Client relations are not merely something that comes with being a trial lawyer, but a key focus of our work. Own it.
An experienced litigator said to me the other day something I’ve heard many other seasoned lawyers say: “Great job, if it weren’t for the clients.” I understand the sentiment: clients in the litigation work that my colleagues and I handle are tough to please, indeed, notoriously so: they are in some mess, whether or not it’s their fault, and they rely on you to manage them through that mess. They will vent and want to talk about the same thing over and over. At times it may feel like they are taking out their frustration on you regarding something you did not create (and, frequently, they did). It is not easy.
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However, this is the job. I don’t mean that it’s simply a frustrating reality that we have to deal with, like deceitful adversaries, or a lazy judge here or there, or law schools that provide next to no useful education regarding how actually to be a practicing attorney. Those things stink, and we simply must endure them as trial lawyers, but they are not the focus of our work.
Managing clients is different. You will never become a great trial lawyer—and never be one who wins at trial—unless you learn to manage clients.
Something to keep in mind is that if you’re meeting your obligations to your client you are advising them not to share any details about their case with anyone else since those conversations are not confidential. Thus, if they’re taking your advice, they need to vent to you and talk about how difficult things are. You and your colleagues are really the only ones they can talk to.
Beyond this practical reality, though, is what I wrote above: to be great at this job, you need to know how to manage clients. This is for two reasons. First, if you manage your clients well, they will trust you. That means not only that they will hire you again, but that they will actually tell you what happened. A criminal defense lawyer once told me that when a new client comes into his office he’s lucky if he gets 50 percent of the truth. The firm where I work handles all kinds of matters—investigations, intense negotiations, false claims matters, some class actions—but our bread and butter are business disputes, generally involving international clients. I can tell you that those sophisticated, well-meaning, well-educated new business clients will generally provide only about 51 percent of the truth when they first tell you the story. It’s understandable: the clients want to tell you, a stranger, a story that shows that they are right and to get you to like them. In order to advocate for your clients, you need to know the truth, all the details, especially the bad ones. If you manage your relationship with them, the trust will grow, and they will share more with you.
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Second, if you manage your clients well, they will simply perform a lot better at trial or in hearings. A trial or hearing is a hugely stressful experience. Not only will managing them mean, as just noted, that they tell you more of the dirty details so you can prep them better for trial, but proper management of clients will help them feel more comfortable in an intense environment such as trial, since they will have the rapport with you that comes only from managing well the relationship with them.
It matters: I recently had a hearing with a client who had never been cross-examined at any length. Not only did he do well on cross, but our rapport helped him clean up anything he needed to on redirect. This was contrasted with the key witness on the other side who, clearly not having a rapport with his litigation counsel, went as far during my cross-examination of that adversarial witness to blame his lawyer (the one sitting feet from him) for what I was demonstrating was the inconsistent position their side held.
It can be exhausting hearing clients vent, for the tenth (or hundredth) time about the same small event, email, or sometimes a devastating life- or profession-changing occurrence. In order for us to serve and be great trial lawyers—and win—we must embrace this part of our work.
John Balestriere is an entrepreneurial trial lawyer who founded his firm after working as a prosecutor and litigator at a small firm. He is a partner at trial and investigations law firm Balestriere Fariello in New York, where he and his colleagues represent domestic and international clients in litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach him by email at [email protected].