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[00:00:07] Scott Benton: Hey everyone, Scott Benton here. I am 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. Now today, we’re going to take a look at what happens when you’re working with a client, and you determine that their legal goals can’t be reach now,
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[00:01:15] Scott Benton: In general, when you meet with a client, you get a pretty good idea of the legal goals that they’re trying to get to, or at least you have a good ballpark estimate of what those are going to be. There might be some details that you’ll get into once you start working on the case, or sometimes the client doesn’t exactly know what goals they want to reach themselves, but they know the legal situation that they’re in, and they’ve come to you to help better understand their options.
[00:01:40] Scott Benton: But in any case, there will come a point where you’ve set the legal goals, and you know where you want this case to go, so now it’s time to put in some deep thought, do a little legal research, and come up with the case strategies to get your client to the finish line that they’ve set their sights on.
[00:01:57] Scott Benton: Now, in a perfect world, things [00:02:00] don’t change. And you go through a series of steps to file documents and petitions, and you take depositions, and you collect declarations, and you conduct discovery, and you present your case in a courtroom in front of a judge, and you win the case, which means your client reached their legal goals, and now they’re walking away with a substantial financial reward for all of that hard work.
[00:02:20] Scott Benton: However, in the real world, it doesn’t usually go that smoothly. Sometimes there are turns and twists and even sudden drops that take you on a free fall until you’re picked back up again and it feels like you’re on a roller coaster at the beach, and you know the kind. It’s the kind made out of wood that shakes the entire roller coaster car that you’re riding in and it’s quite terrifying.
[00:02:41] Scott Benton: And then just when you think you’ve got all of your evidence and documents and expert witnesses lined up and ready to go. Some new piece of information comes in that throws off your whole case and it changes the entire nature of your legal goals. Maybe there’s an updated will that was found during discovery [00:03:00] or another witness invalidates your claim or even something completely out of the blue is uncovered or takes place and now your legal goals are really no longer relevant.
[00:03:11] Scott Benton: So you sit down with your client and you go back over the case and where you currently are and your client decides that now they want to achieve a legal goal that you’re not simply going to be able to achieve. And as an example, it might be something that really doesn’t have any legal argument behind it, and it’s designed simply to hurt the opposing party, but it wouldn’t really necessarily win your client any kind of cash or asset settlement like investment properties, which.
[00:03:38] Scott Benton: You might have a moral or an ethical issue about accomplishing and you might decide that it’s just not something you’re willing to help your client with. You do get to choose whether or not you want to work with your clients. So you might even present them with a choice of updated goals that you can help them with, but now they’re in a heightened state of [00:04:00] mind.
[00:04:00] Scott Benton: Your client is, is suddenly they’re dead set on reaching their own goals. which fall outside of your ability. Now, this doesn’t mean the goal of the client says that they want to reach is illegal or can’t be reached. It could be perfectly legal and it could easily be reached.
[00:04:17] Scott Benton: It just means that you and your firm either can’t or won’t help the client reach those goals for your own reasons. The client can always go to another firm if they like who will help them achieve those goals. So this presents you with a little bit of a dilemma. On the one hand, if the client wants to pursue their own legal goals that you don’t ethically or morally agree with, then you’re going to have to remove yourself from the case because you’re simply not going to be able to do the necessary work that they’re asking you to do.
[00:04:47] Scott Benton: And this is what you’re going to have to tell the client, which means you lose them as a client and you lose that case. On the other hand, as you explain to them, if they choose to pursue one of the alternate [00:05:00] case objectives that you’ve come up with after the new development changed your strategy, then you would be more than happy to see it all the way through to the end. In this case, the client, let’s say, who remains in a heightened emotional state, maybe they’re really angry, they’re determined to pursue their own legal goals, even though it could end up harming their own position. And it tells you that they don’t want to work towards the alternate goals that you’ve presented them with.
[00:05:27] Scott Benton: They want to reach the goal that you are not able to provide legal services for, so you formally disengage from the case, and the client is free to go anywhere that they want. Who knows? Maybe they cool down a little bit later and they come back and they see that the legal goals that you’ve presented them with are far more favorable, or maybe they just go and find another firm to work with. But you’ve protected yourself and you’ve protected the firm.
[00:05:53] Scott Benton: Now the reason that you’ve protected yourself and you’ve protected the firm is because in a lot of cases where attorneys help a [00:06:00] client achieve, let’s call them their vendetta goals against an opposing party, or what are sometimes called pound of flesh goals, That’s a term that comes from the William Shakespeare play, The Merchant of Venice.
[00:06:11] Scott Benton: When the case is over, there’s a chance that the client might choose to go to the bar and put you through a fee arbitration case. In other words, even though you did all this work for them and you helped them achieve their legal goals that you advised them against and that you had a moral or ethical issue with, and even if you win, by virtue of going after a pound of flesh objective, It potentially signals that they might go after you and the firm once the case is over and demand their legal fees back.
[00:06:41] Scott Benton: So you need to make sure you’re protecting yourself and that you’re protecting the firm. And like in this case, where you’re achieving legal goals designed only to harm an opposing party, it’s going to potentially be your pound of flesh that they’re coming after next. which you definitely don’t want.
[00:06:57] Scott Benton: Even if you win that fee [00:07:00] arbitration case, that’s a whole day dedicated to participating in this hearing, which takes away from your minimum billable hours and reaching those levels and exceeding them. But hopefully, with your sharp attorney skills and with your ability to build up positive working relationships with all of your clients, You’ll be able to present updated strategy alternatives and provide the pros and cons of each proposed direction including the pound of flesh direction that they want to go and ultimately settle on one that’s going to allow you to both continue working together.
[00:07:33] Scott Benton: That would probably be the best possible outcome for everyone involved, but it’s not always what necessarily happens.
[00:07:39] Scott Benton: My name is Scott Benton. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. Thank you so much for watching this episode. If you’re finding this to be valuable information and you’d like to receive an alert every time we put out a new episode, you can go to our website.
[00:07:52] Scott Benton: Our website is classroom2courtroom. com. That’s classroom, the number two. courtroom dot com. You can leave us your contact [00:08:00] information there and we will send out an alert. So that you know a new episode is available. Don’t forget to share and subscribe. And we hope you’ll join us on our next episode of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast.
[00:08:10] Scott Benton: And we also hope you’ll join us in the meantime of making the world a better place one client at a time. Thank you so much.
