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[00:00:07] Scott Benton: 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 where we make the practice of law fun. And today we’re going to take a look at why attorneys disengage from cases.
[00:00:24] Scott Benton: Why attorneys disengage from cases.
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[00:01:14] Scott Benton: For context, when you’re working on a case, there are three, let’s call them, mindsets that you’re going to be in with each case. Mindset number one is that you’re going to be winning the case. Mindset number two is that you’re going to be losing the case. And mindset number three is that you’re going to be Disengaged from the case.
[00:01:32] Scott Benton: Now, out of those three mindsets, disengagement is probably the one mindset you don’t wanna be in the most, and you wanna find a way out as soon as possible. So to do that, it helps if we look at some of the reasons why disengagement might occur. Once we have that part of the puzzle all worked out, it often becomes a matter of doing a little bit of backwards engineering or backwards math to turn disengagement back into full [00:02:00] engagement and so that you can get those cases that are stuck moving again.
[00:02:05] Scott Benton: So for the most part, when attorneys start to disengage from a case, it can often be attributed to working with Difficult clients, which could include clients who either just don’t know what their legal objectives are, so in other words, they don’t know what they want. Or, sometimes clients can keep changing their objectives.
[00:02:22] Scott Benton: When this happens, it makes it very difficult for the attorney to provide the legal services clients are looking for, because the goalposts simply keep moving. Now, if you know what the client’s goal is, and you have specific legal objectives, That’s when you can put the case strategies for them together to choose from.
[00:02:41] Scott Benton: And that’s where you can provide all the pros and cons for those objectives. But if the goal keeps changing, you as the attorney are simply waiting for them to pick the goal that they want to go after. And until they do that, you’re pretty much stuck and why disengagement would occur.
[00:02:57] Scott Benton: In some cases, attorneys might [00:03:00] become somewhat disengaged from a case because They’re representing the bad guy of the case, which is a little different than working with either difficult clients or clients who don’t know what they want or keep changing the goals. Although, if you’re working with the bad guy of the case, let’s call them, even if the goal is not exactly clear, you know for the most part that you’re really trying to minimize damages for your client.
[00:03:25] Scott Benton: And you’re looking for an opportunity to settle the case and then get out. Bad guy or not, this is your client that you’re fighting for to create the best possible outcome.
[00:03:36] Scott Benton: In all of these cases, however, the biggest reason attorneys tend to disengage from a case is because the objective is not clear.
[00:03:44] Scott Benton: In other words, attorneys would not be able to answer the question of what the client wants. If a supervising attorney, for instance, showed up in their office and asked them about this particular case and what it is the client wants, that attorney wouldn’t [00:04:00] know how to answer that question. So when there’s any confusion or fogginess about what the client wants to achieve, it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to create the to do list for that case, which in turn makes it difficult, if not impossible, to perform the legal services in order of priority from that to do list.
[00:04:20] Scott Benton: And the case starts to slow down, and it gets murky, and it gets stuck, and that eventually is going to require a fairly good deal of effort to get it going again, especially when there are plenty of other cases that have clear objectives, a full to do list, and plenty of prioritized legal services to perform.
[00:04:38] Scott Benton: There are just so many hours in the day for you to reach and exceed your minimum billable hourly requirements. So when cases get stuck, you can see how they might stay that way for a little while to focus on cases that are in progress and moving. But it’s important to not let the other cases stagnate, and there are remedies for keeping that from happening.
[00:04:58] Scott Benton: For the attorney, [00:05:00] generally speaking, whenever a case flags or it’s been stuck in limbo for any amount of time, there’s no clarity for the goal. There’s no clarity of what that is. That’s almost always the biggest reason for cases to slow down or just stop entirely. So if you as the attorney can’t describe what the client wants, then neither can they.
[00:05:22] Scott Benton: So somehow, this is going to need to be decided upon, or the case is going to remain stagnant and probably go away altogether. Attorneys mostly disengage from their cases because of that lack of direction. So the goal for the attorney for the cases that are not moving forward, or moving slowly, is always going to be clarity, clarity, clarity.
[00:05:45] Scott Benton: One way or the other, the attorney must get on the phone with the client or maybe even meet in person and talk about nothing other than the objectives of the case so that everyone is firmly on the same page and so the case can move forward with [00:06:00] clear objectives. Now, in some examples, once the goal has been clarified by the client and they clearly state what they want, with this understanding, the attorney will know they’re not going to be able to deliver what the client is looking for.
[00:06:14] Scott Benton: This will then need to be explained to the client and the attorney most likely would sub out altogether and turn their attention back to the cases that they’re working on that have objectives that they can reach. This is why clarity is everything for each and every client that you work with.
[00:06:31] Scott Benton: And the sooner you’re able to gain that clarity, the better. Now, at some point along the line early on, you and the client were probably on the same page objective wise, but then sometimes new information comes along and the initial goal that was agreed upon, it’s really, it’s no longer relevant or valid or doesn’t apply as at once it applied, so unless you get really clear on what the new legal direction is, the case is going to flounder in uncertainty for as, [00:07:00] as long as forever.
[00:07:01] Scott Benton: That’s going to be a drain on your time and on your client’s resources.
[00:07:05] Scott Benton: So when a case pivots like that and new priorities for your client need to be repositioned or just reset. You as their attorney need to be aware of finding that new direction so you can properly assess whether you can meet your client’s new legal objectives or not, and with as little disruption as possible, hopefully.
[00:07:24] Scott Benton: The goal for you as the attorney is to be fully engaged with all of your clients this way and with all of your cases.
[00:07:30] 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.
[00:07:44] Scott Benton: Our website is classroom2courtroom. com. That’s classroom, the number two. courtroom dot com. You can leave us your contact 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 [00:08:00] episode of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast.
[00:08:02] 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.
