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[00:00:07] Scott Benton: Hey everyone, Scott Benton here. I am the host of the classroom, the courtroom podcast. How are you? We are a podcast dedicated. To showing law school students how to transition Out of the world of the theoretical into the practical as you become a full time bonafide and fully licensed Attorney and you begin your career as you know They don’t teach you how to practice as an attorney in law school nor should They’re busy teaching you how to graduate law school and this podcast will take care of the rest that way when you show up For your first job as an attorney, you will know how to actually practice as attorney.
[00:00:44] Scott Benton: If you listen to episodes that we’re putting out of the classroom, the courtroom podcast
[00:00:48] Scott Benton: today, we are going to take a look at whether or not you should work towards saving your client money. Should you save your client [00:01:00] money? Now this is a subject that comes up sometimes, especially with newer attorneys when they get into their first job.
[00:01:08] Scott Benton: position as an attorney and they start to see the cost of legal services. It’s natural to try and figure out how to reduce those costs the way that you might want to try and figure out how to reduce costs of say if you take your car in for a car repair, You don’t want to pay thousands of dollars, of course, when you can pay a few hundred dollars and a lot of times when it comes to legal services, which can be costly over time, newer attorneys will frequently think about how to save.
[00:01:39] Scott Benton: money for their clients. And so we are going to look at whether or not you should be focused on saving money for your clients. A lot of times that means taking shortcuts. If you are, for instance you need to write a status report, you might skip the status report, or if there are expert [00:02:00] witnesses, maybe you don’t hire an expert witness, that type of thing.
[00:02:03] Scott Benton: And these are certainly going to help. Save money for your client, but it might also have some other deleterious effects on your case And so the question becomes do you want to focus on? Saving your client money now I’m going to suggest that focusing on saving money for your clients is not where your mind should be.
[00:02:27] Scott Benton: Your mind should actually be focused on the value of the case. The value of the case is where you want to focus and not on saving your client money. Let’s say for instance you have a probate case. Now the firm that I work for is a trust and probate litigation and administration firm and so That’s what I’m seeing all day long.
[00:02:49] Scott Benton: But let’s say that you have an estate that’s worth a million dollars and you have a client who has a 50 percent stake in that estate. That means that [00:03:00] all in there probably going to get About 500, 000, all things being equal. So your mind should really be focused on getting them that 500, 000 or as much as you possibly can from the estate and focusing on the value will receive and not trying to save a few hundred dollars here and a few hundred dollars there.
[00:03:27] Scott Benton: Now, your responsibility as their attorney, as their representative that they have hired is to Simply to understand their case, understand their legal objectives, do some research to figure out what strategies are needed to reach their legal objectives. Write up those strategies, write up the pros and cons of each of those strategies and present those to your client.
[00:03:54] Scott Benton: That’s your job. Whether or not you’re saving money for the client is, [00:04:00] Immaterial for the process that you’re engaged in as their representative, and I’ll tell you why in just a moment So you have given your client The different strategies that you’ve researched and that you have figured out will help them achieve their goals.
[00:04:15] Scott Benton: And each of those strategies, let’s say there’s three of them, are going to have cons and they’re going to have pros. And you’ve discussed those cons and those pros with your client and that’s it. Now you’re hands off at that point and you’re going to let them decide. You’re going to let them decide the direction that the case is going to go.
[00:04:34] Scott Benton: And that way, when you go home at night, you’re really not carrying any of that burden for those decisions on your shoulders. You’ve done the very best you can as the representative, as their attorney, in order to point out the different directions that they can go. And by the way, one of those directions is simply to not engage your legal services any further.
[00:04:56] Scott Benton: If it’s not going to serve them, or if it’s going to be too costly for [00:05:00] them, or if it’s going to be. too difficult, or if they have a statistically a low chance of prevailing, the client may feel that it’s not worth pursuing. But you’re going to give them all of the information that you possibly can so that they are informed.
[00:05:17] Scott Benton: They have all of the information that they need in order to make the best possible decision based on the direction that they want to go. So in terms of saving money for your clients. That’s not really a part of that thought process at all. In fact, it would really be up to the client to decide if they wanted to save money on their own case.
[00:05:42] Scott Benton: So for instance, maybe there were 15 witnesses to an event and they don’t want to pay for 15 declarations. They only want to pay for three declarations because getting 15 declarations is just going to be very costly for them. [00:06:00] So they may want to say, save money and only get three declarations, but you as their attorney are going to point out the benefits and the liabilities of only getting say two or three declarations.
[00:06:12] Scott Benton: Now maybe they don’t want to hire an expert witness because they’re concerned about the cost of hiring an expert witness. And in that case, you’re going to point out the pros and the cons of not hiring an expert witness and they get to decide, is it worth it? If they’re. Part of the estate is going to yield them 500, 000, then, and the difference is maybe a few hundred dollars, then maybe it’s not going to matter in their mind.
[00:06:39] Scott Benton: But, maybe they just don’t have savings to go to, so they have to go to family or friends in order to pay for the legal services. Or they have to make other arrangements that are outside of the scope of what you’re doing as an attorney. But, that’s not really part of your process. the part of your process is simply giving them their [00:07:00] options, then letting them decide, but your process is not involved in figuring out how to shortcut the work that you’re doing on this case and how to save the money.
[00:07:11] Scott Benton: For instance, if you have to write up a status report. You’re not going to make a decision as to whether or not you’re going to save the money for by, for instance, not writing up the status report. You’re still going to write up the status report, which is a billable event, and you’re going to move forward with the case properly.
[00:07:29] Scott Benton: The writing up the status report is going to help your client to stay on track, to understand where the case is. They’re going to keep paying for legal services because they’re going to have much more clarity about where you stand in that overall process. And then it also protects you and the law firm by supplying those types of communications to your clients, which are an expected part of the work that you do on any sort of case where you periodically provide a status report update.
[00:07:58] Scott Benton: So you don’t want to shortcut [00:08:00] a status report update. You don’t really want to have your mind, Anywhere near the idea of saving money for your clients, you simply want to focus on the value of that case and work towards delivering the maximum amount that you can based on that value number. And that’s where your mind should be and that’s where your time is better spend.
[00:08:22] Scott Benton: So I hope this has been helpful in terms of figuring out whether or not you need to work towards saving your client money. Remember that you are there as an advisor. You’re providing options after understanding what their legal objectives are, and you’re letting the client make that ultimate decision.
[00:08:37] Scott Benton: That takes a lot of the stress off of you. You can enjoy your evening and weekends a lot more, and that’s when practicing law starts to be have fun. And what this podcast is here to point out to you that you don’t want to get yourself in any sort of traps that are just going to create unnecessary stress for you.
[00:08:56] Scott Benton: You want to make sure that you are moving along as [00:09:00] efficiently as you possibly can and that you are enjoying the process. I’m Scott Benton. I’m the host of the Classroom to Courtroom podcast. I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for joining me on it. And if this is material that you are enjoying and you’d like to receive an alert every time we put out a new episode, you can go over to our website.
[00:09:20] Scott Benton: Our website is classroom2courtroom. com. That’s classroom, the number two, courtroom. com. You can put in your contact information and you’ll receive an alert. whenever we put out a new episode. And if you do like this material, don’t forget to share and subscribe. We hope you’ll join us on the next episode of the Classroom to Courtroom Podcast.
[00:09:38] Scott Benton: And until then, we hope you’ll also join us in making the world a better place one client at a time. Thank you so much.
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