How Do I Wrap Up A Case With My 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? We are a podcast dedicated to law students and those who have just graduated law school. People looking for their first job as an Attorney. And we’re going to show you how to make that transition from legal student to legal professional as easily as possible.

And this is also a podcast where we make the practice of law fun.

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Scott Benton: Today we’re going to answer the question of How Do I Wrap Up A Case With My Client? How do I wrap up a case with my client? Which is an important question and something that you’re going to need to know how to do.

Now, generally, a client’s going to come in and hire you, hire you as the attorney in the firm that they want to work with, and you’re going to engage that client. They are going to engage your services. And at the end of that case, once it’s completed, once decisions have been reached, you are [00:01:00] going to disengage.

Now, keep in mind that all law firms are going to have their own process for wrapping up cases, which is probably going to account for some slight differences in terms of what I’m talking about here today.

Scott Benton: But, in general, they’re going to largely be the same once cases is done or it’s really it’s kind of nearing completion. You’ll see what I mean in a moment when I talk about that. Just know that there’s a process in place for you to reach the conclusion of a case and to process that official disengagement.

It’s the same way that every law firm is going to have a client services agreement, something that the client is going to sign to engage those services. You also need a way to disengage those services as well.

So a lot of what I’m talking about here is going to be based on what we do at the law firm that I work at, which is located in Irvine, California, that’s Southern California. For those of you not familiar with the state of California, we’re closer to Los Angeles than we are San Francisco, for instance.

[00:02:00] So we are a law firm that practices trust and probate administration and litigation. So I’m telling you that because it provides a context for you in case the firm that you’re working at is a little bit different or maybe you’re doing family law and their process has its own sort of special kind of ways of doing things or there are other additions or subtractions to a disengagement process from what we typically do as a firm. And again, remember that all firms are going to be a little bit different.

So you’re going to notice, there are some things that probably I’m talking about that don’t apply to you. So for us, once the decision has been made by a judge or a settlement’s been reached and you know, the case isn’t quite over yet, but it’s right at the beginning process of winding down.

So really the Attorney needs to reconnect with that client now that you’re pretty much done in terms of the work that you’re doing together and you need to discuss the end result of that case and really take a look at [00:03:00] how it looked, how it went, and you want to sort of re-evaluate what the client wanted to accomplish when they started the case and really ultimately look at what they’re going to end up getting you as the Attorney.

You want to let the client know that there’s a disengagement process, the case is now I’m going to need to go through and you’re going to really be the one that explains that to them.

And during that conversation, you as the attorney, you have an opportunity to really reflect on what the proceeds are in the case or you know, a lot of times with trust and probate and estate matters, there are a lot of family members involved, so a lot of times you’re going to be really intimately familiar with all of those relationships.

Sometimes these cases can last for months and months and months, and you’re going to see a lot of dynamics play out between family members, brothers and sisters, uncles, aunts, grandparents. Parents sometimes and a lot of times there are strains that come [00:04:00] along with families and law especially when it comes to probate and trust in the States.

And so if you’ve done your job correctly and you’ve been able to really build a relationship with your client you’re really going to sort of, understand all these intricacies. You’re going to be able to see where those kind of family fractures are, whether they’ve continued to grow, maybe got, worse or maybe they got better. But You want to make sure that you’re checking in with your client because a lot of times when it comes to estates, chances are that someone has passed away.

A lot of times it’s a parent, somebody that your client has been very close to. And now that particular person, that parent or family member has passed away and in some cases, this is going to be the first time that your client, like, let’s say it’s the holidays, for instance, let’s say that holidays are coming up and their parent has passed away and you’ve just sort of finished up this case or [00:05:00] you’re, just about to finish up this case.

It could be the first time that your client has not spent the holidays with a parent or, really, you know, something that’s going to be quite different in their life that they haven’t really done before. So this is a chance for you to really reconnect with your client because they could be going through a pretty difficult period in their life.

And you want to sort of check in with them on a kind of a human to human level as opposed to attorney client level. You want to sort of maybe turn that off for a moment and just check in with them. to see, you know, where they are and, and really kind of, talk about all the work that you’ve done together.

You know, relationships have been damaged or ruptured between family members in a case, you can touch upon those as well. Now, sometimes during litigation, people are, can really be torn apart as a family, but a lot of times through discussions when people sort of understand how that estate is going to be divided up between the different people in the [00:06:00] family a lot of times people can be walking away with what they want or they can just walk away either having a better understanding of of why, who is getting what.

And in any case, those fractures that took place during litigation, some of those could be mended or the family members could be growing closer to each other, you just don’t know, but again, if you’ve done your job correctly and you’ve built relationships with your client, you’re gonna just have a better idea of where all of that is, because you will have had your finger on the pulse of that case.

And so you wanna make sure that you’re really ending this relationship with your client, or at least as far as working on this case goes, you want to make sure that you’re leaving it on a positive note or at least maybe a note of hope if in the case where the family members are still kind of fractured.

Sometimes families are just never going to be able to repair themselves. It’s just not going to happen but sometimes that is possible, and if that is possible, well, you want to make sure that you’re highlighting that anything that’s positive, you want to focus on that [00:07:00] in terms of your conversation that is going to set the stage for your disengagement.

So next you want to talk to your client about disengagement letter that you’re going to send. That’s the next thing you’re going to do. This is usually a form letter that a firm has, a lot of times it’s kind of the same language.

Now, sometimes there are issues from case to case that will be mentioned in a disengagement letter. For instance, sometimes you’re working with a client not on one case, but on several cases.

So in that disengagement letter, you’re gonna want to mention you know, we’re still working on this other case. And put in the, case name and the file number on that letter, for instance, this will all be procedure in the firm that you’re working at, there’s going to be a specific process that people write these disengagement letters through, but just understand that there are going to be slight differences.

It’s not just going to be a copy and paste, although it could be a copy and paste, sometimes the similarities are, almost exact that you can really accept for the name and the [00:08:00] address and the phone number. file number and the file name, you can pretty much cut and paste, but you want to make sure that if there are any outstanding issues that those are also mentioned in the disengagement letter.

So, in the disengagement letter, you typically they’re gonna state that here as of this date, and it’ll be the date of the letter that we are officially disengaging from this case, it’s been finalized.

You also want to talk about how the client is going to receive an electronic copy of all of their files from the law firm, those are going to be sent out maybe a week or two. After this disengagement letter, their files are usually put on a USB drive, there are electronic files that are sent separately to the client and they’re going to receive those. So in the disengagement letter you’re going to mention that as well.

Now keep in mind that the client doesn’t get all of the case files. There are certain files that just don’t go on that USB. So for instance, there are going to be attorney [00:09:00] notes, Attorney notes, we’ve talked about Attorney notes in other podcast episodes. In fact, many other podcast episodes.

And in fact, we’re going to keep talking about Attorney notes because those are so important critical to practicing law, practicing, certainly practicing probate and probate litigation and administration. Those Attorney notes, it’s like you’re journaling an entire case by using these Attorney notes and these are notes that you’re putting everything into so that you don’t have to hold all that information in your mind, but you’re also putting stuff in there that really doesn’t necessarily need to go to the client and it shouldn’t go to the client.

There’s also confidential correspondences that the client’s not going to receive in other documents and so on. But really the people that are going to be putting together the drive and this disengagement letter.

They’re going to know what goes on that USB drive and what doesn’t go on that USB drive, so that will be something that you may not need to worry about, but you do need to know that there is a [00:10:00] difference between documents that the client does get at the conclusion of a case and documents that they don’t get.

Sometimes there are outstanding balances that still need to be addressed, and so you may mention that in the disengagement letter as well. A lot of times, if there are balances, the final check from the estate, the distribution will actually go to the law firm, and then the law firm will deduct the amounts that are owed to them from that distribution, and then they will turn around and send a check out to the client for the remainder.

So that’s not unusual, that’s something that can also be put in this, final disengagement letter if that’s necessary. So once that’s all done, the case is then moved into the closed cases file on the firm’s drive and no more work is done on that case moving forward.

Unless for some reason it needs to be reopened, but for the sake of this podcast episode everything is done. That case is now moved to the closed cases file and you’re [00:11:00] done with it. You move on to your other cases at that point.

So you can see that there’s a whole process in place that you should be aware of when it comes to closing out a file. There’s much more to talk about when you’re closing a file that, you want to sort of have those conversations with your client. Make sure you’re sending out that disengagement letter. This is really kind of a broad overview for you so that you can get more of a context of what that looks like when you’re closing out particular case.

And there’s gonna be much more to talk about wrapping up cases that we’re going to address on the classroom 2 courtroom podcast on future episodes which I hope you’ll able to listen to because we are going to get a little bit more granular with this. Today I just wanted to provide really sort of the more broad based overview.

So I hope that was helpful. I’m your host Scott Benton. This is the classroom 2 courtroom podcast. Thank you for listening to this episode in where we answered the question of how do you wrap up a case with a client and we took a look at what that process involved and the [00:12:00] importance of disengaging from a case and sending out a letter once a case is all wrapped up.

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