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[00:00:07] Scott Benton: Hey everyone, Scott Benton here. How are you? I’m 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 where we happen to make the law fun. Now today, we’re going to take a look at when cases become disengaged for one reason or another and the importance of engaging in all of your cases.
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[00:01:16] Scott Benton: Once you start working as an attorney, let’s say you’ve got 30 cases you’re working on, and I generally use that 30 number a lot on this podcast because it’s just an easy middle number. Sometimes you’ve got more cases, sometimes you’ve got less, but regardless of how many you have, you’re going to have cases that you’re engaged in and other cases that you’re probably not engaged in.
[00:01:36] Scott Benton: So why would you not be engaged with some of your cases that you might ask? There are any number of reasons disengagement might occur on a case, some of which might be caused by the attorney, some of which might be caused by the client, or maybe a combination of both, but all of these cases can and should be re engaged as soon as possible and move forward with a little bit of [00:02:00] momentum and completed legal services And we’re going to talk about how to do that.
[00:02:04] Scott Benton: But first, let’s figure out why the attorney might start to disengage from a case. Maybe the client is difficult or unpleasant to work with or they don’t know what they want. Or maybe they want something that either you can’t understand or from what you do understand. You don’t believe you can deliver what they’re asking for.
[00:02:24] Scott Benton: Now, while you’re waiting for the client to gain some sort of clarity on their behalf, on the legal goals that they want to achieve, you probably are going to turn your attention to the other cases that you’re working on, because remember you have 30 of them, that already have momentum, and that you can spend your days performing legal services on.
[00:02:45] Scott Benton: And then after a couple of weeks, the disengaged case, it’s probably come to a standstill. The bottom line with cases where disengagement has occurred generally comes down to one thing, and that is clarity with its legal goal.
[00:02:59] Scott Benton: Clarity with [00:03:00] its legal goal. So in other words, you don’t know what the client wants and maybe the client doesn’t know what the client wants and they’re probably coming to you to help them figure it out and hoping that you might know what they want, which might be an unrealistic expectation.
[00:03:15] Scott Benton: But the good news is that this is your golden opportunity to put your attention on that case in order to get it going once again.
[00:03:23] Scott Benton: Now, what if it’s largely the client who’s disengaged from their own case?
[00:03:28] Scott Benton: A lot of the time, like we’ve mentioned, they don’t really have a lot of clarity into what they’re trying to accomplish legally speaking and with your help. It also might be an example where the client is constantly changing their objective and moving the target which is delaying and even throwing off the case and prevents it from moving forward. Sometimes there’s also a problem communicating to the client that work is actually getting done on their case. So from their point of view, they see the legal bills coming in, but [00:04:00] the billing entries don’t really provide much information on what’s actually happening.
[00:04:04] Scott Benton: So for a client who Hasn’t worked much with attorneys or maybe who’s really never worked with an attorney. It looks to them like nothing is happening or it can and that they’re not getting anything for the money that they keep paying out each month and they begin to pull away from engagement with their attorney and with the firm simply because they don’t know what’s going on.
[00:04:25] Scott Benton: So now you, as the attorney who’s covering 30 cases, you’re busy looking over your list of cases that you’re engaged in and the list of cases that you’re not engaged in, and your goal is to become fully engaged in all of your cases. So you’re going to want to call your clients whenever disengagement has occurred, and you’re going to want to do a verbal assessment with them about where the case is, so you make sure that you’re both on the same page because Something’s just gone off track somewhere and you want to be able to pick it back up.
[00:04:58] Scott Benton: Now, not only [00:05:00] are you building a strong working relationship with the client, which is important, and you’re doing that by interacting with them directly, but you’re also clarifying the legal objectives of their case that could be murky at this point and why it got stuck in the first place. Sometimes you don’t know what the objective is in the case where the client keeps moving the goalposts, and sometimes they don’t know what the goals are. So as their advisor, you’re gonna need to really clarify for them what their options are, and then from those options, what the different case strategies are for reaching their legal goals, as well as the pros and cons of each strategy.
[00:05:38] Scott Benton: If you have the goals of your cases established and clarified, then you’re more likely to move them forward and not risk losing clients who feel like nothing’s getting done on their cases. Through your efforts to build relationships and help clients clarify their objectives,
[00:05:53] Scott Benton: now you can start to perform smaller legal services at first for disengaged cases [00:06:00] just to get the ball rolling and to build some momentum and momentum clients can see and understand the value that they’re getting in terms of working with you. This reengages your cases. It reestablishes connection with your clients and their objectives. It moves them forward and it gets your clients unstuck. More importantly, you also want to make sure that you’re continuing to build on that momentum so it doesn’t get stuck once again, and so that you’re putting a to do list together for that case and performing all those legal services.
[00:06:32] Scott Benton: That’s really why you want to get momentum in your cases. You want to build your to do list. So that you can supply those legal services. Now, if the client is having a hard time understanding the work that’s getting done, then you want to make sure that they have clearly written status reports sent to them, and that all billing entries are broken down into individual completed tasks, and that they’re written in a way to ensure that a client who’s never [00:07:00] worked with an attorney before can understand them.
[00:07:02] Scott Benton: In other words, you want to make sure each billing entry demonstrates a single completed task, and does not use any legalese or any complicated language of any kind that they might not understand. You want to simplify it as much as possible so that anyone reading it can understand the billing entry.
[00:07:22] Scott Benton: You also don’t want a block bill where you lump the completion of a number of tasks into one single billing entry. You want your client to be able to look at their bills and immediately understand the work that’s been done on their case, so that they can clearly see the progress that’s getting done towards reaching their legal goals.
[00:07:42] Scott Benton: Now, if you do all of that, it’s far more unlikely that your case is going to get stuck again or experience any kind of disengagement from the attorney or from the client.
[00:07:51] Scott Benton: My name is Scott Benton. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. Thank you so much for watching this episode. If you’re finding this to be valuable information [00:08:00] and you’d like to receive an alert every time we put out a new episode, you can go to our website.
[00:08:05] Scott Benton: Our website is classroom2courtroom. com. That’s classroom, the number two. courtroom dot com. You can leave us your contact information there and we will send out an alert. So that you know a new episode is available. Don’t forget to share and subscribe. And we hope you’ll join us on our next episode of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast.
[00:08:23] Scott Benton: And we also hope you’ll join us in the meantime of making the world a better place one client at a time. Thank you so much.
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