Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

What’s it going to be, positive or a negative?

I’m constantly amazed at the treatment I see whether first or second-hand in my day-to-day law practice. And it’s often brushed off as so-called “gamesmanship” or different sorts of intimidation tactics…I’d mostly just call it “being a jerk” or plain rudeness. At a surface level I’m not surprised because sadly there’s much rudeness outside the legal profession too. And I’m not going to spin off into some rant regarding our great cultural moral decay because that’s not my purpose here. Nope, the question we deal with in this space is, how do you build a great entrepreneurial legal services business.

The focus of this post is purely a lawyer’s self-interest:  The critical impact between your relationships as lawyer with opposing counsel, opposing client, and the other players in the legal world AND the flat-out success of your business whether defined by client outcomes good old “dollars in your pocket.” I’ve had several eye-opening examples just this week and over the last month where good relationships meant success for my clients. And there have been a few jaw-dropping displays by opposing lawyers in terms of their treatment of me that just has me thinking, do you realize what you’re costing your practice due to your behavior.

First, just recently having a good relationship with the clerk in a courtroom likely saved my client a big headache. Here the opposing pro se client was a good hour late for the scheduled court date so by the time she got into the courtroom our case had been called, and an order favorable to my client’s interests was set to be entered, and essentially the court clerk had the orders in her hand set to be entered when the pro se litigant asked to have the case re-called and to speak with the judge. The clerk asked me if I wanted the case re-called, I said NO, it wasn’t, and the order favorable to my client was entered. I’m as big of a critic as anyone regarding the general functioning of some of the circuit court clerks’ offices but most of the specific individuals in single courtrooms are pretty reasonable people and more importantly, it’s in your (and your client’s) self-interest to have a good relationship with those people.

Second, having a good relationship with opposing counsel can often save you in a pinch. I recently had a death in my family that required me to be out of town for about 1 week (see this post regarding handling vacations as a small firm attorney). This was unexpected so I had a few court matters set that I simply couldn’t make. But simply by have respectful and really a friendly repertoire with the opposing two lawyers in these cases made my conflict just a non-issue. In one case the other lawyer gave me some dates and I was able to step-up before a judge on an earlier date and set the matter like we wanted to on the date I had to now miss. In the other matter, the lawyer was nice enough to cover the case for me. This ain’t rocket science but I surely could have envisioned having to pay some lawyer to cover these matters for me and that hurts my practice. Of course this is a most simplistic benefit of having good relationships with other lawyers on a grander scale…think referrals and court coverage and having people to discuss legal questions with and the list goes on and on and…

Conversely, having a poor relationship with opposing lawyers hurts your clients and your practice. If you want to hurt your client’s case by shutting down communication with the other side, motive your opponent to win at trial, create utter disrespect and ill will on the part of your opponent and simply eliminate all the potential positives that other lawyers can provide (see above…referrals/favors/expertise) treat your opponent like crap. I finished up a case last fall where my opponent absolutely despised my client and sadly his feelings flowed onto me. I got a few vile and profanity-filled phone calls from this guy that leave me to this day having about the lowest opinion of this guy of any lawyer I’ve dealt with in 8 years. As an aside, what made this guy’s behavior most ludicrous and laughable is that the case we had together was a court-appointed matter where I had zero control in my client selection. What does this type of person gain by shredding his lawyer relations?

Lastly, sometimes having the trust and respect of an opposing client pays big dividends. The obvious point that is often forgotten is that opposing clients are potential future clients or referral sources…likely not in that particular case due to conflict problems but who sees your work more closely than the opposing client? But, particularly in transactional matters sometimes your relationship with an opposing client can help your own client’s matter right now. Recently we had a dicey real estate transaction with no real estate agents on either side so it was just was lawyers and clients. So I had to be involved in some things I normally wouldn’t be like a pre-closing walk-thru. But having that little extra relationship with the opposing client may have saved the deal. We ended up needing to make some totally unwritten side agreements to get this deal closed. That good relationship (and the clients’ good relationship) might have been the difference between my Sellers seeing $250,000 versus having to re-list the property for sale and who knows what.

My initial word association with a “Third Way” would be Tony Blair’s centre-left Labour Party government in Great Britain and his attempt to meld a different sort of political alternative to the extremes on the both the left and right. Although that’s not a wholly inaccurate description of my political leanings this ain’t the Politico so lets talk growing your law practice and specifically initial client meetings.

How to handle initial meetings with potential client prospects is VERY IMPORTANT to your practice but I don’t think there’s a real clear black/white answer on how to handle these and specifically, to charge or not to charge. Here was a previous post and an earlier evolution of my thinking on this matter. Generally the debates I hear and have had within my own mind are should you offer free initial consultations or should you charge for all meetings. A brief summary of my thinking (see link above) being that in the early days of your practice you’ve got plenty of time and should offer free initial consultations to more recent times as the practice fills-up you’ve got to charge for every minute of your time.

However, is there a third and better way? These are 3 questions guiding our current Initial Prospect Meeting Policy:

1.  What’s the source of the prospect and/or how did the prospect find you? The underlying thought here is to treat your best referral sources well indirectly though their referrals. Meaning, I’m much more liberal about offering a free initial client meeting to the person who got my name from that great referral source who sends me a new prospect every month versus the new prospect making a cold call and having no previous relationship to the Firm.

2.  What’s the case potential and/or why does the prospect want to meet? Simply, might your 1 hour meeting turn into thousands of dollars of profit in the future or is the prospect looking for your expertise limited to that initial hour meeting with no potential for future payoff. Now you might say that there’s potential future payoff just from a prospect meeting with you (just getting to know you) but personally that’s too indefinite and unlikely for my taste.

3.  What’s the Trade-off? Here I’m talking Opportunity Cost:  What’s the value of the next-best choice available when you obviously have several options of how to spend your time.  This question is why I think this whole subject-matter tends to change and evolve because your law practice like any business is a sort of living thing that constantly changes and evolves. So say six months after opening my doors if I’m balancing between organizing my office, creating legal forms, or taking a free initial prospect meeting I’d say the free meeting would be the best available cost. However, these days there’s a better chance that I’m choosing between actual billable legal work versus a new prospect meeting and trading $200 for that hour versus $0 isn’t usually a tough call.

Is there a 4th Way??

**Update** GAL re-posted here some ideas from Ed Poll:

The issue: whether to charge a prospective client a fee for an initial consultation, the meeting before being engaged. The wisdom of charging in this situation has long been debated, and it comes down to three fundamental choices:

1. Free initial consultation
2. Paid initial consultation at the lawyer’s regular rate, exclusive of any subsequent engagement
3. Paid initial consultation at the lawyer’s regular rate, with the payment applied to the total bill if the consultation results in an engagement.

We’re all in the business of retaining clients but there are times when a person is best left a non-client…better for both the lawyer and non-client. Because I strongly believe that there are situations when lawyers are unnecessary and often destructive. And taking on clients where you obtain a poor result and run up a client’s fees unnecessarily surely isn’t the sort of reputation building you need to really “Grow Your Practice.”

I’m constantly amazed and appalled in many of my domestic relations referral program appointed cases where I’m defending clients against indirect civil contempt. These cases are frequently post-judgment matters in divorce. More often than not an upfront review of the case file and discussions with my “new” client uncovers not only high levels of lawyer dissatisfaction but also tens of thousands of dollars in attorney fee judgments against these former clients. In other words not the sort of glowing client testimonials likely to bring those referrals and repeat business knocking on your door.

So when does a person REALLY need a lawyer?

It depends on the person and the definition of “need.” I suppose the continuum ranges from lawyer as replacement 3rd-party actor doing something a client could do herself but simply chooses not to (like using a landscaping service) to the most specialized of legal work where the intimate knowledge and experience of a lawyer is critical (think capital murder defense). And there’s nothing wrong with serving at either of those extremes…it’s honorable work to be your client’s trusted adviser on a variety of life’s complications. But oftentimes I think the honest assessment to a client that he should handle something himself bolsters your reputation (like parents arguing about visitation schedules or knowing that there’s not a legal solution to the potential client’s problem).

Here’s a guide I’ve developed (and heard many of these points made by judges) to answer the question, Does This Person REALLY Need a Lawyer, within the divorce field…maybe you can modify my list to polish your client selection discernment within your niche.

1.  No property and no children and short-term marriage=don’t REALLY need a lawyer. Unless a party simply wants to hire you like the landscaper, to avoid the hassle of a task and would prefer just paying someone to do this for them, no property/no children often should equal no lawyer.

2.  Property and/or children=REALLY Need a Lawyer. Simply way too many ways to blow money here like not knowing how to calculate “Net Income” for child support purposes if no one knows what they’re doing.

3. One party has a lawyer=the other party REALLY Needs a Lawyer. This is a recent add-on category for me that I think crosses the spectrum outside of my little family law world because if one party has a lawyer the pro se party is looking at potentially getting screwed BIG-TIME. I have several examples of this happening but a recent scenario that crossed my desk is the best…a couple both likely in their mid-50s divorces with several children but all the children are adults and beyond college age. The party with the lawyer talks the pro se litigant into having a $20,000ish judgment entered against the pro se litigant for a child support arrearage for a time period some 5-7 years prior when the kids lived with her. Judgment was to be paid out in installments. So, this guy is stuck with a $20k judgment because he didn’t have a lawyer…no way something like that happens with simply the most minimal trained opposing counsel.

Does this person REALLY need a lawyer? It’s likely one of the first issues you should be discussing at new client consultations. I think it’s an effective way to sort of play on the “scarcity principal”…I don’t take every little case that walks in the door. An important part of good client counseling.

Few things bother me professionally more than lawyers and law firms who seem to have the following business philosophy:

—First, take exceedingly large retainers up front.
—Second, churn the case for approximately 6 months by filing unfocused, fruitless pleadings and discovery.
—Third, withdraw from the case and file a fee petition against their former client for even more $$$.

We just got retained recently in a simple dissolution of marriage matter so I pulled the case file and took a look around. The previous firm filed the case some 9 months ago and took a $1,500 retainer up front. The case was filed and service was made on the Respondent; some 5 other court dates came and went; and, the firm withdrew with the case no closer to conclusion. Perhaps even worse was a matter against a gentleman who to my knowledge owes more past due child support than anyone in the state of Illinois. The firm brought several pleadings such as petitions for rule to show cause and motions to modify child support and visitation, never even got the pleadings they filed to hearing, then withdrew, and the last I saw had brought a $10,000 fee petition against their former client. It’s quite sad actually in much of my court-appointed contempt defense work, which is quite often procedurally post-divorce, the amounts of attorney fee judgments I see against former clients and the dissatisfaction of so many former clients with their attorneys.

What to do?

How about being a results-oriented attorney. How about starting with a specific end in mind and communicating with your clients specifically what you and her/his expectations are. Sadly I think these “lawyer churn” cases are almost the norm in the domestic relations field. Rule of Professional Conduct 1.5 disallows contingency fees in most domestic relations matters (child support collection being a notable exception). I suppose a contingency case for say custody of a child is rather unseemly, but some of my examples above aren’t exactly peachy either. Flat or capped fees? I’ve capped fees in some of the most common domestic relations matters like a motion to modify child support, for example. But in an early stage divorce it’s nearly impossible to gauge things like the opposing party/lawyer and the general tone of a case.

In my opinion at the end of the day you’ve got to create the personal policy of pushing your cases relentlessly towards settlement, hearing, and final resolution. And much of the pushing is about driving action BETWEEN court dates…that’s when the progress MUST occur. Waiting on those 15-minute court dates every couple of months is a recipe for disaster.