[00:00:00]
Scott Benton: Hey everyone, it’s Scott Benton here. I am your host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom Podcast. How are you? We are a podcast dedicated to law students and those who have recently graduated law school and passed the bar and they’re looking for their first job as an attorney to start building their career.
We are here to teach you how to practice law, a subject that is not taught in law school. It’s definitely not taught in a bar prep course, that’s for sure. So the bottom line is no one actually teaches you how to practice law and it’s something that you start to learn once you get your first job. But ideally when you set foot in that firm for the first time, you should already know how to do this and we are here to bridge that gap.
Scott Benton: And today we are going to take a look at a question of Who Gets To Decide What Direction A Case Goes, who gets to decide in terms of [00:01:00] its strategy, which strategy is going to be picked and pursued. So we’re going to look at that question real quick.
Now, when a client hires you and they engage your services as an attorney, you are going to find out everything about that case from them. What are their legal objectives? What are they trying to do? They are hiring you because of your expertise. They are hiring you because you are an attorney, a licensed attorney who can represent clients in a court of law. You can advise them. They are basically asking you, how do I accomplish this goal?
And once they’ve engaged your services as an attorney, it is your job to do all of the research necessary to figure out how to accomplish the goal that they are trying to reach. Now, a lot of times they’re going to be several options and it’s your job to know what all of those options are going to be.
The next thing that you’re going to do is you’re going to sit down and you’re going to write a letter. And this letter is going to go to the client and it’s basically going to be a list of all of their options.
[00:02:00] Here is the goal that you want to reach. Here are the, let’s say, three options that we can, these two options, three strategies that we can use in order to achieve those goals. Now, those three strategies are going to be broken down a little bit further. You’re going to look at the case value using those three strategies. Now the case value might be the same no matter which strategy you use, but it might be different, so you want to be able to consider that as well.
You’re also going to want to break down the pros and cons of using each strategy. If we go this direction, here’s the pros and the cons. If we go this direction, here’s the pros and the cons. Sometimes cases have stronger pros than others and they have weaker cons or stronger cons, worse cons. You know what I mean?
So you want to make sure that you’re highlighting what those pros and cons are for each of the directions in terms of the strategies that you’re presenting to the client so that they can decide.
Ultimately, it’s the [00:03:00] client that decides what direction they want to go, which is the answer to the question of who decides the direction that a case goes based on strategies that they’re presented with.
So, you want to make sure that in this letter that you are describing very clearly and confidently what those strategies are. Remember, you want to make sure that you’re always building a platform of trust with your client. And, that they have that confidence in you in terms of representing them and accomplishing their goals.
Now, what’s going to happen is that client is going to look at their options. It’s possible that it just none of those options make any sense for them. So in other words, maybe the amount of money that it’s going to take to purchase legal services in order to accomplish that goal is going to be more expensive than the financial outcome that they’re going to realize if they actually won the case.
Now, in addition to the pros and cons, you’re going to discuss with them the likelihood of winning [00:04:00] the case based on that particular strategy. So they might have a 50, 50% shot of winning the case or a 90 10 or 60 40 or whatever it is that you deem is their chance of actually winning the case based on that direction that they can go and then how much they could stand to realize if they go in that particular direction.
If it’s different from any other case, it could be that the value of the case is just $200,000 or $500,000 or whatever that number is and that’s going to be a consistent number throughout the strategies and it really won’t matter.
But sometimes strategies do affect that outcome because sometimes strategies will take much longer and cost much more. You might have 20 declarations that you’re going to go get or you might need three expert witnesses that you’re going to have to hire and it’s just going to take six months of time as opposed to one month of time.
And six months of time of paying for legal services is significantly much [00:05:00] more expensive than one month of time in theory, all things being equal. So, if the consistency is a $200,000 payday, let’s say, then a six month time period of legal services is going to cut into that $200,000 far more than let’s say one month of time would.
So you want to present the client with this letter with their options. You want to discuss those options with them. You want to do it in a confident and clear manner so that they are able to ask all of the questions that they’re going to have of pursuing their case and option number one, option number two and option number three.
So they have as much clarity of as possible so that they can then make a decision. And again, the decision could be that they’re not going to do anything. In that case, you disengage your services. They no longer pay for any services because you’ve helped them determine that their case is not worth pursuing. And that’s going to come up from time to time.
But if they decide that [00:06:00] is worth pursuing. You’ve given them a number of options. They ultimately are the one who is going to decide the direction that the case goes. So you’re waiting for them to respond.
They’re going to come back to you and they’re going to say, okay, I’ve looked through these options and want to go with option number two. Here’s what we’re going to do. And now they’re going to engage your services and pay you for the work that you’re going to complete in order to that case through option number two.
Now, at no point in time are you going to say to your client, well, okay, you’re choosing option number two, but I don’t think that’s the best option. I think we should do option number one and I think we should pursue this case that way and not the way that you’ve asked me to pursue it with. That’s just not going to happen. You don’t have that kind of privilege. It’s the client that gets to make that determination and not you.
Now, that being said. Your client could come back, for instance, as an example, and decide that none of [00:07:00] these options are options that they want to pursue. Sometimes, clients will feel that they’ve been wronged, let’s say by a family member, and this is their opportunity to exact revenge. So, they may want to pursue the case in a way that might be unethical or something that you disagree with just on ethical grounds.
If there’s someone and they just are going to go after it and they want their pound of flesh and they don’t care how much it’s going to cost in order to exact that revenge over the person that they feel has wronged them, you do have the option as the attorney to tell that client that you are sorry, but you can’t help them with the case or you won’t help them with the case, and at that point you’re going to sub out of it as their attorney.
They can go find another attorney, they know what their options are that you’ve given them if they’re unhappy with them and they still want to pursue the case, but in a way that you feel is unethical or it’s just a revenge case that you don’t want to represent them in then you can always [00:08:00] sub out and you can let them find an attorney if they can find an attorney who is going to pursue the case under the conditions that they wish to pursue it in.
But other than that, you are there hired as someone’s attorney as your client’s attorney to provide them with their options. You’re going to give them the case value. You’re going to let them know what the pros and cons are with all of the different pursuits that you’ve presented them with the different options and you are going to answer any questions that they have.
And that’s about it, they get to choose, can sub out if they decide to go in a direction that you don’t want to go. But other than that, it’s always the client that gets to decide the direction that the case is gonna go. So I hope that is helpful.
Now, if you like this material on the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast 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 Classroom2Courtroom.com. You can provide your contact information. And whenever we have a new episode that goes out, you’ll get an alert that you can then go check [00:09:00] out and watch our new Classroom 2 Courtroom material that we’ve put out, our new newest episode.
And if you’re finding that this is valuable information, don’t forget to share, like, and subscribe.
We hope you’ll join us on our next episode of the Classroom 2 Courtroom Podcast. Until then, we hope that you’ll join us in making the world a better place, one client at a time. Thank you so much. Take care now.
