck is coming every Friday at 2 PM regardless of what you did or did not do the week leading up, you begin to lose any sense of cause and effect between you and the world around you. In the end, it becomes tempting to just not show up and see how many paychecks pile up on your desk before someone calls to see if you are okay.

It was when I found myself facing these unpleasant realities that I began to consider what it would be like to have my own law practice. It was, in a very real way, the idea of screwing up and having to pay the price for it that became very exciting to me. I certainly did not want nor did I plan to fail. Yet, it was the consideration that failure would now have a reasonable reaction from the world around me that made the work I did become more real, more important, more human.

So, now I am on my own. I do rise or fall on my work-product. I make decisions every day; react to situations every day and each decision and reaction has real consequences. For many, this may seem like “no big deal.” But to me, who for many years had lost the exhilaration of seeing one’s thoughts, feelings and actions matter, being able to fail and knowing there would be a price to pay is nothing short of paradise.

A Pressure Cooker

Is it just me or is the pressure so thick you could slice it with a butter knife? I can actually visualize a small but sharp knife making slow, even slices separating the air in front of me into dark, smoky layers. Am I losing it completely? In this condition I fear a client would be certifiable to put their problem in mY hands. Let me take a breath. O.k. Lets back up a few beats.

I am looking at an office filled with boxes, books, framed certificates (attesting to the fact that at one point I was qualified in some respect), and wires. All I see, however, are the wires. There are thousands of wires here. Plugs of all sorts, USB cords. HDMI cords. I am not an expert on technology, but in a saner moment I had placed my wares in various bags and labelled them things such as “AC cords,” “USB,” “Unknown.” Is it a bad sign that the bag containing the unknown wires is at least four times as big as its next smaller sibling?

A little more concerting is that I can tell with little detective work that there is absolutely no way I have enough actual electronic machines to use up the plugs that are waiting to be connected. This has happened before, and it is inevitable. When all is said and done, I will have many extra electrical cords, orphans left behind as their “connected” compatriots have paired off and disappeared in a symphony of glowing green and red lights and a chorus of reassuring & steady “beep, beep, beep.”

This is my new office. I am now the boss, the numero uno, the “go to guy.” The problem is that I am the guy who gets to go to the go to guy. I am, I guess, gonna be going to myself. And, as I sit here in my new desk chair and stair at this mess, I have a funny feeling that when I need to find that guy, the go to guy, chances are he may be on the last Greyhound to the Florida Keys.

What’s It All About, Anyway?

One of the reasons I decided to go on my own and start my solo practice is that I am kind of a technology geek and I wanted to incorporate my love of technology with my practice of law. As 2008 looms before us, it is simply amazing what technology allows a solo practitioner to do. What, only a few years ago, would require a full sized firm with support staff and in-house technology experts can now be done with me, my computer, and the internet. There are options out there for everything from dictation to phone operation all the way to full case management and pretty effective speech recognition.

As usual, with the good comes the bad, and one of the issues we must deal with is the sheer amount of bad programs clouding an otherwise promising landscape. As developers begin to realize that an entire generation of attorneys are salivating at the gates of innovation, just waiting for that next best thing, there is the unfortunate impetus to come to market with products that are either poorly designed, poorly executed or both. As someone who usually tries whatever is new, I have had my share of these unhappy experiences.

This web site, I hope, will allow me to share what I have found that works, what does not work, and what is out there tha has yet to be tried. My hope is to set the flame to a continous discourse between lawyers, technologists, futurists, programmers, and anyone else who either has their finger on the pulse of whats new, or is searching for the pulse as we speak. I know from spending time at the various web sites where these subjects are discussed, in addition to conversations with colleagues on and off the web, this is am incredibly exciting time to be an attorney and a techno-geek at the same time.

Perhaps the biggest sign that technology has a deserved seat at the trial table is the fact that I have software programs just waiting for a case to put them to the test. I actually want to work harder so that I can see what does and does not work. Hopefully, this will be a place where we can learn about whats new, what is on the horizon, and what is better off passing by.

My office is still filled with yet to be opened boxes. Only now, I have had to pull out some legal pads and pens and begin to do some work. Im gonna have to open this office and prepare for this new experience while bringing my clients along for the ride. Dramamine is available for those less apt to enjoy the bumpy ride.