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Scott Benton: Hey, everyone. Scott Benton here. I am the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom Podcast. How are you? We are dedicated to law students and those who have just passed the bar and they’re looking for their first job as an Attorney. We are here to make that transition easy and remind you that the practice of law is fun.
We are going to teach you how to practice as an Attorney is subject that law schools do not teach you and certainly bar prep courses aren’t going to teach you that at all.
Today, the question that we are going to answer is What Do I Do When Case Facts Or Case Objectives Change? What do I do when case facts or case objectives change?
So let’s unpack that a little bit so we understand what we’re talking about.
Scott Benton: Now, generally speaking, what happens is a client will hire you to help them with their case. And during that [00:01:00] initial consultation, they’re going to sit down with you and they’re going to tell you the whole story and they’re going to give you all the facts behind the story.
They’re going to be facts that are unimportant and facts that are in fact important. But in any case, they’re going to supply you with that story and with those facts. And at that point, you’re going to want to have the all that information in front of you and you’re going to want to sit down and like putting a puzzle together.
You’re going to see how all of those pieces fit together, all the relevant facts are going to form a narrative that you’re trying to get to.
And the reason you’re trying to get to a narrative is so you can understand the nature of the case. And once you understand the nature of the case, now you’re gonna understand what you need to do and what research needs to take place so that you can come up with the case strategy or case strategies.
Usually you’re going to present several case strategies to a client. Remember that it’s the client that [00:02:00] decides what direction the case is going to go. They are hiring you as their representative, you are supplying them with strategies to achieve the goals that they’re trying to reach in their case, and you’re going to explain the positives and negatives, the benefits and liabilities of each strategy should they employ it.
They’re going to ask you questions about those different strategies, and ultimately they’re the ones they’re that are going to make the decision about what direction the case goes.
So your job is to gather all those facts that the client’s going to give you. You’re going to put together that CSA. A CSA is a Client Services Agreement and it’s going to be based on your understanding of the case that you’re going to be working with. This is before you’re going to supply the strategies because the client is now engaging your services, at which point you’re going to do the research, come up with the strategies, present those strategies to the client, decide on a strategy.
Now you’re off and running, now you’re going to be [00:03:00] supplying the legal services that they’re hiring you to provide to them, and you’re going to be billing your client and taking care of all of the tasks that need to take care of in order to reach that client’s goals.
So, anyway, once the CSA has been signed and a decision’s been made and you are working on their case diligently, of course, because you’re a responsible Attorney, then you are going to sort of move that case down the track.
You’re going to get closer and closer and closer to your objectives and you’re going to provide all those legal services to the client and right about now, it’s going to feel like everything’s perfect. You know what you’re going to be doing. You move judiciously down the line.
You have your to do list is filled up, it’s prioritized. You know what steps you need to take next, and you are working on those legal services, billing your client, going back to do list. If you know the success cycle that we have, if you’ve listened to other episodes in the Classroom 2 Courtroom Podcast, you’ll know what I’m [00:04:00] talking about.
If not, this is something that we will discuss over and over and over again. The success cycle, which is composed of three parts. It’s a to do list, you perform the services, you bill for those services, and you return to the first step, that to do list.
Now, as you’re going along, something new will come along and this is where the facts change and where the strategies will need to be adjusted based on the new objectives of the case because something new is going to occasionally be introduced into a case.
Your case facts are suddenly going to change. Now, when that happens, it usually means the objectives are going to have to change because you’re now working on a case that you didn’t really understand that you were working on. The scope of that case has suddenly, without warning usually been adjusted.
So now for context, your client, when they came in and met with you during the initial consultation, they may not have known about [00:05:00] all of those case facts.
It’s possible they just didn’t know, but as you got into the case, those additional case facts will materialize, they are going to show up.
Now sometimes a client isn’t going to want to supply you with all of the relevant facts for any variety of reasons that maybe they’re embarrassed by them or they feel they’re not necessary, like they just don’t hold that much importance and so they don’t want to tell you about them.
Maybe you haven’t really built up that relationship yet because it’s so early on in the work that you’re doing together, that they don’t really have that level of trust yet or that level of understanding yet and what their role is as the client to be able to supply you with absolutely everything that they know about a case so that you can make the determination as to what’s critical and what’s not useful.
But in any case, you’re going to realize at some point that there are new case facts that have shown up, and that is going to change the [00:06:00] nature of the case, and that is going to mean that you’re going to have to stop what you’re doing, and you’re going to have to make a hard pivot, and that hard pivot could be a small pivot, or it could be a very large pivot, depending on the nature of the new information that has just shown up.
So you need to understand that when the facts change that this is actually a big deal and it could potentially turn what you thought were A clients into C and D clients. And what that means is that you’re going to have to be a lot more diligent and a lot more vigilant in terms of understanding the information that you’re getting from your client because now there’s an example of some critical piece of information or several case facts that weren’t disclosed to you initially for whatever reason it is.
So working with that client moving forward, you’re going to want to make sure that you’re drilling down pretty deeply in the conversations that you’re having with them or the communications that [00:07:00] you’re having, that you’re asking very, very specific questions to make sure that additional case facts are not left out.
But when something like this happens, it means that you’ve got to stop and right away, like immediately, you’re going to need to put together a status update. You’re going to need to document this case as having new facts coming in that are going to change the nature of the case.
You want to have that documented, you want to have that dated, you want to show that you’ve accounted for decision that’s going to probably be made to pursue other objectives and probably abandon the strategy that you have already been pursuing now that may not be the case.
Maybe you will use the same strategy, but chances are, if this is a different type of case that you’ve just come into the realization that you’re working on and that changes the case objectives, then chances are you’re going to Um, introduce new strategy and you want to make sure that’s documented.
[00:08:00] If it is a new type of case that you’re working on, you’re also going to want to put together an addendum to the CSA. Remember the CSA is the client services agreement. This addendum is going to explain the nature of the case, the new nature of the case and the changes that have now taking place.
And this is going to be critical that you complete this immediately when case facts or your case objectives change.
So you don’t want to wait to record these changes. You want to make sure that you get on the phone and you speak to your client about these changes right away. You let them know what you’re going to do that you’re going to document this and they’re going to have to sign off on the addendum to the CSA.
Now, remember that they’re the ones that are deciding what direction the case is going. So if you’re going to make this hard pivot, if this is a new case that you’re working on, if you’ve written history about this change, you’ve made an addendum to the CSA.
Then you’re going to probably go back and provide [00:09:00] new strategies in order to achieve the new goals as you understand them. And that client once again is going to have to decide on which strategy they want to pursue.
So once you have that, it’s kind of been a little bit of a reset for you. You’ve updated the status report about this case, and you’ve documented this big change, this hard pivot that’s come up. The client has decided on the new direction that they want to go in order to achieve the new objectives in the case.
And now, finally, you are moving in the correct direction that you needed to move in when the case began. But you just really didn’t have all of the case facts and now you do. So you want to make sure that you understand all of those facts.
Sometimes when you’re getting a new case and you think that you have all of the facts that you’re going to need, there’s this tendency to want to jump into the research right away. There’s this tendency to want to get to the law, part of the case [00:10:00] right away. But you want to be careful about doing that so quickly because there is the potential for new case facts to materialize, like they did in this example that we’ve just talked about. And you want to make sure that you’re looking at the facts. facts that you have.
And wherever there are gaps present, wherever you see something that doesn’t quite make complete sense, you want to be able to go back and fill in those gaps. You want to go to your client, you want to ask them clarifying questions so that you can tease out any other facts that you are going to need that are critical facts to the case so that you understand that you’re working on the case that you believe you are working on and that there are no new changes that are gonna come out of left field and surprise you with and so that you stay on track so that you and your client are both you know, in the same headspace as far as what the [00:11:00] objectives of the case are.
So that’s going to become very important for you as a part of your process and looking at cases and determining how to move them forward. You want to make sure that there are no gaps left before you get into the research, before you devise the strategies that you’re going to present to the client in order to determine which direction to go with the case.
So I hope that answers the question that we’re looking at here in terms of what you need to do when case facts change and when objectives change to a case and I hope that’s been helpful.
I’m Scott Betton. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom Podcast. Thank you for listening to this episode. If this is information that you’re enjoying and that you’re liking the content we’re putting together, and you’d like to get notified anytime we put out a new episode of the Classroom 2 Courtroom Podcast, you can always go to our website.
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Thank you so much for listening and take care.
