Are You Controlling Your Client's Narrative?

Columnist Keith Lee explains why it's so important to manage your client's expectations.

A few days ago, a lawyer buddy of mine shared a post about Kurt Vonnegut explaining why people yearn for drama in their lives:

People have been hearing fantastic stories since time began. The problem is, they think life is supposed to be like the stories. Let’s look at a few examples.

He said, “Let’s look at a very common story arc. The story of Cinderella.”

He wiped the board clean and said, “Now let’s look at another popular story arc: the disaster.”

People LOVE this story! This story arc has been written a thousand times in a thousand tales. And because of it, people think their lives are supposed to be like this.

But the problem is, life is really like this…

The writer of the post speculates that’s why people have fights and are drawn to sports – we desire drama in our lives. It’s why reality tv and celebrity gossip is so prominent in popular culture. Most people’s lives are quite mundane, but they want, they expect, the ups and downs of fairy tales they’ve heard all their lives.

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That doesn’t change when they walk into your law firm.

CSI, Law and Order, Suits. 12 Angry Men, My Cousin Vinny, A Few Good Men. To Kill A Mockingbird, The Firm, The Lincoln Lawyer. Popular culture is filled with story after story about adventurous and exciting trips through the legal system. There is drama, action, and romance. The right evidence is always found in the nick of time. The expert always messes up at a deposition when needed. The key witness always cracks on the stand. And when it happens on TV, it’s all tied up, start to finish, in about 43 minutes. This is the background, the expectation, that many people have when they walk into a lawyer’s office.

They want their issue to follow the disaster story arc. They want you, the lawyer, to be able to do some voodoo magic between commercials that will let them automatically get custody of their child or make their DUI go away. They think that it can probably all be wrapped up in just a few days. Yet a client will likely not express these things to the lawyer, often because they’re not even aware of these thoughts. But the hundreds of legal stories they’ve been exposed to in their lives create a latent set of expectations about how things are supposed to work when they need a lawyer.

This is why it’s incredibly important to manage the expectations of clients. They might say they don’t have any expectations, but they do. Clients have all the stories they’ve seen or read that create subtle expectations in their mind, even if they’re not aware of them. It’s up to a lawyer to control and create a realistic narrative for the client to follow. A lawyer needs to be able to tell a realistic story of how a client’s issue or lawsuit might play out. A lawyer needs to be able to say no, we can’t wrap things up in a couple of weeks. No, I can’t make the judge hear your case earlier. No, I don’t respond to text messages at 1 am in the morning.

Making sure that you dissuade clients of any unrealistic expectations they may have — whether they know it or not — is a very important step in making sure they have a good experience with your firm.

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Of course, the reverse is true as well – controlling the client’s narrative is an important step in making sure you have a good experience with the client.


Keith Lee practices law at Hamer Law Group, LLC in Birmingham, Alabama. He writes about professional development, the law, the universe, and everything at Associate’s Mind. He is also the author of The Marble and The Sculptor: From Law School To Law Practice (affiliate link), published by the ABA. You can reach him at keith.lee@hamerlawgroup.com or on Twitter at @associatesmind.