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Hey everyone, Scott Benton here. How are you? 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 as a lawyer.
where we happen to make the practice of law fun. Now today, we’re going to take a look at when to hold them and when to fold them. And we’ll get into what that actually means.
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Now, when you start working as an attorney, you’re going to find yourself in a privileged position to be able to represent clients.
And you’re likely going to find the work that you’re doing to be fulfilling when you win a case for a client that actually helps improve the quality of their life. Now helping another person like that can be probably one of the most rewarding feelings you can possibly have. Now in probate law, which is the type of law the firm that I work for practices, we all know that many of the clients we serve are in much better shape financially by the time their case is closed.
Now, we know that without our help, there’s a pretty good chance that they could be in some kind of trouble, whether that’s economic or maybe with broken [00:02:00] family relationships or maybe with the loss of some property that has sentimental value to it. We already know that they’ve lost somebody. That’s very near and dear to them in probate.
That’s the transfer of wealth from one generation to the next, typically. But there are other potential pitfalls for those clients as well. Now, our attorneys and our staff they feel like they’ve achieved something for someone else. And when you do that enough yourself, and when you’ve helped out enough clients, the improvement of the overall quality of life for really all the many people out there in the local community that you work with, that ticks upwards, which means that the net result of all of your work for society as a whole turns out to be a net positive. You’re actually making the world a better place. Now helping others achieve their legal goals and improving the quality of their lives makes it really easy to get up each morning and go to work.
So that’s the best possible [00:03:00] job situation that you can probably find yourself working in because it can give you just a deep sense of meaning and direction and purpose. So many of the cases that come in can have positive outcomes, but there are other examples where a client wants to do something that it’s not really going to be productive for their case and they might insist on going in a direction that you’re not comfortable with as their attorney and that you might not feel is going to be productive or really do anything for the case.
And you might not be able to find a legal justification for it, so you’re going to eventually have to decide whether to hold them, meaning keep the case moving forward, or just fold. If you fold, that’s where you let the client know that you’re really not going to be able to represent them any longer, and you’re going to have to end up ending that working relationship and no longer be their attorney.
Remember that you are the one that is in charge of the case. Now that doesn’t mean that you’re making the decisions for [00:04:00] which legal services you’re going to be performing for your client. Your job as the attorney is to listen to your client’s legal goals, to come up with different case strategies that you’re then going to present to your client.
And you’re going to present it to them with the pros and cons for each direction. And then you’re going to let your client decide which direction the case goes. They’re the one that looks at all of the information you’ve given to them, and they say, that’s the case strategy I want to go with.
Now, sometimes, for whatever reason, your client is going to be dead set on a specific filing that you might strongly advise against her. Maybe it’s a case strategy or a case objective that they come up with that’s one kind or another that you just can’t go along with. And maybe they’re in a highly confused or maybe a highly emotional state.
Maybe they’ve been fighting with their family and they can’t really hear or consider any of the alternatives that you’re presenting. Or even look at the [00:05:00] pros and cons of the different directions. So you’ve got to know that as their attorney you have a choice. As a more extreme example, sometimes a client is just, they’re angry or they’re behaving in a vindictive manner. And they want you to engage in some kind of action that is really merely intended to bring harm to another person. And for no other reason that you can find an actual legal argument for that, you’re going to lose it, and therefore you can’t go along with this plan that your client is proposing.
So this is also when you’re going to have conversations about going in those directions that you’re going to have to tell your client you’re either going to lose that case or that it’s really only meant to bring harm to somebody. Here again, at this crossroads, you have a choice. You have a choice to stay in, to hold them, and to do whatever it is that your client is asking you to do, or you can choose to discontinue your work with that client and fold.
and stop representing them. Again, as an attorney, you’re [00:06:00] not choosing the legal strategies to pursue. You’re coming up with the legal strategies, but you’re not choosing which one to go with. Your client does that part based on what you’ve given them to choose from, but you’re in charge of the case and whether or not you continue to represent your client.
Now keep in mind that if you do choose to do something that your client wants you to do, but that you don’t really support, and even if you put your concerns in writing to them to help really shift the, Liability on to the client, even if that direction fails, and there’s often a pretty good chance that they’re going to take you to a fee arbitration hearing anyway to recover their costs that failed in that strategy that you tried to talk them out of now, even if you don’t have to return their fees.
A fee arbitration hearing generally means that you’re going to lose an entire day of productivity. And you might have to return the fees on top of it if you lose the free arbitration, the fee arbitration hearing. So for you going along with a [00:07:00] case strategy that you just don’t support and that you don’t believe is going to win or really help to move the case forward at all.
In the future, it might mean a lot of negative repercussions for you. So you want really consider your choices carefully here and decide whether it’s a good time to hold them and keep going with the case or if it’s a good time to fold.
My name is Scott Benton. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If this is material that you like and you want to receive an alert every time we put out a new episode, you can go to our website, which is classroom2courtroom.
[00:07:37] Scott Benton: com. That’s classroom, the number two. Courtroom. com. You can leave us your contact information. You’ll get an alert when we put out a new episode. So how cool is that? Additionally, if you like this material, don’t forget to share and subscribe. And by doing that, it’ll help you stay on top of our newest episodes as well.
[00:07:53] Scott Benton: Cause you’ll get an alert through the podcatcher that you’re on. So until next time, we hope you’ll join us in making the world a [00:08:00] better place, one client at a time. Thank you so much.
