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Dealing With Clients

How Responsive Are You?

January 29, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

In this recent post at More Partner Income, Tom Collins asks whether an attorney who has a one day turn-around to respond to email and phone calls is being responsive.  Tom Collins says no, as does Ed Poll.  As a practicing attorney, however, I don’t completely agree. Some days, I might return late to my [...]

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Client Serving Firm

January 16, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

Though it comes in number 5 on this list of law firm questions, client relations tops the blog charts for this week.  Allison Shields’ Legalease offers a great round up.  Of course, one of the best essays I’ve ever seen on how to get to know your client is this one (though I can’t find [...]

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Declining Representation Without Peril

December 28, 2005 by Carolyn Elefant

I’ve posted quite a bit on the importance of retainer letters, here and here, but not as much on a declination letter which informs prospective clients that you’ve declined to take their case.  This post from Day on Torts discusses the perils of misinforming clients about the applicable statute of limitations in a declination letter.  [...]

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Sometimes Lawyers Tell Clients To Lie, Sometimes Clients Say Lawyers Made Them Lie

December 6, 2005 by Carolyn Elefant

This piece, Tri-Cities Lawyer Arrested for Contempt (November 30, 2005), reports on a lawyer arrested for contempt for pressuring his client to lie at trial.  The laywyer was caught when the client presented the judge with the email exchanges documenting the lawyer’s advice to the client to lie – and her response that “I understand [...]

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Why You Should Listen to Your Clients

November 18, 2005 by Carolyn Elefant

Many lawyers tend to complain when our clients try to play to lawyer.  These lawyers either feel as if the client is trying to usurp of exclusive domain or simply don’t want to take the time to explain why the law doesn’t work as the client believes it does.  Yet as this article, Court:  NY [...]

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Would You Fire A Client Who Doesn’t Take Your Advice? Here’s What Doctors Are Doing…

November 9, 2005 by Carolyn Elefant

What do you do when a client consistently refuses to take your advice?  It’s a knotty problem for many lawyers as to whether they should keep those disagreeing clients and try to bring them around or simply dump them.  This article, Feuding Over Vaccines, (Sandra G. Boodman, Washington Post, November 8, 2005) discusses how pediatricians [...]

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Watching out for Clients

November 8, 2005 by Carolyn Elefant

Reader Frank Kautz forwarded this great article, Small Firm Life:  Friendly Fire (Raymond Dowd New York Lawyer 11/4/05) which begins with this advice to lawyers:  “Quit worrying about your adversary coming after you; it’s your client you need to worry about.”  Sadly, that’s true.  Though there are some pretty bad lawyers (as we’ve just posted [...]

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Practicing Law on a Full Stomach

October 29, 2005 by Carolyn Elefant

This month’s issue of GP Solo has a great article, If Esq. Ain’t Happy, Ain’t Nobody Happy by Robin Page West (who I wrote about in The Accidental Practice).  The article makes the point that our clients need us lawyers as much for emotional support as for legal expertise – and if that unless we [...]

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If Clients Can Grieve and Tell, Lawyers Should Be Able to Also

October 20, 2005 by Carolyn Elefant

David Giacalone of f/k/a has this post about a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling reversing a gag rule on those who file ethics complaints against lawyers.  (more details from this Star Ledger article (10/20/05) here.)  Under the old rule, clients who filed grievances couldn’t discuss them publicly but now they can even though many of [...]

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To Disclose or Not to Disclose, That Is the Question

September 19, 2005 by Carolyn Elefant

This article, Is Mandatory Disclosure of Malpractice Coverage a Good Idea? Ann Sherman, Small Firm Business (9/19/05) writes about the debate over mandatory malpractice disclosure rules taking place before many state bars across the country.  Below from the article is an excellent summary of the pros and cons of mandatory disclosure from Bob Weldon of [...]

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