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[00:00:07] Scott Benton: Hey everyone, Scott Benton here. I am the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. How are you? We are a podcast dedicated to helping you transition from Law school student into your professional career as a fully licensed attorney. And as you begin your new job, we are here to teach you how to practice law, a subject that is not taught in law school, law schools there to help you graduate law school.
[00:00:31] Scott Benton: And the bar prep courses are there. to help you pass the bar But, no one is actually teaching you how to practice law, and that’s where we come in.
[00:00:44] Scott Benton: Today we’re going to look at the question of, Can I shortcut my legal services? Can I shortcut my legal services? What does that mean exactly? When you are hired by a client, you have a certain amount [00:01:00] of steps that you’re going to be taking to in order to work on their cases and they’re hiring you for your expertise.
[00:01:08] Scott Benton: And once you’ve determined what direction a case is going to go, then there are certain steps you’re going to take. And a lot of times, especially with newer attorneys, there’s this tendency to want to shortcut those legal steps. As you will find out, there are specified steps that are laid out for each strategy and each direction that you’re going to go, but sometimes there’s this sort of idea that you can save time or you can maybe save your client money by skipping steps.
[00:01:39] Scott Benton: And so this question is addressing of whether or not you can skip steps when it comes to performing your legal services. And the answer is yes. No, you have to do all of the steps and you have to do all of the steps in order as they are prescribed. But that doesn’t mean steps can’t be skipped.
[00:01:59] Scott Benton: And that’s something [00:02:00] I’m going to explain in just a second. But your job essentially as an attorney is to understand the case as deeply as you possibly can. And by the way, You accomplish that by building a strong relationship with your client. Now, in other podcast episodes, we talk about this building relationships in the firm that I work for, which is a trust and probate litigation and administration firm.
[00:02:24] Scott Benton: One of our core company values is building relationships. And we say build relationships and all else will follow. It’s the cornerstone of the work that we do with our clients. It’s essential to build relationships because that’s how you are able to really drill down into the nature of the case and get all the nuances in order for you to come up with the best possible strategies for that case for which the client will want to further engage your services and will continue to pay for your legal advice and your help with their case and in representing [00:03:00] them.
[00:03:00] Scott Benton: So your job is when a client comes in to understand that case as deeply as possible and to do some research and provide that client with their different case strategies that will help them to achieve their legal objectives. So this is why you want to form a strong relationship with them because they will open up to you and they will help you really understand all of those little nooks and crannies of their legal objectives.
[00:03:28] Scott Benton: And then you’re going to present them with their different strategies And with those strategies, you’re also this is all in writing. You’re going to include the pros and cons of each strategy. Maybe one of the strategies would take. two years to complete and it would be very costly in order to do that.
[00:03:47] Scott Benton: And maybe one of the strategies would take a much shorter period of time, but would have percentage wise a much lower chance of prevailing. So you want to go through all of, I’m just making this up, but you [00:04:00] just want to go through all of those different pros and cons with the strategies that you are giving to the client.
[00:04:08] Scott Benton: Now You want to make sure that in your work you’re not skipping steps. Now, what would constitute skipping steps? For instance, periodically you need to provide a case update. A case update is a document that you write out, you explain where the case is in that moment in time, and you send that to your client.
[00:04:27] Scott Benton: Now, this is a billable event. So you want to sit down and you want to write out your case update. And you want to make sure that gets completed, that gets delivered, and that you don’t skip that step. You might think I’m going to do one of these updates in a month or two. So do I really need to do one now?
[00:04:47] Scott Benton: The answer is, yeah, you do. Absolutely, you need to sit down and write that. That status update for that case and then in a month or two or whatever that time period is, then you’re going to do it again because cases [00:05:00] evolve and you need to be able to document not only for the client in order to keep them paying for your legal services so they don’t feel like they’re being ignored and they know exactly where the case is at any one given time, but it’s also a way to protect you as their attorney, as their representative, and it’s a way to protect your firm.
[00:05:16] Scott Benton: Okay. So you want to make sure that you’re not skipping steps. Now, maybe there’s a case where you have several witnesses that you need to talk to and obtain declarations from. And you might think there’s 15 of these people I need to get declarations from, but I’m only going to get two. I’m only going to get two declarations because that’s going to be enough.
[00:05:36] Scott Benton: That’s not really going to be enough, because if you listen to some of our other podcast episodes, you’ll learn about layering evidence. Layer the more, you keep layering evidence one layer after another, because you want to make sure that you’re covering every single angle, that the opposing side has no way to chip away at your argument.
[00:05:57] Scott Benton: And in this case, when it comes to declarations, [00:06:00] especially when there are witnesses at a particular event, let’s say, Then 15 declarations all saying the same thing, maybe from a slightly different angle, are better than just two declarations. It’s an overwhelming amount of evidence, and when it comes to proving your case, you want to have an overwhelming amount of evidence.
[00:06:20] Scott Benton: That is going to make the difference between, let’s say, a level 1 attorney and a level 2 attorney. A level 2 attorney being far more detailed and far more complete in their work. And then a level two is an attorney that is definitely not going to skip steps when it comes to their legal services.
[00:06:38] Scott Benton: Now, As I said earlier, there is a way to skip steps, but it’s not gonna come from you. Once you’ve presented your client with their legal strategies and the pros and cons of each one of those legal strategies, and they pick one, and they’re now hiring you essentially to go in the direction that they’ve asked you to [00:07:00] go in terms of choosing that strategy.
[00:07:03] Scott Benton: The client may elect to only get two declarations. Maybe 15 declarations is going to be extremely costly for them and they don’t feel that it justifies the added expense. So they tell you to only get two declarations, but even when they do something like that and it goes against your advice, you’re going to want to give the client the pros and cons of only getting two declarations.
[00:07:30] Scott Benton: You want to make sure that’s in writing, by the way, so that you have it documented that the client chose that shortcut and that it was chosen by them and not by you. That becomes very important. That’s going to reduce your stress. You’re going to enjoy your evenings and weekends more if you have that documentation that the client, for whatever reason has decided to only get two declarations instead of 15 or Maybe the client decides they don’t want an expert witness.
[00:07:59] Scott Benton: Maybe [00:08:00] you need three expert witnesses, but the client only wants to get one because getting expert witnesses can be pretty pricey. So whenever something like that happens, when a shortcut has been made, you want to make sure that the shortcut is initiated by The client and not by you. And then you want to make sure that you’re documenting that all along the way so that you can show and if you need to in the future, either to protect yourself with a firm or both, that the decision to shortcut is Some process in the in the case work that you’re doing was initiated by the client.
[00:08:37] Scott Benton: So I hope that answers the question of should, could you, should you shortcut your legal services or not? The answer is a resounding no, you should not. You definitely should do all of the steps, do them in order, and don’t skip any of them. But the client may want to skip some of these steps may be based on just financial resources that [00:09:00] they have.
[00:09:00] Scott Benton: I’m Scott Betten. I’m the host of the Classroom to Courtroom podcast. I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode and that this information is helpful for you. You are enjoying this material and you’d like to get an alert every time we put out a new episode of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast, you can go to our website. Our website is classroom2courtroom. com. That’s classroom, the number two courtroom. com. You can put in your contact information.
[00:09:22] Scott Benton: You’ll receive an alert whenever we put out a new episode. And if you do like this material, of course, don’t forget to share and subscribe. We hope you’ll join us on the next episode of the Classroom 2. Courtroom podcast. We also hope that you’ll join us in making the world a better place one client at a time.
[00:09:40] Scott Benton: Thank you so much.
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