Optimizing The Attorney-Client Relationship To
Optimizing The Attorney-Client Relationship
To Achieve Outstanding Results
By Arnie Herz
(As appeared in the September 2003 issue of ICM Update, a publication of the Institute for Conflict Management)
Clients expect their lawyers to handle matters with proficiency and professionalism. It is widely reported, however, that many lawyers fall way short of meeting their clients’ expectations. The shortfall manifests in pervasive public criticism of the legal profession, overburdened court dockets, and lawyer stress and burnout.
The gap between what clients want and what lawyers routinely provide derives in large part from a fundamental breakdown in communication. Clients are not always adept at articulating what they really need and lawyers lack the insight or inclination to help them fill in the blanks.
Failing to ascertain their client’s real needs, lawyers focus on achieving the typically superficial goals their clients reactively declare at their first meeting. Even if such goals are fully realized, clients rarely come away feeling truly satisfied or whole. In conflict scenarios, client satisfaction is further undermined by a huge investment of money and time for protracted litigation.
To avoid this communication pitfall and bridge the gap to client satisfaction, lawyers need to bypass the routine approach to providing legal services and reframe the heart of their practice – the attorney-client relationship.
One effective way of doing this is to lead clients through a process of self inquiry that helps them pinpoint the goal they really want to attain. These “real goals” are often quite different from the goals clients articulate when they first seek counsel. They are ones that meet deepest needs and larger life interests; goals that usually get lost in the emotion and tension surrounding legal issues.
To focus in on real goals, lawyers can ask clients to envision their lives six, twelve and twenty four months into the future and, from that vantage point, gage how the initial goal they identified aligns with their larger life vision. If the alignment is off, lawyer and client have to work together to parse through other options until they pinpoint the outcome that best serves the client’s real needs and interests.
This exercise is a powerful tool because it compels clients, perhaps for the first time, to think of their legal issue not only in the context of their life as it now is, but in the context of their life as they wish it to be. With this broadened perspective, clients and their lawyers are more attuned to pursuing meaningful results.
Beyond serving larger life interests, real goals are reasonably attainable. Thus, in taking them through this inquiry process, lawyers must ensure that their clients are realistic in their goal-setting. Clients need to be grounded and understand the limits of their entitlement in both a legal and practical sense.
With the clarity gained in the course of identifying real goals, lawyers and clients find themselves well on the way to being in sync and in the best possible position to devise, implement and follow through on an optimal game plan for realizing the targeted outcome.
In sum, by understanding the true nature of the attorney-client relationship, learning a new skill set to optimize it, and using those skills to empower clients to choose real and meaningful goals, lawyers can find inspired, innovative solutions to the legal problems brought to them and achieve outstanding results. In doing so, they become more contented and fulfilled in their work lives and the legal profession thrives.
© Arnie Herz, 2003. Arnie Herz is a lawyer, mediator and speaker with offices on Wall Street and Long Island, NY. He can be reached at arnie@arnieherz.com or www.arnieherz.com.
