I enjoyed reading the lawyer’s client manifesto (original link). Some of my favorites are listed below:
- Your case/matter is the most important thing happening to you right now. It is not the most important thing happening to your lawyer right now. It may not even be in his top ten.
- You want to buy results, not time. Most lawyers sell time, not results. Make sure you both understand the difference before your first bill arrives. You will certainly understand the difference after.
- Big firm lawyers are not more efficient. Or smarter. Or cheaper. They are certainly not cheaper.
- Make sure your lawyer understands your business. If your lawyer doesn’t understand your business, find out if he’s going to learn about it on his time, or yours.
I’ve learned each of these lessons over the past year and am happy to have a good lawyer working with me. Always ask for a referral from a friend with a good lawyer. I did and am happy to this day.
The only addition I would make to the list is:
- Lawyers charge by the hour and thus will explain an infinite amount of detail on any topic. They need to pay off their law school bills where they were trained to research and talk for long amounts of time. Limit them to just the information necessary to make a business decision.
Life on the road 
January 4, 2007 at 9:06 am
Your additional point only applies to bad lawyers, and yes there are some out there.
My job is to give my client my advice, often with a recommendation as to a course of action. That can be as simple as yes or no. Often it is necessary to give reasons to explain the advice. Most lawyers I know will do that to an extent that is sufficient rather than excessive. It is not necessary to go on ad nauseam.
I can add that my experience as a lawyer handling litigation is that clients who try to restrict what they tell you to what they think you need to know create bigger messes for themselves. The client needs to tell me everything. Of course, part of my skill set is in ensuring I extract all relevant information, even if that included stuff the client had not originally thought relevant to say.
January 4, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Agreed. I suppose I was violating the mention of “stop making lawyer jokes, they are not funny.”
In fact, many times when my lawyer was explaining something to me in detail it turned out to be very beneficial to me in the long run to understand that item and the nuances of it.
A new rule should be, “Don’t think of your lawyer as a parking meter. You need what they know, and they are looking out for you — think about it as insurance.”