Boutique Law Firms

Help The Client Achieve A Worthy Goal From Hiring You, Or Don’t Take The Assignment

Make sure your clients have goals you can help them achieve in litigation or arbitration.

By John G. Balestriere on July 22, 2016 11:14 am
john-balestriere

John G. Balestriere

Make sure your clients have goals you can help them achieve in litigation or arbitration.

Back when I started out as a solo practitioner, I mostly had solo, individual clients. When one of those individuals or small businesses got sued, or had a brewing or actual dispute, they contacted me, a trial lawyer. I learned early on that many individuals did not even know what they wanted me as their lawyer to do: settle the case? Litigate to the end? Write an angry letter? Something else? I learned that a key part of my job, very early on in the attorney-client relationship (indeed, generally pre-engagement), was helping the client answer this question: what is your goal from hiring a trial lawyer?

My colleagues and I still occasionally represent individuals, but generally we represent institutions and businesses in complex commercial, often international, disputes, and where the amount in dispute is frequently many thousands times more than it was for the individuals I once represented. But even sophisticated clients and general counsel who have been in litigation often have not thought through the question above—what exactly is your goal from hiring a trial lawyer?—and at our firm we still must work through that question with these clients.

Asking the question and answering it adequately is essential, indeed fundamental. Maybe the client should not even hire you. Maybe this is something they can handle without a lawyer. Or perhaps a litigator, thinking tactically, and not relying on the emotion and baggage every client understandably brings to a dispute, is exactly what the client needs.

If you do not ask this question, then it’s very easy for a borderline potential litigation to become an actual litigation (especially when, bluntly, plenty of lawyers are looking to get business for themselves and they get paid by litigating and arbitrating cases, not so much for ending cases). Even if the dispute should (or, perhaps better stated, must) enter formal dispute resolution, without knowing the goal of hiring the trial lawyer, the client can putter along with her lawyer without getting anywhere the client wants.  Far too much litigation and even arbitration is simply managed, rather than directed. Lawyers get in the habit of thinking, in essence, “OK, we’re in discovery now, so I suppose I should get out the interrogatories and document demands.” Instead, lawyers need to think, always, “What is my client’s goal in this dispute? What can I do as the client’s lawyer to advance that goal?”

As noted, it’s easy not to ask this question since, if someone wants to hire you and they agree to your engagement terms, hey, why not? Don’t do that. We are human beings. We will always have disputes. Always. And some disputes cannot be resolved without a fight. As long as there is a human society, we will break promises, take advantage of one another, or otherwise perpetrate injustices against one another (and certainly perceive that all of these are happening even when they are not). As long as we maintain civilization and don’t revert to resolving our disputes with bats and bricks, those disputes will be litigated in some forum somewhere. The world will always need trial lawyers.

“There will still be business enough” — so help your clients confirm that you can help them achieve their goals even before they hire you.

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].