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[00:00:07] Scott Benton: Hey everyone, Scott Benton here. How are you? I am the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast, where we help you easily transition from a law school student into your professional career as an attorney, and, of course, where we make the practice of law fun.
[00:00:20] Scott Benton: And today, as a reminder, we’re going to go over the idea that as the attorney, you are the one who is controlling your cases. You’re the one controlling your cases.
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[00:01:18] Scott Benton: So you might be saying to yourself, of course, I control my cases as the attorney. Why would that even come into question? And the answer to that very good question is that great.
[00:01:28] Scott Benton: I hope you always remember who’s in charge, but I would also say that as you get deeper and deeper into your cases, sometimes it can be easy to forget that you have that control, and that means that you, as the attorney, have options that, on occasion, it may come up where you have to exercise whether or not you’re going to continue to work on a particular case.
[00:01:52] Scott Benton: Let’s go back over your job as an attorney and what it is exactly that you’re doing when you’re practicing law. Now, in it’s most basic [00:02:00] form, someone has a situation that they’re just not able to resolve themselves. Maybe it’s with a family member, or there’s a legal issue, or it could be some kind of legal instrument that they have that needs to be processed, such as a funded trust with assets, and maybe those assets require distributions, several people after somebody has passed away, for instance.
[00:02:22] Scott Benton: Now, that trust distribution could be a pretty straightforward process, or it could be complicated by all kinds of last minute changes that may have taken place. That person makes an appointment to meet with you as a potential attorney, and they roll out their entire situation and their story, and you eventually agree to work together.
[00:02:43] Scott Benton: Now the client hires you. Okay, let’s pause just a moment there for a second. Because sometimes this is where a little bit of confusion might come up. It might come up. They hired you to advise them and help them navigate the legal process [00:03:00] that they’re in. Okay. But keep in mind that doesn’t mean that you have to do absolutely everything that they tell you to do.
[00:03:08] Scott Benton: And here, at this point in the journey, you might think of course you don’t have to do that. Your job is to find a way to make their goals happen, as long as it’s ethical and legal and that there’s a legal argument for your strategy. Now, once you have those strategies in place and figured out, Those are presented to your client.
[00:03:30] Scott Benton: You take those to your client. Here are the different strategies I came up with. And each strategy is discussed in terms of their pros and cons. So you might say something like, Okay, so if you use strategy number one, you’re gonna get this, but you’re not gonna get that. Or if you use strategy number two, then you get both of these things, but you lose this other thing.
[00:03:49] Scott Benton: Or maybe you damage all of your relationships with your family members. Some people can be very concerned about maintaining their strong bonds with their family, and Even though they’ve hired [00:04:00] an attorney, sometimes they want to navigate their legal situation very delicately so they can preserve those family relationships.
[00:04:08] Scott Benton: That means it’s not always going to be easy for them to figure out how to move their case forward. You might have presented several strategies and you might have even carefully gone through all the pros and cons, but there might be more to the story than they told you up front, which happens. And it’s why you not only want to get really good at building relationships with your clients, but you also want to make sure that when you’re questioning them about their case facts, that you’re digging three layers deep down into their story, and you want to make sure that you’re asking a lot of questions.
[00:04:42] Scott Benton: So in this example, let’s go another direction. Let’s say something happens and maybe the client’s family reacts negatively and they get all lawyered up and they make all of these criminal accusations against your client. And then of course your client responds with fear and anger and now they want to do [00:05:00] something in retaliation, such as file their own criminal charges against their family.
[00:05:05] Scott Benton: that you know are made up because the client told you they’re made up, but they still insist on going in this direction. So you carefully point out the case strategies once again, that you would come up with and you talk about their pros and cons, but now your client is in an angry, fearful, and highly emotional state.
[00:05:25] Scott Benton: So they’re not really listening to what you’re saying. And the client might believe that. Since they’ve hired you as their attorney that they can tell you to do anything and you have to do it. But you know this request might damage your client’s ability to recover anything. And that there’s no real legal foundation or any kind of legal argument for going in that direction.
[00:05:47] Scott Benton: And this is exactly where you need to remember that you, as the attorney, that you are in charge of the case. You can even explain this to the client once they’re able to hear what you’re telling them when they calm down a little bit. [00:06:00] But you’re going to explain that in the world of law, attorneys can elect to remove themselves from a case if they feel they can’t help the client reach their legal goals.
[00:06:09] Scott Benton: And in this case, you simply don’t feel you can help them. You can explain the legal strategies that you presented can help them. But that you can’t help them if filing criminal charges is the direction that they want to go and that you’ll need to stop representing them as their attorney if they insist on going that direction.
[00:06:31] Scott Benton: Now here on this podcast, that all might be pretty obvious to you, but remember that cases are complex. And sometimes, like in the analogy of the frog in the boiling pot of water, while you’re busy providing legal services for your client, you might not quite realize at first that you need to now make a decision about whether or not to continue working with this client.
[00:06:54] Scott Benton: So this is why you always want to keep in mind while you’re performing your legal services for a [00:07:00] client, that you’re always the one who’s in charge of your cases. And therefore, you control them. You control your cases, not the clients. And you control them regardless of who’s paying for those services.
[00:07:14] Scott Benton: So if something’s not right, like in this fictionalized example we came up with, It’s well within your reach to simply get out of the case and work with clients who want to pursue their own legal objectives that you’ve presented to them where a legal argument can be made.
[00:07:33] Scott Benton: My name is Scott Benton. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If this is material that you like and you want to receive an alert every time we put out a new episode, you can go to our website, which is classroom2courtroom.
[00:07:46] Scott Benton: com. That’s classroom, the number two. Courtroom. com. You can leave us your contact information. You’ll get an alert when we put out a new episode. So how cool is that? Additionally, if you like this material, don’t forget to share and subscribe. And by doing that, [00:08:00] it’ll help you stay on top of our newest episodes as well.
[00:08:02] Scott Benton: Cause you’ll get an alert through the podcatcher that you’re on. So until next time, we hope you’ll join us in making the world a better place, one client at a time. Thank you so much.
