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[00:00:07] Scott Benton: Hey, everyone. Scott Benton here. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom Podcast.
[00:00:11] Scott Benton: How are you? We are a podcast dedicated to helping you transition from law school student into your professional career as a fully licensed attorney, someone who can represent clients and represent them in court.
[00:00:30] Scott Benton: Today, we’re going to look at the question of what happens if a client moves the target?
[00:00:34] Scott Benton: What happens if a client moves the target? Now let’s define what that means moving the target exactly. So we know what we’re talking about in this podcast. Now, moving the target is simple. something that happens. Let’s say a client comes to you and they meet you for an initial consultation and they lay out their case for you and you decide that this case has value in this case has merit and you’re going to [00:01:00] let the client know that.
[00:01:01] Scott Benton: Yeah, this is something you could handle and they end up hiring you. Now, a little while later, something comes up that dramatically pivots that case. It’s information that the client didn’t provide to you at the initial consultation. Maybe they knew about the information, maybe they didn’t know about the information, but this new piece of information basically broadsides your case and the legal objective initially discussed with your client and the strategies that you’ve come up with and the pros and cons of each of those strategies and the decision on what strategy to pursue becomes largely irrelevant because this new piece of information changes the direction of the case and the client might even say that their case objectives have changed.
[00:01:48] Scott Benton: This is what we mean by When we say that the client has moved the target, and when a client moves the target, what exactly could that potentially mean? We want to take a look at it. [00:02:00] Let’s fill this in with a little bit more detail. Now, Let’s say that you work at a trust and probate firm and you have a client that comes in and they sit down with you, their potential client, because they haven’t hired you yet, and they tell you that they have a case where there is an estate, their elderly parent has passed away.
[00:02:21] Scott Benton: They are entitled, they say to 50 percent of the value of that estate. And they say that they’ve been written out of the estate, but they tell you that they are entitled to it and they want you to fight for them and fight against their family in order to have that portion of the estate distributed to them.
[00:02:42] Scott Benton: And so they hire you, you become their attorney, you discuss case strategies, but then shortly into your work on this case, wouldn’t you know it, this new piece of information comes in. Now. Sometimes the client doesn’t know this piece of information, [00:03:00] but for the sake of this conversation, we’re going to take that off the table.
[00:03:03] Scott Benton: Sometimes a new piece of information materializes. In fact, a lot of times that will happen material will materialize and it will be new information that you didn’t have that the client didn’t have. And it really changes the entire scope of the case that you’re working on. And in that case, It’s fair to assume that there probably are going to be some adjustments made to the direction that you’re going to take the case.
[00:03:28] Scott Benton: If the target does change, it’s a legitimate change through your discovery work, let’s say, then chances are if you have changed that objective with your client that you’re probably going to want to have them sign a new CSA client services agreement that’s stating that new direction.
[00:03:46] Scott Benton: There are going to be other cases, however, where clients aren’t going to fully disclose everything to you. So this is where relationship building comes in. The more you build a relationship with your client. The more you get to know them, the more they begin to [00:04:00] trust you, the more they open up to you and they tell you everything about the case.
[00:04:04] Scott Benton: A lot of times when clients come to you, sometimes they’re embarrassed about something that happened or they just don’t feel good about something that happened or they maybe they think that it just won’t matter, whatever the issue is. They’re really giving you an incomplete version of their case and their story.
[00:04:22] Scott Benton: But what happens is some new piece of information comes in. So in this case, in this fictionalized case that I’m making this up just for illustrative purposes, you find out this new piece of information comes in. And you find out maybe through opposing counsel or somebody else that your client had illegally sold, let’s say, an investment property out of the trust.
[00:04:47] Scott Benton: And when that happened, the elderly parent, instead of maybe prosecuting him or writing your client out of the will, they said, listen, we didn’t want you to sell that investment property, but you [00:05:00] sold it, you have all the money because your client kept the money for themselves. Go ahead and keep the money, but we are that’s going to constitute your portion of the estate that you would have received once that estate is ready to be distributed.
[00:05:13] Scott Benton: So we’re just going to write you out of the will. And that was the agreement. And that’s why your client was written out of the world. But see, they didn’t give you that part of the story when they met with you. And there was no way for you to know that. So when you go to confront your client and talk to them about this pretty.
[00:05:30] Scott Benton: important piece of information that they just conveniently left out before they hired you. They tell you that, yes, that’s true. Yes, that happened. But they suddenly pivot and instead of trying to get their, as you understood it, proper distribution from the estate, instead They now want to accuse the opposing party and maybe it’s like brothers and sisters or other family members of elder abuse and Undue influence maybe they’re saying [00:06:00] now that through coercion They got the elderly parent to write you out of the will so this Changes the entire dynamic and scope of that case from one of which is about Something that was taken away from your client and in this case an inheritance and something that needs to be reestablished to them to pretty much a pure revenge case.
[00:06:24] Scott Benton: Now this is called a pound of flesh case. This can be called something, if you know the Shakespeare play Merchant of Venice, this is where pound of flesh, that idea comes in. Where in the Shakespeare play it’s, there’s a lender that gives money to the borrower and the collateral is a literal pound of flesh.
[00:06:43] Scott Benton: And when the borrower defaults on the loan, the lender demands his actual pound of flesh. And so they go to court over this. This actual physical pound of flesh. So if you know that play, that’s where pound of flesh comes from. And revenge cases [00:07:00] sometimes can be referred to as pound of flesh. So in this case, the client has pivoted pretty hard.
[00:07:06] Scott Benton: They brought you in as their representative under one pretense and one set of legal goals. And now once you’re in and you make this significant discovery, they’ve. Pivoted pretty hard into essentially what is a revenge case or a pound of flesh case and they have Moved the target so to speak now what you have to ask yourself, especially if you’re a new attorney You don’t have a lot of experience with clients suddenly Moving the target.
[00:07:35] Scott Benton: You want to make sure that you’re getting some expert advice from your senior attorney leadership team. You want to sit down and let them know that your case target has pivoted because a lot of times this can be a signal that it is a pound of flesh case. Now, not always. It’s not always going to be a pound of flesh case, But it can be, and that’s why it’s important for you to go talk to your supervisor, your supervising attorney, and [00:08:00] really sit down and go through the case with them.
[00:08:02] Scott Benton: Now, the reason that you want to be very careful about taking on pound of flesh cases like this, or revenge cases, where the entire point is just to inflict pain and suffering on the other party, even though you can do that legally, they are doing it simply because they can, and they are there to create as much havoc and pain as they can on the other party.
[00:08:25] Scott Benton: And so that kind of pound of flesh case, you may not want to get involved in. And the reason is because after that case is over, guess who the next target is. You are and your firm is and they’re going to come back and they’re going to demand all of their money back or they’re potentially going to demand all their money back.
[00:08:43] Scott Benton: So all that work that you did and some of it you may not feel so good about when you know that you’re just there to help a client inflict pain and suffering on another party when they come back. If they come back and they demand all their money back, maybe they go to the bar [00:09:00] association. It creates for you.
[00:09:02] Scott Benton: It creates chaos at a time when you need to be devoting your attention to all of your other cases. But this client who decided to go for revenge, if you participate in those particular cases, There’s a chance that they’re going to come back, they’re going to want, all of their money back that they spent with you, they’re going to create an enormous amount of chaos, it’s going to end up being not worth it and extremely painful for you, and you might as well have been better off when that target turns and re pivots.
[00:09:35] Scott Benton: You might have been better off jumping out of the case at that point, subbing out completely and not taking it on because revenge cases, pound of flesh cases are extremely difficult cases and you can make the decision to move forward with them. It could just be, in your mind, it’s the path of least resistance that this client continues to pay for your legal services.
[00:09:55] Scott Benton: And isn’t that why we’re here in the first place so that a client can pay for [00:10:00] services that a law firm provides? That’s the whole nature of law and law firms and providing services to clients. But do understand that there’s a whole other side of this and another shoe could potentially drop that is going to be Very unpleasant and probably not worth it.
[00:10:15] Scott Benton: So you do want to talk to your supervising attorney and make sure that if you move forward with this case that it’s a case that you’re going to be able to confidently work through and understand that revenge pound of flesh cases are probably not. A great place for you to be, but that is your decision.
[00:10:33] Scott Benton: So I hope this has been helpful. My name is Scott Benton. I’m the host of the classroom 2 courtroom podcast. Now if you like this material and you’d like to get an alert every time we put it out, out a new episode, you can go to our website. Our website is classroom 2 courtroom. com. That’s classroom. The number two.
[00:10:47] Scott Benton: courtroom. com and leave us your contact information. We’ll send out an alert when a new episode has been published. And if you do like this material, don’t forget to share and subscribe. We hope you’ll join us for the next episode of the [00:11:00] classroom to courtroom podcast. Until then, we also hope you’ll join us in making the world a better place one client at a time.
[00:11:07] Scott Benton: Thank you so much.
