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Scott Benton: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Classroom to Courtroom podcast. I’m your host, Scott Benton. And we are making the practice of law easy and fun as you transition from being a law student into your professional career as a fully ticketed attorney. Today, we’re going to be talking about why your client doesn’t pay you any longer for your legal services? Why do they stop? Why does your client stop paying you for your legal services? There’s a very good reason for that. And we’re gonna do a little bit of a deep dive into, why that happens? And what you can do about it? So, let’s get started now.
Scott Benton: Let’s answer the question.
Why does your client stop paying you for legal services? Why did they just stop being, they hired you, they met with you, they started paying you, they paid a retainer. You got to work on their case and then suddenly they stop [00:01:00] or they tell you that they’re going to stop. Now, when something like that happens, it’s got to send up a red flag in your mind and it’s going to tell you something very specific.
There are only really two reasons why a client is going to stop paying you for your legal services. Now, you probably think and the reason is always the same, by the way, they’re going to tell you they don’t have any money. They’re going to tell you that they’re out of money but that is not necessarily true.
That’s actually not true at all. Now, whether the client has $10 in their account or 10 million dollars in their account. It really doesn’t matter or somewhere in between. They are still going to give you the exact same excuse. They’re going to say, I don’t have any money and what that means is very specific.
When you hear that and you’re going to hear that. When you hear the client says, I can’t continue to pay for legal services, I don’t have any money. It means two things. Now, the first thing it means is, that you haven’t formed a strong enough bonded [00:02:00] relationship with them. You haven’t spent enough time building rapport with that client.
You need to get to a place with your relationships, with your clients, where they feel very comfortable with you, where they trust you, where they’re going to, really open up to you and disclose everything about the case that they wouldn’t normally disclose to anybody else. So, you want to make sure that your skills in terms of building relationships with clients are very strong.
And if this is an area where you’re not particularly confident in, or maybe you’re really shy or you don’t feel like, you have strong relationship building skills, especially in a professional setting like, a law firm where you have clients and you’re meeting with people and so on and so forth. You want to make sure that you do something about that.
If your skills in building relationships are lacking, you must understand that everything you do with clients is relationship building. So, you need to get to a point where [00:03:00] you have instant rapport with people that you just meet. And if this is a space that you’re not really good at or uncomfortable in or don’t do well, in those kind of social environments. Then, you must do something about that because it’s going to cost you cases.
It’s gonna cost you money. When your clients are going to come around and tell you that they don’t have any money to pay for your legal services anymore. What you can do about that, it’s very simple. You can read books. There’s probably the most well known book is by Dale Carnegie.
It was written in, I think, in the 1930s, 1920s, 1930s, so it’s a little bit old timey. Although I did notice recently that they rewrote that book and updated it. But regardless, if you get your hands on a copy of the book, you’re going to see that it’s got some really timeless, powerful information in it.
In fact, when people start reading business books, generally, when they get out of school and they’ve graduated and maybe they’re going to start their own business or go into business in one capacity or another. Almost always that Dale Carnegie book, How to Win Friends and [00:04:00] Influence People. It tends to be the first book that people pick up and which kind of tells you that a lot of people feel uncomfortable in this space and building relationships.
And if you are like them, then you have to break through that barrier. You have to make sure that you’re developing skills that are going to create instant rapport with people that you just meet. And that you’re going to maintain those relationships and you’re going to build a strong relationship.
And the reason is that, in today’s world, a very complex, complicated world. When you have platforms like, LegalZoom or do it yourself platform, where people more and more think that legal services can just be done automatically or online or maybe with AI or something like that. And so, when they come to you, there’s this assumption that legal services should be provided for free.
Now, I know that is a pretty extreme position and very unrealistic, of course, I know you and I agree about that. But the reality [00:05:00] is, that clients that are coming to you have this belief system in their mind that legal services should simply be dispensed for free. That what you’re doing for them, they shouldn’t have to pay for it because they can just go on the LegalZoom or some other platform or get this service really done for free. So, that is a misnomer that we need to work to correct and the way that you correct that, believe it or not, is that your clients will pay all day long for strong bonded relationships with their attorneys. Now that they’re going to pay for, because for the most part, when people come to a law firm, just statistically, most people haven’t hired an attorney before.
So, when you’re in the law space and you’re in a law firm, and now you’re hiring an attorney, and those expenses can be pretty high sometimes. That’s a pretty intimidating place for most people. That’s a scary place, they just don’t really know how to navigate. And so, they are relying on an expert to sort of hold their hand [00:06:00] through that process and guide them through it and you are their expert. You are that expert that they’re coming to. So, if you fail to build a strong bonded relationship with them and that’s really incumbent upon you to do that. Again, you can get that training through reading books. Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.
There are also classes. Dale Carnegie has classes or tons of these kinds of classes about relationship building and you owe it to yourself. If you’re weak in any area in this capacity, you owe it to yourself to just stop what you’re doing and go and study this for a while and improve upon your ability to connect with people right away, especially in this world right now.
We’re all connected by our phones and our devices and our computer and we have less and less face to face communications with people and interactions with them. And so over time, we really lose our ability to form that strong bond with them. But for you, building that strong bond with your clients translates into revenue. Because if you have that, if they have built trust with you. That’s what they [00:07:00] want, they’re trying to build a trust base with you and they’re trying to build a strong bonded relationship with you. They’re in a scary space, they’re trusting you, you need to deliver on that trust promise, whether that’s implied or not.
You need to be able to make sure that you’re bridging that gap with your own skills. So that does become a part of practicing law. And a very important part of practicing law that you need to make sure, you break through that barrier if you have any of those barriers in social situations and I would say that a lot of people do, maybe even most people have that barrier.
Now, the second reason that a client is going to come to you and say that they don’t have any money to pay for your legal services is because, you as the attorney have failed over and over again to remind them of the value of the case. You need to do that every single time you communicate with them, whether it’s in writing or in person on the telephone.
You want to remind them of the value of the case. A law firm, it’s a little bit like, paying a lawyer, let’s say, or attorney that it’s a little [00:08:00] bit like an investment. And you need to make sure that they see what the end result is. Maybe when the case closes, they’re in line to get $50,000 or $100,000 or $500,000 or a million dollars or more, whatever that number is, you want to make sure that you know the value of the case and that you’re communicating that to them often and frequently. So, that number is now in their head so that, when they’re thinking about their case, they’re looking at that end result.
They’re looking at that goal number that when all is said and done that they’re gonna end up with. So that, when they are paying you for the legal services that they’ve hired you for and if you have that strong bonded relationship with them. Then, they will continue to pay for those legal services whether they have $10 in their bank or 10 million dollars in their bank. They are going to keep paying you, even the people that have $10 in their bank are going to find a way to continue to pay you.
They will, they will find a way to make those payments and keep you [00:09:00] engaged because you’ve built trust with them through your ability towards instant rapport, towards building relationships. They’ve now gotten to a point where they feel very comfortable with you. They trust you, they open up to you, they tell you every little detail that you ask them. That’s just a part of relationship building. You’re going to give them questions about everything having to do with the case. You’re going to get to know who they’re children are, the names of their children, you’re gonna get to know their pets, you’re gonna get to know all of their hobbies, the things that they love to do, the places they love to go. You’re gonna create that kind of bond with them. And no matter how much money they have in their bank, those bills for the legal services you’re providing are going to get paid. So remember, the minute that a client comes to you and they say that they can’t pay for your legal services or they’ve just stopped paying for your legal services.
That red flag should go up in your head and you should know that you’ve failed to build a strong bonded relationship with that client. So you’ve got to work on that right away. You need to pivot pretty hard and pretty quickly and you need to make sure you’re doing that instant rapport [00:10:00] thing with them and building that relationship. And then you want to continually remind them of the outcome of the value of the case. So that they understand that the money they’re spending now is an investment towards their future and in winning this case. So I hope that was helpful, I hope that was an informative piece of information on the Classroom to Courtroom podcast.
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We look forward to seeing you on the next episode [00:11:00] of the Classroom to Courtroom podcast. And until then, we hope you’ll join us in making the world a better place, one client at a time. Thank you so much.
