How Do I Disengage With A Client

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Scott Benton: Hey everyone, Scott Benton here. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom Podcast. How are you? This is a podcast dedicated to law students and those who have just graduated law school, maybe even past the bar, and you’re looking for your first Attorney job.

And we are here to make that transition easy for you and even better to make the practice of law fun. We’re going to teach you how to practice as an Attorney, a subject that is not taught in law schools. Law schools are in the business of getting you to graduate and test prep courses are in the business of getting you to pass the bar. But after that happens and you’re going after your first Attorney job, you still need to learn how to practice as an Attorney.

So the question logically becomes, where do you get that information? You don’t want to wait until you’re in a job to learn how to practice law. You would like to go into that position already knowing how to do that. [00:01:00] And this podcast, the Classroom 2 Courtroom Podcast, is going to fill that gap for you and teach you everything you need to know in order to practice law.

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Scott Benton: Now today’s question that we’re going to answer is How Do I Disengage With A Client Once The Case Is Done? how do I disengage with a client once the case is done now in every case, there’s going to come a time when it’s settled and the client is not going to need your legal services any longer, at which point you’re going to need to go through the disengagement process and something that you’re going to do by sending out a disengagement letter.

And the disengagement letter is going to explain what that process looks like, but before you do that, you’re going to have a conversation with them. The disengagement letter is going to basically recap everything you have in that conversation, and it’s going to talk about the point in time where the case that you’ve been working on is now concluded and finished, you’ve disengaged.

It’s also going to say that the client is going [00:02:00] to receive electronic copies of their documents that apply to their case, something that they’re going to generally receive in a week or two after you send the disengagement letter. The files are going to be contained in on a USB drive that they’ll be receiving and something that you want to explain to your client that’s what they’re going to get.

So, in any case, you’re going to have a conversation with the client. Now, the case may not be totally finished. Now, all the decisions have been made and everybody involved in the case, they know what those decisions are. A lot of times a distribution hasn’t been made at that point, but really there’s no more litigation, everything’s done. You’re just going to sort of wait for everybody to receive their distributions.

And so there’s going to come that point in time where you will have a conversation with your client to say, listen, this case is done. We’re going to send you this disengagement letter. and you’ll explain that disengagement process.

Now, for the most part, you have the potential of four different conversations that [00:03:00] you’re going to have with your client and they’re all going to be slightly different, which is going to be based on, of course, the outcome of the case. And so we want to talk about what those four different conversation styles are going to look like.

So, the four types of outcomes that you’re already going to be quite well aware of are now. Most cases are decided through settlement. So most cases settle, in other words, they don’t go to trial. Most of the cases are going to reach their conclusion through settlement, and in settlement, there’s going to be sort of a scale of balance.

Your client is either going to get mostly what they want or they’re mostly not going to get what they want. And those are two totally different conversations that you’re going to have. So, we want to take a look at those, in one case, if the client in a settlement has gotten mostly what they wanted and mostly won, then that’s going to be an easy conversation.

And, [00:04:00] but it’s still going to follow the same structure as all of these conversations. It’s just going to be more of a fun conversation that you’re going to have with your client because they’re happy. They got what they wanted, they came to you, they hired you as their attorney, they set their legal goals.

And for the most part, you’ve helped them reach that whatever percentage that is, maybe it’s a 100%, 90%, 75%, whatever, but they’re walking away happy that they’ve hired you. They’ve come out of this ahead if would have not won had they not hired you, and so you get to have that conversation with them.

But you want to go into it, talking about the positives, talking about the wins. You always want to think about the wins and you want to, celebrate those as much as possible. Now there are probably going to be areas where the client didn’t win. They didn’t walk away with something that they really wanted, but you’re going to want to emphasize the wins.

You want to stay professional, you want to stay positive, you want to you know, talk about everything that they’ve [00:05:00] gained by virtue of the work that you’ve done together. And hopefully, the areas that they’re not going to walk away with that they maybe wanted, hopefully those are largely overshadowed by the enormity of the win, and your client is simply going to be very, very happy with the work that they’ve done with you.

So if you have a client that really mostly one and they’re happy with the work that you’ve done together. This is your opportunity to ask them to write a positive review for the firm and highlight the work that you’ve done together and highlight the relationship maybe that you’ve had with their Attorney and with the firm that you’ve worked in.

Now chances are that a client, if they’re really happy with the work that you’ve done with them, they’re going to write a review anyway. But you do want to sort of nudge them, a lot of times they don’t know or they don’t think about going in and writing a review.

But at that moment when they’ve won, as much as they’ve won, they’re in a very positive mood. positive mood and [00:06:00] are likely to sit down and knock out a very favorable review. Those are always going to be five star reviews, which is going to really provide excellent marketing for you and the firm to help bring in future clients.

So that does become an important component of the disengagement process for you, for the firm, for the business of law. You always want to think about the business of law and growing the law firm and bringing in new clients. And this is one way and really a very easy way to do it if you have a client who’s walking away real happy, you want to make sure that they’re going to leave you a five star review, and you want to do that all day long.

In those cases whether it’s settlement or a trial, in this case, we’re still talking about settlement. Now, there are going to be settlement cases where your client is walking away with less than they had hoped that they got. So they’re going to have the balance is going to be a little bit more tipped into that negative territory.

So they’re not going to be as happy with the outcome of that particular [00:07:00] settlement. And when you have that conversation, that disengagement conversation with a client, you still want to highlight and celebrate the positive. You want to talk about what they are walking away with. And you don’t want to focus on all of the areas that they’re not walking away with.

Chances are that you’ve had a lot of conversations with them about the tough uphill battle that you were having during litigation and during the work you were doing on the case. But for the most part, if the end result is less than what they had hoped for, or sometimes it’s very little, maybe even nothing, you want to make sure that you’re safe still focused on the positive of the case.

I mean, even if it’s like at least the case is finished because a lot of times cases can be exhausting for clients. It stresses, stresses out everybody, it stresses out the family. In the case of the type of law that we’re doing, trust and probate administration and litigation. And a lot of times when families [00:08:00] are fighting over an estate, it can be very, very stressful for them.

So sometimes the positive the case where a client walks away with nothing is that the case has been decided, it’s over and they can go back to their lives without having this very painful situation hanging over him.

So you really want to focus as much as possible on the positive outcome and celebrate the small wins, even if it’s just a tiny small win, you want to focus on that. You know, you don’t want to be pollyannic, you don’t want to ignore what the relative unsuccess of the case, but you do want to sort of highlight the positives and really kind of keep that in mind.

And again, you want to remain professional, certainly don’t want to you want to you you want to be sympathetic to them but you do want to always remain in a professional demeanor and a professional posture when you are talking to your clients regardless of the outcome in these disengagement conversations that you’re going to be having with them.

Now, [00:09:00] the client may be angry or upset or a lot of times as you probably know, and maybe you’ve done this yourself, people write negative reviews more than people write positive reviews. Because negative reviews are a way to sort of blow off steam. There’s a sort of a catharsis that happens when you’re able to go online and write a negative review about something that you’re upset about.

And so people will engage in negative reviews all the time, but in general, if a client has walked away, and they’re upset, unhappy with the services you provided, a really maybe that’s not even the case, they’re just unhappy with what they’re walking away with.

Then you probably don’t want to ask them to write a review. They may write a review anyway, but you see, this is why you want to focus on asking the clients who are walking away with most of what they wanted or all of what they wanted. Those are the clients that you want to ask to write reviews because those will always be five star reviews and those are going to [00:10:00] offset really any negative reviews that do come in.

But you know, remember, you don’t want to ask a client who’s unhappy to go and write a review. That’s just not going to help you in terms of the marketing of your legal services, the marketing of the legal services for the firm, sometimes negative reviews are justified, sometimes they’re not.

There’s a whole other discipline in terms of handling negative reviews which you or your firm want to be very, very familiar with for the most part you want your clients to be satisfied and happy with the work that you’re doing and you want your clients to walk away with having one or mostly one. And remember, you always want to celebrate those wins as much as you can.

Now, let’s start to talk about the trial, because sometimes, settlement’s not possible. So cases are going to go to a trial. And it’s basically the same thing, need to know that either the client is going to win or the client is going to lose.

Now, if the client does lose, Again, chances are you’ve probably had a lot of conversations about that. That’s been teed up long [00:11:00] ago because there could be a lot of barriers between you and that win of the trial.

And so if you do get to a point, I know you’re going to try as hard as you can to win that case, but sometimes you really have stacked up against you and it’s just not gonna happen.

And you do lose the case and in that situation again, you want to focus as closely as possible on the wins. Maybe there are some smaller wins or medium wins even that the client has ended up with. And so in that disengagement conversation, you want to highlight those wins and talk about anything positive you can. You want to find the positive in those cases, so you want to keep that in mind.

And of course if the client wins, it’s going to be the same thing, they’re going to be so happy. They’re probably going to write a positive review with or without you requesting a review, but you always want to make sure to ask them to write a review.

A lot of times there’ll be sent a link for where they need to go in order to compose that review. And you’ll be [00:12:00] surprised about what they say. They’ll say some really nice things about you that you hadn’t really anticipated.

So, I hope that’s helpful. I hope that’s helpful information. This is a pretty broad topic, disengaging from a case. We’re gonna talk about this on several of these Classroom 2 Courtroom Podcast episodes because we want you to be armed to the teeth when you go into your first job as an Attorney.

We want you to know how to have all these skills and tools in your toolbox so that you know how to practice law even when you start your first job, a subject that, again, is not taught in law school.

That’s what we are here to provide you with a tremendous amount of value, and we hope that this is helpful as you transition from law student to legal professional.

I’m your host, Scott Benton. This is the Classroom 2 Courtroom Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. If this is helpful information to you and you’d like to receive an alert every time we put out a new episode, you can always go to our website, which is Classroom2Courtroom.com.

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