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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 like to make the practice of law fun. Today we’re going to take a look at reviving and reigniting dormant cases.
[00:01:00] Today, in order to help assist your overall use of the success cycle, which is what we talk about on this podcast, and indeed what this entire podcast is built around, in order to help you to learn and perfect the actual practice of law, that’s a subject that’s not taught in law school, we’re going to take a look at reviving and reigniting dormant cases.
So first we want to talk about how to identify when a case is stalled out. Then we want to take a look at regaining momentum and then finally leveraging the opposing counsel’s inaction to your advantage. Now you really want to be able to fill up your to do list and then you want to perform your pertinent legal services and bill for those legal services and start all over again.
That’s a success cycle. You want to do all of that to keep your cases moving so when one of your cases is stalling out for really any reason, You need to figure [00:02:00] out how to get it started and moving again. But first, let’s define what we mean by a dormant case. Now, a case becomes dormant when progress just slows down to a crawl or even stops altogether. And this can happen for several reasons. Maybe you’re waiting on a court ruling, or the opposing counsel has gone silent, or it could be that your client’s kind of dragging their feet a little bit.
You’ll know a case is dormant when you see all kinds of signs that it’s slowing down or stalling, which could be from a lack of communication either from the opposing counsel or maybe from your client. There’s probably going to be some missed deadlines or court deadlines, getting pushed back, or you might have Absolutely no upcoming actions.
That means you go and you take a look at your case calendar and you’re going to see on the case calendar that there are no depositions, no hearings, no motions, no nothing. It’s like everything is stopped and your case has nowhere to go, which indicates that the case now needs your focus and your attention.
You then want to take any and [00:03:00] all necessary actions required to reinvigorate the case and push it back into action before it goes away altogether and for good. So the key to reviving a case is to take proactive steps, to build momentum like the snowball analogy. Now it’s going to require the same carefully crafted actions to make sure that a small handful of snow transforms into an unstoppable growing force rolling down a hill and getting bigger and bigger and faster and faster.
So let’s take a look at some of the ideas that you can use to put some extra energy into your snowball or into your stalled out case.
First, you’re going to want to review the case and the case objectives. Is anything missing? Did a new piece of information come in that stalled out the case? And do you need to adjust your case objectives?
Maybe you’re no longer going in the direction that the case really needs to go in.
One of the easiest things you can do is call the opposing counsel and see why the case is not moving forward. Are they swamped or are they waiting for [00:04:00] something to come in before they can move forward, which they really no longer need?
A stalled case could simply be the result of a misunderstanding, so there’s always the possibility that either you or the opposing counsel are just not on the same page. A phone call can really go a long way in clearing up any misunderstandings and firing up the engines of the case once again.
If you’re still not getting a response from the opposing counsel, then you can always file a motion. This could be really any motion that forces the court and the opposing party to act, such as a motion to compel or a motion for summary judgment. This is also a way for you to take control of the case so you can then move it forward.
Now if the opposing counsel seems completely disengaged and they’re just not responding, that might be a sign that they’re willing to settle. And in that case, you can reach out with a settlement offer.
In the case where your client appears to be losing interest, the solution, just like calling up the opposing counsel, is to get on the phone with them. [00:05:00] Now you want to re engage with your client. You want to re establish the client attorney relationship that you’ve previously built up with them. If you can schedule an in-person meeting to go over the current status of the case and discuss the next steps in the process.
You want to make sure that they see things are actually happening on their case. That’s very important to your client.
Remember, a client is much more likely to work with you if they know you, if they trust you, and if they trust and like the firm that you’re working for. And it’s why relationship building is so important to establish and build right from the beginning. You also want to remember to emphasize the value of the case. The client needs to see the value of the money that they’re spending which is not always apparent And it’s why you want to continue emphasizing what they’re ultimately going to get out of the work that you’re doing together.
They need to be able to see the legal expenses as an investment into their future. And if that lack of vision is what’s [00:06:00] stalling out the case, then you have a far better chance of clearing it up and reconnecting as a productive and well aligned legal team once again, if you sit down and meet with your clients.
However you get there, you’ve managed to identify and clear the obstacles that were causing your case to flag out and stall. And just with a little bit of work, you were able to identify that and get it moving once again. You were able to build that momentum.
While managing dormant cases can be frustrating with the right strategies and really knowing exactly where to push, you You can regain momentum by reassessing the case strategy and the case goals, engaging with the opposing counsel directly to clear up any misunderstandings, or even just taking advantage of their inaction if they’re not responding, or through re engagement with your client.
So, if a case is stuck, you really have many options right in front of you to get it going once again. You have all the tools necessary to move a stalled case [00:07:00] forward and really get it back on track before it disappears altogether. I’m Scott Benton. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast.
Thank you so much for checking out this episode. If you like this podcast and you’d like to get more information about who we are, you can always go to our website, which is classroomtocourtroom. com. That’s classroom, the number two courtroom dot com, where you can send us a message to keep in touch with us, or you can even inquire about our seasonal associate programs that we have available for law school students.
You can come and work with us. And as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe to stay on top of all of our newest episodes. And until next time, we hope you’ll join us in making the world a better place one client at a time. [00:08:00]
