Client Expectations

The 3000 Foot View

/ Bruce Cameron

It was the contrast between a morning of field work – a few hours listening to the drone of the tractor and watching the newly mown grass be transformed into bales of hay – and an afternoon of flying – an hour or so spent just drilling a hole in the sky, shamelessly taking advantage of the offer of the use of a new plane for just the cost of gas, enjoying the view from 3000 feet – that brought to mind the oddities of perspective.

For the farmer, harvest can be a time of shrinking perspectives. Once conditions are right, one’s vision narrows to singular focus on the 10 feet of field immediately in front of you through to the implement 6 feet behind you. All else fades away as the process of transforming plant to product encompasses you and your headspace narrows down to this field, these furrows, and this task.

For the pilot, harvest can be a time of expanding perspectives. The CAVU skies and cooler temperatures promise smooth flights and simple, visual navigation. Once the ground is left behind, one’s vision widens. The chart on one’s lap becomes writ large on the earth below – the cardinal directions drawn out by the section lines made visible by the farm fields and fence lines below. Your perspective widens to encompass the entire horizon as you perform an intricate dance with the physics of flight.

The morning had been spent driving a tractor by sight, by ear, and by feel – making adjustments by the sound of the grass passing into the baler, by the bump and lurch of the tractor, and by the relationship between windrow and tire – a system almost as accurate as the tractor’s rudimentary instruments. Unlike my morning’s workhorse, my stead for the afternoon was a marvel of technology – instruments capable of mapping my location and orientation with pinpoint accuracy, a synthetic vision system displaying a 3D representation of the terrain flown over, and an autopilot powerful enough to fly from take-off to landing. Yet, that day, I flew by sight, by ear, and by feel – by the sound of the air across the wings, the bump and lurch of the plane and by the relationship between the plane and the horizon.

Both tasks could have been performed with a different perspective – I could have put the hay up by watching the wider world – maintaining a steady speed on the speedometer and steering straight lines from field edge to field edge and I could have flown with my head nestled deep in the plane’s cockpit with my attention fixedly attuned to the wealth of digital information – but to do so would be to defeat some of the task’s expectations, to lose a little of the art of the task.

God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won’t tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time. Terry Pratchett

For the client, a case can be a time of  non-existant perspective. They  find themselves in that pitch dark room, forced into an obscure game, and focused so narrowly they cannot a future or a past. This lack of perspective neither good nor bad, it just is.

For lawyers, a case can be a time of infinite perspective. The boundless possibilities of a new matter quickly have a lawyer’s perspective traversing the vast scale space –  from the minutiae of statutory interpretation to the wide expanses of legal strategy – that is part and parcel of the lawyer’s realm.

In isolation, neither perspective is very efficient – the client’s narrow focus leads down the road to positional, non-strategic thinking and often leads to frustration on the part of the lawyer; while the lawyer’s perspective tends to be overwhelming to the client. The key is to set the proper expectations – explicit expectations help to widen the client’s expectations and to focus the lawyers. The cool thing is that by establishing a proper perspective, things become more efficient and (here’s the real bonus) it becomes easier for the client to see the lawyer’s value.

A Well-Informed Mind

/ Bruce Cameron / 1 Comment
A well-informed mind is the best security against the contagion of folly and of vice. The vacant mind is ever on the watch for relief, and ready to plunge into error, to escape from the languor of idleness. – Ann Radcliffe

At a recent “new lawyer” seminar the speaker, in response to a question from the audience, spent quite some time dispensing tips and procedures for avoiding “bad” clients and provided a cautionary tales about how they handled their “worst” clients. While the tips were the usual dull platitudes,  I was struck by the automatic assumption that there are “good” and “bad” clients – seems a fairly silly base level assumption to make if one is in what is essentially a customer service business.

As I see it, clients come to a lawyer during times of stress. They come to us in a frame of mind that prevents them from operating as their highest, most rational self, and they come to us more through the actions of the imp of the perverse than through their own volition. So, is it any wonder that, at these times, they may require some hand-holding as they venture onto this new and unknown path. Or that, to a stranger, they may appear to be difficult or unpleasant. There is no good or bad here, there are just people who are reacting rather than consciously acting.

Implicit in our role as advocate, is the assumption that our clients lack the standing, skill, knowledge, ability, and perhaps even the emotional capacity to speak for themselves. It follows then, that as an advocate, it is part of our function to inform our clients, to clarify expectations, to educate and inform, to stave off that “plunge into error”. When we take on the mantle of advocate, the base level assumption becomes one that allows clients to be somewhat less than themselves; allows for less than stellar behavior.

There are no good or bad clients, there are client’s whose “shadow-self” (to borrow a phrase from Pauline Tesler) is one I am not prepared for, but that is my failing, not the client’s. My job is to learn and do better the next time. Hey, perhaps I did take something away from that CLE after all.

Value Billing; Old Wine New Bottles?

/ Bruce Cameron / 1 Comment

If I understanding things correctly, the basic premise behind value billing is that the fee for a matter is determined by the outcome and/or type of services the client wants and the significance (value) of that outcome to the client. However, this does not mean that the client is completely free to dictate the fee received for services rendered. Rather it falls upon the attorney to educate the client as to the value provided (Ron Baker, Pricing Psychology). It is suggested that the attorney establish some measure of value. In Value Billing – What is it, and how is it done, Allison Shields suggests that the attorney:

[D]iscuss the client’s current pain or challenge – in other words, what is it costing the client to do nothing? What will it cost the client if the client delays taking action? What opportunities might the client miss? Or what would it mean to the client to reach their objective? How will the result achieved affect the client’s business or personal life?

Now, for a business to remain in business, income must be greater than or equal to expenditures. Setting an hourly rate is, in essence, a simple matter of estimating: the hours that can be billed to clients over the course of a year, the expenses incurred, and the desired profit (rate = (expenses + profit)/hours). I submit that the value billing attorney must perform a similar calculus when trying to establish value provided, after all there are a fixed number of “things” that can be accomplished in a year and a known amount of income that must be generated. Continue reading →

The Value of Tradition

/ Bruce Cameron

At the onset of my journey to a solo practice, I conducted a fairly informal market survey of my potential client base to see if a virtual office practice would work as well in a rural community as it does in the more densely populated urban areas. While my survey indicated that my potential client base was willing to accept some deviations from their concept of “lawyer” (such as flat fees v. hourly rates), they value the more traditional trappings of an attorney. Here, there is value in engraved letterhead and wax-sealed wills, in the formality of a wood paneled office and a heavy oak desk and there is comfort and confidence in that three piece suit and a good firm handshake.

I found that this is a community that still does business face-to-face and is one where impressions matter, especially when issues such as trust and confidence are involved. The virtual office concept falls flat because the web can never give the feeling of permanence that bricks and mortar provide. It does not matter that a virtual office means lower overhead, that brick and mortar office is permanent — you can trust permanence; you can have confidence in permanence. There is value in tradition.