There is a very nice double entendre connected with the thought that “clients are people, too.” One meaning centers on personalizing clients, recognizing them as living, breathing, human creatures, with hosts of problems and pleasurable characteristics. Too often we think of them as our problems, part of a case, too often on the phone, impossible to deal with or, in a “meet the overhead” frame of mind, perhaps as a source of income, a “meal ticket” or someone who does not pay their bill on time.
Another meaning helps us remember that we are people, too; that we, like clients, have our problems and pleasurable characteristics. We, like them, want to be taken care of from time to time, respected, honored and even loved for who we are. A client often misses this. So does opposing counsel and, need I say, the judge.
What all of this suggests to me, especially after being around clients, other lawyers and courts for as long as I have, is that it’s not bad to remember who and what we are and mean to each other as lawyers and clients, at the human level, as we necessarily spend some time in each other’s company.
Looking at Clients as Human Beings
Being human is a tough role to fulfill. Among all the creatures, we humans seem to be the species most blessed, and cursed, with thought processes and complicated emotions that underlie most of our behavior. I know there is debate about some of the other mammals and how they work, but for the most part humans are pretty distinct in this regard.
Among all the animals, we notably laugh and cry, for good reasons and bad. We operate from the brain and from the gut. We often get the gut functioning when it’s the brain we should work, and vice versa. Clients do that, too.1
When clients come to us for help and advice, they bring the whole ball of human wax with them. They are confused, hurt, mad, hating and hateful. They want justice, revenge, hope and some help with their problems. They are probably, at some level, looking for love and affection from someone who only gave them, or is giving them, hurt and trouble.
They may, or may not, be good analysts. They may or may not know how to diagnose their wants, needs, desires and interests. They may or may not know how feelings work, what their own feeling is or why they feel the way they do. Unless they are claims examiners, sophisticated corporate counsel or otherwise work a lot with litigation and legal problem solving, it’s probably a good guess they know little or nothing about the law, its processes and who lawyers are and how lawyers work.
Clients inevitably bring problems to us for solving that are a tangled skein of interacting parts. These parts are not just legal. They are transactional, relational, economic and political, and a whole range of other designators. They want legal help, sure, but they also often want, and almost always need, transactional, relational, economic, political and other help, too.
But as lawyers, we may not be aware of, or feel competent about helping identify, much less solve, these other problems. As lawyers, we have been trained as logical and analytical thinkers. Do you remember your law professors urging you to “think like a lawyer?” Can you remember wading through those first few hundred cases trying to discern fact patterns, the court process, who sued whom and why? Do you recollect IRAC (issue, rule, application/analysis and conclusion) as the tool for successful analysis and test results?
We hardly stop to register that we were actually hand picked for the ability to reason logically, to take things apart and then put them back together again in some rational order. That’s what the LSAT (Law School Aptitude Test) was all about. We were told, taught and conditioned that we should leave our feelings at the door.
But if we leave our feelings at the door when we are with a client, we are apt to end up completely missing the boat in our role as legal and conflict problem solvers. God (or choose words like Evolution, The Universe, The Tao, The Way Things Are) gave us sensibilities — that is “sense-abilities.” We are supposed to use them. We are not supposed to check them at the door. Our professors are not gods anymore and they were never totally right about the way the world works or how lawyers should practice law even then.
I therefore suggest taking time to listen, really listen, to what our clients have to say. Query them, too. Clarify. Feed back what we hear: check it out for accuracy. Let our senses work, too. Check out body language, tone and emotionality. Show some sympathy. Don’t be afraid to shed a tear, internally, and in the right moments, perhaps externally, too.
Let’s remember these are human problems we are dealing with. They are relational: as they say, “It takes two to tango (or is it tangle?).” There is always going to be someone else involved, probably several others. They are known as adversaries, acquaintances, partners and former partners. If they are a little more removed from the conflict, they may be interested and invested stakeholders. Let’s identify who they are, talk about them a bit, too. Get our clients to think about how they all fit into the picture, what their wants, needs, desires and interests are. Maybe even suggest a meeting to talk things over.
With this kind of approach, and adding other such awarenesses to it, we can help our clients, and thus ourselves, think and react a little differently about what has occurred. It will help us map our course and help our client map his or hers. It will help us understand what our clients’ real needs are and help guide us where we — the clients, and you and I — need to go. It will also, probably, help us get to the heart of the problem we are asked to help deal with more quickly, more efficiently and with greater human skills.
Sure, we should still “think like a lawyer.” But we should do so humanely, too. And if we do, I am reassured, and can confirm, we also will feel better about the second part of the double entendre we have discovered in the words “clients are people, too.” We will find ourselves better respected, even honored, and, perhaps, recipients of some love and affection from those we are called on to interact with almost always on a daily basis as we do our work.
Let’s make it our mark not only to recognize that clients are people, too, but they are, for the most part, just like us, and we are just like them.
John Shaffer litigated, tried, mediated and settled cases for more than 30 years. He is a candidate for an LL.M. in Dispute Resolution (Straus Institute, Pepperdine University Law School). He now mediates and arbitrates disputes full time and counsels law firms, executives and management-level personnel on conflict system design and economical conflict resolution. He can be reached at jcslaw1@aol.com.
1 I suspect all this applies to opposing counsel and judges, too, but I’d like to leave that discussion for another essay or perhaps some enjoyable discussion over a cup of coffee.
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