Lawyerist readers are familiar with the mantra for building a law practice: networking, networking, networking. But there are lawyers out there who, despite their keen legal minds, are just painfully shy. For these lawyers, the idea of “working the room” at a cocktail party or calling someone that they hardly know to arrange a coffee or lunch meeting is not just undesirable, it actually could make them break into a cold sweat.

The risks of isolation

The introverted lawyer is not just at risk of being unable to develop a referral network that will generate business. In representing lawyers in discipline matters, I often see lawyers who are very isolated from other lawyers, whether it is by virtue of office location (working from home, renting an inexpensive office in a suburban office park, working in a rural area), a strong independence streak (“I will prove I can do this myself”), or, sometimes, not knowing how to get started networking. For some lawyers, isolation leads to bigger problems, such as not having colleagues to turn to when tough questions arise on files or not having anyone around to notice that the lawyer is showing signs of depression. It is troubling in a discipline case to represent a lawyer who cannot identify one or two friends with whom the lawyer has shared his or her problems and know the lawyer well enough to testify as a character witness.

Get in the game

Introverted lawyers should approach networking in ways that will minimize confrontation. For starters, become a joiner. Sign up for one or two bar committees, social organizations, or nonprofit boards that will have regular meetings. Small nonprofits, in particular, are eager to have lawyers serve on their boards. Through these meetings, over time, you will get to know your fellow participants and they will have the opportunity to get to know you.

These relationships may lead to a coffee or lunch date but it is not critical. You should find appropriate times—before meetings, during breaks, walking to the parking lot afterwards—to slip your elevator speech into the conversation. After you’ve served a two or three-year term, move on to another activity. Yes, this is a long-term strategy. But really, all networking is a long-term strategy and you will likely make deeper connections with people who actually work with you on projects than you would just by drinking a lot of coffee.

Go on-line

Introverts should also take the opportunity to participate in on-line discussion groups. Ask anyone who is active in a listserv and they will tell you that they get to know the personalities of their fellow participants just by reading their posts. More importantly, they develop trust in their colleagues and refer business to them. This is where an introverted lawyer can shine because often your strengths lie in deliberation and thoughtfulness (as opposed to your extroverted cousins, like me, who think while speaking, which occasionally has unintended consequences).

If your local bar association does not have an on-line discussion group or listserv, consider joining the ABA. No, it is not likely to generate referrals. Networking, however, is a skill. Like all skills, it needs to be practiced. After you get the hang of participating, perhaps you can be the one to introduce a listserv to your local bar.

Lastly, look for situations in which you can develop one-on-one relationships without the cold calling. Sign up for a mentoring program, for example. You put your name in, they contact you. Offer to visit or take meals to members of your religious community when they are ill. Join a book group. Just try to form relationships with people in environments that are suited to your personality.

Introversion is a personality type, not a disability. Everyone needs to play to their strengths, networking included.

Networking Strategies for Introverted Lawyers is a post from the law firm marketing blog, Lawyerist.com

Despite lawyers’ efforts to get the best possible results for their clients, sometimes clients are dissatisfied. Their disappointment is often accompanied by finger-pointing; surely someone must be to blame for the outcome of the case besides the client or the opposing party. When the lawyer ends up in the path of that finger, the most common complaint is that the lawyer rarely, if ever, talked to the client and that on the few occasions the lawyer did talk to the client, the lawyer never let the client know what bad events were about to unfold.

For the lawyer who has tried to do everything right, defending against such allegations might be unpleasant but not threatening. Of course the lawyer talked to the client. Quite frequently, in fact. And yes, the lawyer is certain she warned the client about the possible outcome. The client was given the choice of how to proceed and, unfortunately, made a poor choice.

“Sounds great,” says the investigator from the attorney discipline office. “Can I see your notes of those conversations?” “Well, I’m not sure I have notes of every conversation . . . “

Most of my practice is devoted to defending lawyers against allegations of unethical conduct. As a result, I often review my lawyer-clients’ files for the matters they have  handled. This includes not just the substantive documents, such as pleadings, correspondence, financial documents, etc., but also the parts of the file that one typically does not see in the course of discovery, such as the client questionnaires, the e-mails, the time records, and –hopefully– the notes.

In the last few months, however, finding notes in my lawyer-clients’ files has become the exception rather than the rule. I do not doubt my clients when they assure me that there were multiple phone calls with the client and at least a couple of meetings, but there are no specific records of those contacts: when they took place, what was said, how long they lasted. The ethics investigation is suddenly at risk of being reduced to a battle between “Did not!” and “Did so!” The disgruntled client may be regarded as having a legitimate gripe.

Why bother taking notes?

The value of taking notes should not be underestimated. Beyond providing a first line of defense against a client’s ethics complaint, notes can be helpful in tracking previous conversations with a client. The client does not then have to repeat information or suspect that the lawyer cannot remember the client’s case. For clients who challenge a bill or later demand a copy of the file, the notes fill in the gaps between written contacts with the client and show how attentive the lawyer was to the client’s case (under most states’ ethics rules, your notes are part of your clients’ files and belong to them, so avoid excessive doodling and gratuitous comments about your clients’ mental health). Your notes will also provide the chronology of events on which you may need to rely when explaining your decision to withdraw to the client or the court.

Contingent and flat fee lawyers who eschew time keeping seem to be more prone to avoiding note-taking, perhaps a byproduct of their attempts to streamline their practices. Lawyers who do not keep time records are probably in greater need of good notes than lawyers who bill hourly and can use their timesheets to track very brief conversations with clients, some of which may be written-off. The inconvenience of taking notes while talking to clients from a cell phone while walking, driving, or waiting for some other appointment to begin may have led many busy lawyers to get out of the practice of taking notes. Whatever the reason, the time lawyers save on the front end can come back to bite them on the other.

Making record-making a habit

Note-taking should be a habit, hopefully one developed early in a law practice. Personally I think that hand-written notes are the most efficient way to make a record of a conversation with a client, but it doesn’t matter whether the notes are handwritten, entered into your practice management software, typed into a Word document, scrawled on your iPhone or iPad, or dictated to your legal assistant. The goal is to create a record of the date and time that you talked with the client and, even for short conversations, some indication of the subject matter that was discussed. Lawyers should do the same for conversations with opposing counsel, witnesses, court clerks, prospective clients, supervising lawyers, and so on.  If you are talking, there should be a notepad or a keyboard in front of you.

In addition to the client’s name, the date, and at least some brief description of what the conversation, it is a good idea to note whatever advice or instructions the you gave the client. It is also wise to spend an extra few minutes after the conversation ends to fill in details you did not have time to record and clarify on paper the advice you orally gave the client. At the end of the conversation or meeting, I typically also record in the margin the length of the conversation, usually in tenths of an hour. This can help corroborate the fees you charged a client and refresh your recollection years later about the length of a conversation.

Taking notes is a lot like wearing a seat belt: 99% of the time it probably doesn’t matter whether you do it or not but it is the other 1% that you are preparing for. Take notes. The license you save may be your own.

(Photo: http://flic.kr/p/8HNqQi)

Avoid Ethics Complaints by Taking Notes is a post from the law firm marketing blog, Lawyerist.com

I met with a lawyer a couple of weeks ago in a small town about two hours outside of the Twin Cities. Our conversation turned to operating a law firm in a small town and the lawyer told me two things I probably knew but did not really appreciate. One was a complaint about how difficult it is to attract new lawyers to join law firms in rural areas. The other was the lawyer’s prediction that in the next ten years, half the lawyers in her quarter of the state were going to retire from the practice of law.

That prediction probably is not unique to Minnesota. New lawyers unable to find a job in a major American city may want to broaden their job searches beyond their local beltways.

There are many benefits to practicing in a smaller community. First off, there is plenty of work to do. All those farms you pass as you drive that two-lane road into the country? That farmland is worth several thousand dollars an acre in many areas. Those farm families need estate plans, contracts, and business advice. There are teachers, small business owners, bankers, and other professionals as well. The folk in small towns sometimes get divorced, commit the occasional DWI, and get in car accidents. They need local lawyers and they do not want to pay for some lawyer from the city to drive out to the rural courthouse to represent them. They need trusted advisors they can form life-long professional relationships with. That could be you.

Not sure what area of practice is best for you? In small towns, many lawyers are generalists. They take a variety of cases and get experience in multiple areas. Eager to get inside a courtroom? You may get more opportunities in a small town than you would as an associate in the big city.

The economics can work as well. The cost of housing may be less than half of what you would find in a major city. Your mortgage could be so small that even with your law school debt you would have less overall debt than you would have living in the city.

I know, you could never give up the city. You would miss the theater, even though you only go once or twice a year. Where would you shop? (Although you do most of your shopping on-line nowadays.) A small town only has one movie theater! (Of course, you stream most of the movies you see through Netflix.) These fears of cultural isolation may be just that—fears. The lawyer I met with told me that she and her colleagues are simply more intentional about going to the city for entertainment and probably do so more than city-folk. Many people in the city think nothing of traveling three hours each way in the summer to go up to the family cabin; rural residents just do a “reverse commute” to attend sporting events, concerts, and other big city attractions. I have a client who lives 2½ hours from Minneapolis and has seasons tickets to the Minnesota Twins.

Granted, there are some impediments. If you are single, it may be harder to find a mate in a smaller community. Even if you are married, your spouse may not be able to find suitable work in the same area.  But rural lawyers love to tell you how nice it is to raise children in a small town, where they can ride their bikes to every friend’s house and you know the parents of all of their playmates.

Quite frankly, rural lawyers probably do not want you to just show up for two or three years and then back your bags and go back to the city. But there is always the possibility that once you get out to the country, you might like it and stay. There is risk in any venture, whether it is joining a big firm or starting your own practice. In tough economic times like these, some new lawyers may want to open their minds to a different type of risk and go west—or north, or south, or east—to find a job beyond their urban dreams.

(Photo: http://flic.kr/p/4MfjWZ)

Small Towns Have Jobs for Young Lawyers is a post from the law firm marketing blog, Lawyerist.com

The Minnesota Supreme Court appears ready to open the bar admissions door just a little wider – at least enough for some graduates of unaccredited law schools, modifying the recommendations of a year-long study and report (9 MB) by the Minnesota Board of Law Examiners (MBLE).

Under the present rules, there are essentially two ways to get admitted to the bar in Minnesota: by taking and passing the bar exam or by practicing law in another jurisdiction for five of the past seven years (different rules may apply to in-house counsel). But these routes to admission are only open to graduates of ABA-accredited law schools. If you went to one of a handful of unaccredited law schools in the United States (mostly in California) or graduated from a law school in a foreign country, you cannot be admitted to the Minnesota bar unless you go to law school again at an ABA-accredited school. In fact, I know several foreign lawyers who had to do just that. Minnesota is in the minority of jurisdictions that adhere to this strict rule.

In April 2009, several Minnesota residents who had been licensed to practice law in other jurisdictions filed a petition with the Minnesota Supreme Court to amend the bar admission rules to allow them to sit for the Minnesota bar exam despite having not graduated from an ABA-approved law school. The Court, in turn, asked the MBLE to study the issue and report back to the court.

MBLE’s lengthy and quite thorough report analyzes the difficult issues surrounding how a state should determine whether individuals are competent to practice law. The ABA’s accreditation arm sets and enforces rigorous standards for law schools, such as the types of courses offered, the size of classes, availability of clinical courses, well-stocked libraries, etc. Of course, there is no empirical evidence that links each of those standards to success in practice.

Similarly, we rely on the bar exam as a measure of prospective lawyers’ competence to practice but there are no studies that reveal whether lawyers who failed the bar exam one or more times before passing are any less successful than lawyers who passed the first time. And we do not have any way of knowing whether lawyers who failed the exam and gave up might still have been successful lawyers.

The MBLE evaluated these hard questions and recommended no change in the rules regarding who is eligible to sit for the bar exam. MBLE did suggest, however, that the Court should consider admitting attorneys from other jurisdictions based on a “substantial” number of years of practice, without regard to the accreditation status of their law school. Call it the “uber waive-in rule?”

The Minnesota Supreme Court, however, appears poised to take a hybrid approach. In an order the Court issued August 13, 2010, the Court asked the MBLE to draft and file a proposed rule amendment that would “permit a licensed attorney who has successfully practiced law in another United States jurisdiction for a specified number of years to sit for the Minnesotabar examination and, if successful and otherwise qualified, be admitted to the practice of law in Minnesota notwithstanding the fact that the attorney had not graduated from an ABA approved law school.” This is very close to the suggestion submitted to MBLE by the MSBA Rules of Professional Conduct committee.

The proposed rule amendment must be filed by September 30, 2010, and will be followed by a notice and comment period. I wonder whether the ABA accreditation committee will share its thoughts.

A recent decision of the Eighth Circuit and a pending prosecution by the Minnesota Board on Judicial Standards (BJS) encourage judges to speak more in some instances and less in others.

The Eighth Circuit case, Wersal v. Sexton (courtesy of Minnesota Lawyer’s blog), struck down several restrictions on candidates for judicial office, as set forth in Canon 4 of the Code of Judicial Conduct. The court rejected clauses that prevented judicial candidates from endorsing or opposing other candidates for public office and directly soliciting campaign contributions from non-lawyers, whether for the judicial candidate’s own campaign or some other candidate’s campaign.The clear theme of the opinion is that few, if any, restrictions on the political speech of judicial candidates will ever pass constitutional muster.

So Minnesota judicial candidates are now free to speak more. In combination with previous United States Supreme Court and Eighth Circuit decisions, Minnesota judicial candidates are free to announce their positions on issues, align themselves with political parties and candidates running for local or national offices, and solicit campaign contributions. Could make things interesting in Minnesota’s 10th judicial district, where 24 candidates are vying for one seat.

On the other hand, the Board of Judicial Standards has filed a formal complaint with the Minnesota Supreme Court seeking to publicly discipline Hennepin County Judge Stephen Aldrich for, well, speaking too much. Or perhaps it is better characterized as being too glib in his courtroom. Judge Aldrich referred generally to some witnesses (not when they or a jury was present) as ”a bunch of drunkards,” made some other comments about intoxicated people, chided counsel on a couple of occasions, and made an insensitive joke about how he and his wife, during 45 years of marriage, had never considered divorce but maybe considered murder.

Judge Aldrich’s response is available as well, although the version the BJS posted on its website (and linked to here), does not include the exhibits Judge Aldrich attached. The exhibits, which were filed with the Minnesota Supreme Court, consist of an order by Hennepin Chief Judge Swenson refusing to remove Judge Aldrich from one of the matters identified in the complaint, a letter from a witness to one  another matters, and a half-dozen or so letters of support from other judges and lawyers.

Juxtaposed against each other, the two cases make for some  interesting contrasts. Judge Aldrich is being chastised for engaging in speech that violates rules preventing judges from creating the appearance of impropriety or impugning the judiciary. In the Sexton case, the Court rejected arguments that restrictions on judicial candidates’ speech was necessary to avoid even the appearance of impartiality (as described in Judge Bye’s dissent).It’s okay for a judicial candidate to speak out during a campaign in favor of tougher DWI prevention but not for a judge to refer to allegedly intoxicated people as “drunkards.”

So, judges — feel free to talk more but watch what you say.

Tuning in to the live tweets last week from the opening of the Association of Continuing Legal Education conference in New York City (it may sound dull, but they are a hard partying group!), there was much talk at the plenary session about  the allegedly irrevocable changes occurring in the legal profession because of the fallout from the Great Recession. Familiar themes: hourly billing is evil, the leveraged-associate model is on its way out, law firms will never be the same, etc. This has been the drumbeat of blawggers, consultants, and plenary speakers for at least two years now. I think they get a kick out of seeing the color drain from lawyers’ faces.

Fortunately, the old French saying remains true: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Seemingly huge upheavals often have less long-term impact than we expect.  After 9/11, many people thought we would all be singing Kumbayah for at least a generation. Ten years later, the music has faded.

According to statistics published by the ABA, there are about 1.2 million lawyers in the country, about 74% of whom are in private practice. Of those 900,000 or so lawyers, 76% practice in firms of fewer than 20 lawyers, and the vast majority of those lawyers are in firms of five or fewer lawyers.

In what areas do most solo and small firm lawyers practice? By my own estimates: Family, criminal, personal injury, workers compensation, insurance defense, estate planning and probate, plaintiffs’ employment law, consumer, bankruptcy, and small business litigation and consulting. In other words, predominately individuals and small businesses.

The issues that large firms are facing—large corporate clients wising up to the abuses of the billable hour, competition from international mega-firms—are not likely to affect the vast majority of solo and small firm practitioners. For lawyers representing individuals, the law is local. Family and criminal law attorneys, for example, face little competition from lawyers outside their geographical area. Individuals in need of legal services tend to seek out lawyers in small firms that are close to their homes or businesses, where the cost structure is lower and where they get personal attention. That is not likely to change.

Regarding legal billing structures, personal injury and plaintiffs’ employment lawyers have had an “alternative” fee structure for decades: contingent fees. That is not likely to change. Criminal, bankruptcy, and many estate planning lawyers have been using flat fee billing for years. The concept is nothing new to them.  It seems unlikely that their practices are headed for a revolution.

As for the solo and small firm attorneys charging on an hourly fee basis, particularly the litigators, their practices are unlikely to change either. Moving from an hourly fee to a flat fee billing structure requires a lawyer to take on risk. Family law clients  often make their own problems and are unpredictable once a custody battle or other dispute gets underway. Even when the client is an angel, the opposing party or their counsel can unexpectedly drive up the costs of the matter. Why would lawyers want to assume the risk for their clients’ issues? My guess is most lawyers take on enough risk already when they agree to represent a client and will not offer to take a financial stake in the client’s problems.

The clients of solo and small firms also tend to be less subject to the abuses of the billable hour and therefore less likely to seek alternative fee arrangements. Many solo and small lawyers routinely write off the time for short phone calls and e-mails, discount travel time, and reduce bills for unproductive or administrative work. Smart lawyers include all that written-off time on their bills; the clients can see that they are paying for value (a common refrain by flat fee advocates), not to line the lawyer’s pockets. Associates in small firms are more often employed to help get the work done, often at a lower hourly rate, rather than to pad the bill.

There are other entrenched practices in the legal profession that will weigh against changes in the fee model for litigators. There is a substantial body of case law that requires attorney fee awards pursuant to statutes or fee shifting agreements in contracts to be calculated based on an hourly fee. Attorneys liens are typically determined on a quantum meruit (read: hourly) basis. The Rules of Professional Conduct identify the time spent on a matter as an important factor in assessing the reasonableness of a fee. Insurance companies often hire and reimburse lawyers for representing insureds based on hourly fees, except perhaps for the most routine matters. Some areas of practice have clearly changed—many corporations that hire outside lawyers for immigration and intellectual property matters have shifted to small firms and are requiring flat fees. But these tend to be project-based assignments with predictable time requirements and outcomes.

It is healthy to have a debate about the best practices for any industry. Some change in the legal industry will occur over time. But if you are sitting at a CLE plenary session about the practice of law and feel your head spinning, excuse yourself and go splash some water on your face. You need not worry that you will be out of a job by the time you get back to the session.

The More Things Change, the More Hourly Billing Will Stay the Same is a post from the law firm marketing blog, Lawyerist.com

Each year in early July the Minnesota Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility (OLPR) and the Minnesota Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board (LPRB) publish an annual report summarizing the Year in Discipline, as it were. Not the type of reading typically picked up by anyone other than ethics wonks and insomniacs, but here are some of the highlights:

• Complaints and inventory growing. The number of new complaints was up during the first five months of this year; if it holds it would reach an annual pace of 1,400 complaints, about a 10% to 15% increase over the past few years but about the same as the Office had in the mid-90s. More troubling is that the number of open files was up to 638, possibly its highest in two decades. The target is only 500, which the Office hasn’t seen for about seven years. The number of files open longer than a year is holding at around 140, above the goal of 100. The Office should be able to handle the increase given that it has added a full-time attorney position and a full-time paralegal position in the past year. Clearly they are feeling the pressure to get the caseload down: the annual report announced a three-month “moratorium” on staff presentations of CLEs and writing articles for Minnesota Lawyer.

• Trusteeships growing. The Office seems to be swamped with trusteeships over the files of lawyers who have died with no one to wrap up their practices and the aftermath of the demise of Centro Legal, which left behind hundreds of client files. The Office has had to rent additional storage and office space; some of the drain on staff resources may account for the growing number of open files.

• Discipline levels stable. For all the increase in complaint volume, about the same number of attorneys received public discipline last year (38) as in prior years. Private discipline was also pretty constant, running at about 115 private admonitions and 35 private probations. Although the number of reported trust account overdrafts has dropped about 10% from historical levels, each year about a dozen lawyers have overdraft inquiries converted into disciplinary files, usually because of shortages resulting from poor bookkeeping or inattention, or because the financially-strapped lawyer, although perhaps not stealing any money, used the trust account in lieu of a separate checking account.

With the upgrade of my website to WordPress (by my webmaster, Karin Conroy of Conroy Consults), I get to venture into the blawgosphere first hand. I have been blogging on a semi-regular basis for the past two years on Lawyerist and plan to continue to post there. I am also on Twitter, which I have used for posting note-worthy ethics news and the occasional random thought.

Why then, would I need my own blawg? Quite frankly, I do not intend to make a career of writing blog posts or claw my way into the ABA’s top 100 blawgs. But there are some topics, such as commenting on Minnesota ethics cases or providing updates on the activities of the MSBA Rules of Professional Conduct committee and the Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board (LPRB) that do not quite fit the theme of Lawyerist (which has a national readership) and would be of interest to Minnesota readers. The heart of my practice is Minnesota lawyers; I intend to use this space to develop resources they may find useful.

I invite you to subscribe to the RSS feed, which is a convenient way of having future posts delivered to an RSS reader in your web browser or to your e-mail program. I pledge to write posts that are high on relevance to lawyers’ practices and low on self-indulgence. I plan to post when I have something to say, rather than chain myself to a schedule I will never keep up with. Of course, I welcome your comments, either publicly on this site or by private e-mail.

Many of the posts on Lawyerist focus on how to get good clients; we spend very little time talking about how to get rid of bad clients. As a general rule, the goal is to keep the clients around once they hire you. Nevertheless, for some clients, the lawyer’s advice should be limited to “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

Read this article over at Lawyerist.com >

Many of the posts on Lawyerist focus on how to get good clients; we spend very little time talking about how to get rid of bad clients. As a general rule, the goal is to keep the clients around once they hire you. Nevertheless, for some clients, the lawyer’s advice should be limited to “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

Lawyers are typically reluctant to withdraw from representing clients. Several of the most important principles of lawyer ethics —confidentiality, avoidance of conflicts, holding funds in trust— are built on the idea of loyalty to the client. Many old school lawyers believe that once you agree to represent a client, you stick with them until the bitter end, even if you are the one left with the sour taste in your mouth.

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct, however, do not require a lawyer to go down with the client’s ship. To the contrary, Rule 1.16(b), which has been adopted by most jurisdictions, says that a lawyer may withdraw from representing a client if the “withdrawal can be accomplished without material adverse effect on the client.” Note that the rule does not require that there be no adverse effect on the client at all, just that the effect not be material. Presumably, every withdrawal before a matter is completed will have some adverse effect on a client – the hassle of finding a new lawyer, getting that lawyer up to speed, some additional cost to the client, etc.

Often, by the time the lawyer gets to the point of wanting to withdraw, the matter will have progressed far enough that there will be some material adverse effect on the client. In those cases, the lawyer must to look to the other subparts of Rule 1.16(b) to see if the lawyer‘s reason for withdrawing is sufficient to overcome the material prejudice to the client (and, of course to determine whether any presiding court will allow the lawyer to get out). Conflicts of interest, client fraud, and the client’s refusal to cooperate with the lawyer may fall into this category. But there are many cases in which a lawyer has discretion to decide that his or her time would be better spent elsewhere. Here are a few examples:

Do you hear that barking sound? When that car accident case came in, it sounded great. Your injured client was the breadwinner in the family, the other driver was clearly at fault, and there was lots of insurance coverage to go around. As you started gathering information, however, you learned about the client’s pre-existing medical conditions, spotty work history, faulty recollection, and fondness for the drink.

Sure, you could stick with the client and try to get the best deal that you can under the circumstances, assuming that you can readjust the client’s expectations from a high six-figure recovery to something less than the cost of a new car. It is not unusual though to see a lawyer avoid a tough conversation with the client, hope that the client’s injuries will “mature” (a real consideration in some cases, less so in others), and let the file collect dust in a remote corner of the office. These are the types of files that turn into ethics complaints for neglect or non-communication. Instead, if the case is pre-suit and not close to a statute of limitations deadline, you can withdraw.

Sorry, I forgot my checkbook. The first few months of the attorney-client relationship are critical for figuring out whether the client is going to pay the lawyer’s bills. Human beings are remarkably consistent creatures. Clients who pay their bills within a week or two of when they get them are likely to keep doing so. Clients who need three written reminders and a phone call, or who promise to pay and do not follow through, will maintain that pattern throughout your representation. When clients fall behind on their bills, lawyers may become frustrated or angry and cross some ethical line in trying to collect their fees.  Let the next lawyer be the one who ends up representing your client for free. Get out before the receivables start aging.

Talk to the hand. You (hopefully) have several dozen clients. Your client has one lawyer. Some clients are oblivious to this imbalance. Combine that with the high emotions of a custody battle and you may get a client who calls you multiple times a day, demanding action against an estranged spouse. Emotional, needy clients not only eat away at your time but they drain the energy of your staff and may even be abusive when they do not get what they want. Sure, there are ways to manage your client communications. Some clients though are so demanding that they will overwhelm you. Withdraw from representing the problem clients and save your energy for the rest of your docket.

If you do decide to withdraw, keep the explanation simple. Avoid the urge to provide the client with a laundry list of his or her faults. And be generous in refunding fees. That way you look less like the stereotypical greedy lawyer and the client has some funds to try to find a new lawyer, likely one who is less savvy than you are about choosing which clients to represent.

Wash That Client Right Out of Your Hair is a post from the law firm marketing blog, Lawyerist.com