Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

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The more time I spend sitting around courtrooms for my own cases & even more relevantly for this post, the more time I spend sitting around courtrooms observing other lawyers, the more strongly I feel that the title above is CORRECT!  I’m sure there’s an exception or two to the above where trials are inevitable such as in some of the criminal or personal injury areas, but in many, many practice areas court appearances tend to be mostly of the “status report” variety or mere formalities to have a judge sign-off on some settlement. And that’s why you need to do your heavy lifting/lawyering back at the office.

I think too many lawyers & clients do not get this.

How do you know if you’re not doing enough strong lawyering outside of court? The fact that you or your cases are in court too frequently might be the first strand of evidence. Second, are you in court too much on matters that are mostly logistical in nature like discovery disputes or temporary orders or mere case logistics? I just observed a big deposition controversy in the last few days at Daley Center that surely should have been handled without judicial intervention.

I think of the in-court vs. out-of-court balance as very similar to athletics where 90% of your time is spent practicing and games comprise only 10% of time. Practices are where the heavy lifting occurs and your skills are developed. If you attend a football game you can tell who worked hard in preparation for the game in comparison to the person who sloughed-off during the week thinking he could just show-up on Saturday and make things happen. The courtroom picture is very similar. I can almost always tell which lawyer has communicated with opposing counsel long before this court date or has been pushing her client to answer discovery or speak to the other party about settlement or push the case forward generally.

Here are 5 reasons to step-up your Outside-the-Courtroom Lawyering:

1. Less court = Less lawyer/client hassle. I don’t mind going to court and frankly I like a good old contested hearing once in a while but you can’t tell me that most clients enjoy going to court. Nope, most clients dread going to court. It’s time off from work, coming downtown, paying for parking, and just an uncomfortable high stress situation in general. I talk to clients up front about 3-4 case approaches from mediation to lawyer as mere scrivener to cases where EVERYTHING is in-court and strictly between the lawyers. Once in while I do end up in the extreme category where everything happens in court and only between the lawyers, but honestly that’s the worst place on the continuum to be.
2. Client Ownership & Client Actualization. Every case is the client’s case. I might live with a situation for several months or sometimes a couple years but it’s the client’s for life. I’d rather have great input in shaping the terms of a judgment instead of strictly having terms imposed on me. List client action points with every letter you send after a court date and check-in with clients via telephone/e-mail to make sure progress is happening.
3. Be a Level 5 Lawyer. Jim Collins in Good to Great talks about Level 5 leaders as the essential leaders where certain companies made the jump from good to great. The book analyzes the traits of certain select high-performance corporations. In a nutshell, Level 5 Leaders “blend extreme personal humility with intense professional will.” I think there’s a relevant parallel to lawyers…the ideal “Level 5 lawyer” has intense pride focused solely on the case result and client satisfaction whereas many lawyers sort of want to pad their ego by keeping case decisions only in their hands and subtly raising their own importance while undermining client satisfaction and frequently worsening case results.
4. Start with the End in Mind. Once you’ve been retained by a client, you should immediately set out a case map with your client laying out time-frames, action points, and the major decisions that will be decided over the course of litigation. Get the client engaged and working on her case immediately. In my practice using the example of a dissolution of marriage case, decisions are typically going to be made regarding 1) property division, 2) maintenance, 3) child custody, and 4) child financial support…talk through the statutory standards on those matters up front and see if the clients can work through these matters together. If the clients can make these decisions themselves great, if not make sure you’ve done your strong out-of-court lawyering so you know where court intervention IS necessary more quickly. The trouble is when 6 months into a case a client may not even yet know or understand the items a court may need to decide or the decisions that need to be made.
5. No fights about temporary orders or discovery, EVER. Granted I can’t always achieve this but it is a rule of mine that I tell clients up front. This is the crap that wastes critical dollars, lawyer time, and is wholly unsatisfying. I never want to be the lawyer in court from a few weeks back who had to argue about re-scheduling a deposition in open court. The mother has custody of the kids while the divorce is pending, keep supporting them, keep the temperature down, and work out a parenting schedule between the two of you.