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[00:00:07] Scott Benton: Hey Everyone, Scott Benton here. 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 of course, where we make the practice of law easy and fun. And today we’re going to answer the question of what does your client want?
[00:00:24] Scott Benton: want? What does your client want?
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[00:01:15] Scott Benton: Now, I’m gonna preface this episode by saying initially that I’m gonna have to circle back and get you to the to do list after we take a look at what the client wants and why sometimes that’s not so easy to understand. It’s not easy to always understand what the client wants.
[00:01:32] Scott Benton: Keep in mind, this is one of the most important components to any case that you’re going to be handling. And it’s why we spend so much time talking about building relationships, which this subject also requires. But first, we need to determine what the client wants. And they don’t always know, or as we’re going to look at, they are not always going to tell you, especially when you first meet.
[00:01:56] Scott Benton: before they hire you and the firm and they engage your legal [00:02:00] services. Now, sure, they’re going to tell you all the many details about why they’ve made an appointment to come into the firm and visit with you, and there might possibly be a little bit of anger, sometimes hostility. or pain Maybe the client’s in pain.
[00:02:13] Scott Benton: There’s going to be energy behind their narrative. Because your client is likely going to be sitting in front of you, sometimes they’re feeling wronged, or they’re feeling maligned, or lied to, or gaslighted, or somehow taken advantage of. These initial conversations, Occasionally, they can be fueled with a lot of negativity, and somehow, inside all of that negativity, you still have to calmly listen to their story, somewhat detached.
[00:02:40] Scott Benton: You’re gonna ask probing questions to help fill in the gaps in their narrative that they’re presenting, and you, being an impartial and unemotional participant in this conversation, you’ve gotta dig into the details of their story, and you have to understand exactly What the client wants. Now we know they want justice [00:03:00] or at the very least they want justice as they understand it.
[00:03:04] Scott Benton: But the truth is the client doesn’t always necessarily know what they want or possibly they just simply they can’t articulate it. In the way that you can by taking in all of the information that they’re giving you, sorting through it, and then articulating it back to them on a more sometimes even handed, non emotional level.
[00:03:26] Scott Benton: We’re assuming this is the initial consultation that you’re meeting with right now in this fictionalized scenario that we’re putting together or maybe it’s the first time that you’re meeting with a client right after they’ve hired you and your firm. However, once you have an understanding of their story and you’ve begun to narrow down what they want, even if the client says that’s what they want, the question becomes Is that truly what they want?
[00:03:53] Scott Benton: It could be, but it also could be that, no, that’s not what they want because you may [00:04:00] not have dug deeply enough into their story, or you may have not looked closer into the facts to gain the full clarity that you need to really understand what they want. Sometimes relationships, they’re just not built up at this point in the process. The client might simply and potentially be embarrassed to tell you what they really want.
[00:04:21] Scott Benton: Because it might bump up against what’s considered socially acceptable, or it might make them look bad somehow. Now, this might be something they realize, but they’re hiring you to fight for them anyway. There could be mixed signals that you’re getting. It could also have something to do with the fact that they don’t really know you yet. And there’s been no rapport built. There’s just a lack of trust at this point. They don’t really feel safe in telling you everything.
[00:04:48] Scott Benton: Occasionally, that takes a little while before you have that trust built. In that case, the worst thing you can do is get what the client wants, and then later find out it’s not what they actually wanted.
[00:04:59] Scott Benton: Maybe [00:05:00] they say they want a conservatorship, for instance, which you end up getting them, but then later when it’s done, you find out they wanted what they thought a conservatorship could provide, but then they discover it doesn’t give them what they want, so the conservatorship wasn’t what they actually wanted, even though they said it was.
[00:05:17] Scott Benton: So sometimes this, as you can tell, this gets a little complex. And I’ll touch on this briefly here, although just know we have plenty of Classroom 2 Courtroom episodes that cover these subjects that you can watch. But this is where you want to bond with your client and really build a strong relationship with them to the point where you know the names of their pets and everyone in their family and where they go on vacation.
[00:05:39] Scott Benton: This is where they formed a Bond of trust with you. And this is usually the point where they’re willing to answer any of the questions that you have when you reach that level of trust or as you’re building it along the way, you’re going to start digging what we say three layers down into their story, and you’re going to collect all the facts that you [00:06:00] can, whether those facts point to a specific law or they don’t point to specific law.
[00:06:04] Scott Benton: Sometimes they’re just background facts. But all case facts are going to help you determine what the client actually wants. Now once you have that, Now you’re going to know how to move the case forward. You have clarity on their objectives and you can put the appropriate and accurate case strategy options together.
[00:06:23] Scott Benton: That’s going to help your client decide which direction they want to go with their case and it’s going to help them achieve the clarity that they’ve hired you to provide to them. Once you have all that in place now, and I told you we were going to go back to the to do list. Once you have all of that in place, now you can fill up your to do list, which is going to inform the legal services that you deliver, and it’s going to continually move forward. Your client’s case, without taking wrong turns or ending up exploring blind alleys or just going down rabbit holes that you really have no business going down.
[00:06:56] Scott Benton: Your clarity in knowing what your client wants illuminates the [00:07:00] path that you’re gonna follow and hopefully, with their case objectives, ultimately getting achieved.
[00:07:04] Scott Benton: When they give you a five star review online, you’ll know the work that you’ve done was ultimately successful. And it all started once you found out what the client actually and truly wanted. So I hope that’s helpful, insightful, and valuable information.
[00:07:19] Scott Benton: I’m Scott Benton. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If this is information that you enjoy and you’d like to get an alert every time we put out a new episode, you can go to our website. Our website is classroom2courtroom. com. That’s classroom, the number two, courtroom.
[00:07:35] Scott Benton: com. Leave us your contact information. We will send you an alert. And if this is information that you’re enjoying, don’t forget to share and subscribe. That’ll also help you stay on top of all 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.
[00:07:51] Scott Benton: Thank you so much.
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