Small Law Firms

The One Thing Lawyers Should Be Thankful For

The one thing lawyers should be thankful for is their most basic reason for existing -- to help their clients improve their lives.

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Every year around the holidays, I try to reach out to a number of current and former clients. I don’t call to demand payment. I just call to see how they are doing and to wish them a happy and safe holiday season. I am particularly interested in knowing how my former clients are doing, mainly to see if my services have improved their lives.

This year, one former client comes to mind. Let’s call him Sam. To protect identities, some details have been changed.

Sam was one of my first clients after I went solo. He was a man who today would have been in his late 60s. He lived in a poor part of town. Social security was his only source of income.

Sam was also HIV positive.

Many years ago, Sam and others started a business that never turned a profit. After the business folded, he was deep in debt and was hit with multiple lawsuits from creditors and collection agencies. He hired a debt settlement firm that ended up doing nothing for him.

Sam somehow found me. When he called, I asked how he heard about me. He said I was recommended by someone I never heard of. At the time, it seemed odd because he lived very far away from me. The distance was so far that we never met in person. Also, I just started my solo practice so I didn’t have a website, or even a business address. I was working out of my house and on the rare occasions that I met with clients, it was at a coffee shop or at a friend’s conference room. The only form of advertising was telling friends, family, and a few professionals I met at mixers or in chat rooms.

To make a very long story short, I was able to get a decent settlement with his creditors mostly by using the all-powerful “you can’t get blood from a turnip” argument. My guess is that once I told the creditors Sam’s age and his medical ailments, they were not eager to meet him in person for a debtor’s examination.

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A year after our attorney-client relationship ended, I reached out Sam to see how he was doing. On the phone, he sounded very happy to hear from me. While I enjoyed hearing about how his quality of life had improved, he tended to ramble on and on, and as a result, I ended up staying on the phone a lot longer than I anticipated. A few years later, I decided to email him instead. He always sent back an equally long, rambling reply.

At some point, we lost touch, and it’s been this way for some years.

A few days ago, I was thinking about traveling to a city to meet other clients and friends. The city just happened to be two subway rides away from the city where Sam lives. So I sent him an email asking if he wanted to meet somewhere for coffee or lunch. I told him that I was looking forward to finally meeting him after all these years.

I didn’t get a response.

I tried calling him, but his phone number was disconnected.

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I wondered what happened to Sam. Looking him up on the internet revealed nothing. I feared that he may have succumbed to complications from HIV. But since many people today with HIV are living without physical complications, there was an equally good chance that he may have moved. Maybe one day I’ll know. Or maybe not.

I looked back at Sam’s ramblings. On his final email to me, he said that he was going to get his nephews and nieces expensive holiday presents to make up for not getting them anything for the last few years. He also planned to travel in the near future because he was able to save a few hundred dollars.

As another Thanksgiving comes and goes, I wonder what lawyers have to be thankful for. Of course there are the usual responses: health, family, friends, and members of the military for their service. But today, with growing student loan balances, uncertain career outlooks, the evolution of RoboLawyer, depression, more cost-sensitive clients, and recent news of layoffs, the list of gratitude seems to be getting smaller.

Whenever I feel this way, I think about the people I have helped over the years. In Sam’s case, I helped him get out of thousands of dollars in debt. For seasoned lawyers, this might be small potatoes. But to Sam, a elderly man living with HIV, it probably meant a lot. I think sometimes we forget that we have the power and the credentials to make a meaningful difference in peoples’ lives in ways that other professionals cannot. So despite the challenges, the one thing lawyers should be thankful for is their most basic reason for existing — to help their clients improve their lives.

Shannon Achimalbe was a former solo practitioner for five years before deciding to sell out and get back on the corporate ladder. Shannon can be reached by email at sachimalbe@excite.com and via Twitter: @ShanonAchimalbe.

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