Small Law Firms

4 Types Of Clients You Meet Trying To Collect Your Fees

With the end of this bad, no good, awful, crappy, yucky, poopy, and disastrous year come the annual annoying tasks of charging retainers, collecting overdue payments, and rectifying accounts.

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Chasing Dollar money poorWith the end of this bad, no good, awful, crappy, yucky, poopy[1], and disastrous year come the annual annoying tasks of charging retainers, collecting overdue payments, and rectifying accounts. These tasks are met with a variety of reactions shared by a variety of different clients. I figured it’s been a relatively long time since I created a short list of types of individuals to explain the full extent of human experiences, so here we go:

  1. The Friendly Forgetful Type

The least common and most preferable type of client reactions is the, “oh, I forgot I owed that, my bad. Give me your billing department!” Whether this person is legitimately forgetful or simply feigning their ignorance as to the — often many months — overdue bill, I could give a damn. They are paying me money. They are not complaining about paying me money. And they did not make me waste much time. I love you friendly forgetful type. I’ll probably end up calling you a few months from now to do the same thing. I hope you remain the Friendly Forgetful Type.

  1. The “I Forgot, and I owe you money, but now that I have you, it’s too much money” Type

This is the bastard cousin of the Friendly Forgetful Type. And by “bastard” I don’t mean that they have dubious knowledge of their father. They are, as good ole’ dictionary.com puts it, “a vicious, despicable, or thoroughly disliked person.” They admit that they know that they owe me money, they concede that they failed to pay said money in a timely or forthright fashion, but only upon being called upon it do they suddenly take issue with it.

  1. The “It’s December, and I know the bill was due in October, but I’ll get my tax return in March, so it’s totally reasonable for me to pay you six months late, right?” Type

I have likely enabled this situation by already previously hitting their retainer, failing to either get them to refresh said retainer and also failing to withdraw when they failed to refresh the retainer. There are two variants to this type of person. The one that is disorganized and earnestly intends to pay, and will. And the lying liar who lies. My reaction will depend upon which one I assess them to be. But as we have previously established, I can be a little overly trusting.

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  1. The “It’s just not worth it” Type

I remember once being at a CLE conference where bar counsel talked about there being no faster way to invite a bar complaint than suing one’s client for unpaid fees. Sure, calling them to ask them to pay is not suing them, but there are some clients whom — after you’ve hit the retainer, and collected the vast majority of what you are owned — it is simply not worth the hassle of hounding down. My time is worth something. So is my mental health. And while this client is a rare exception, they do exist. I’m not ashamed to admit it.

I’m sure there are more types of clients you all called last month.  Don’t hesitate to tweet me if you think I forgot any!

[1] This sequence of adjectives seems a good place to drop some props to Julia who came up with what, in my opinion, is a better analogy than the Velociraptor analogy in my last article. Julia compared the uncomfortable experience in trial preparation of not being able to decipher the other side’s argument to hearing one’s cat throwing up in the middle of night and figuring out where to step. The point being, there’s a heck of a lot more carpet/floor than puke, but potential barefooted contact with that puke makes for a treacherous risk despite its remoteness.

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Atticus T. Lynch, Esq. is an attorney in Any Town, Any State, U.S.A. He did not attend a top ten law school. He’s a litigator who’d like to focus on Employment and Municipal Litigation, but the vicissitudes of business cause him to “focus” on anything that comes in the door. He can be reached at atticustlynch@gmail.com or on Twitter

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