What really matters in an attorney? Stated simply –
“The capacity to Relate to you as a client.”
Legal problems are like all problems, they are there to teach us something. The bigger the problem, the bigger the lesson! And when it comes to legal and financial stress, I have found that the problems are often the biggest the client has ever had to deal with. The upside to this is that the lessons are also often breakthrough lessons! Things that are life changing and reach far beyond the legal issues at hand.
Of course, the work product is important and the systems we have developed to support our work and our clients are also very important. But as information continues to become more and more freely available, the historical legal concept of paying for access to information becomes less and less valuable. When you hire an attorney you are no longer paying for his unique knowledge of things that only he or she can know because he has access to the sacred vault of legal knowledge and therefore you must pay for it.
It’s doesn’t mean that all work is the same, or that you can figure it all out on your own – far from it. But what I am saying is that the true value, the real thing I have found my clients need from me doesn’t arrive in a ream of paper. It is human. It is, more than anything else, my capacity to related to them, to consider where they are at, and to provide them with perspective that will help them make good decisions about their own life and choices.
This has been more true over the past 4 years than ever before. I have had more calls with more clients who don’t need any additional work, but who need someone to help them see out of the box they feel like they are in. And when we are finished with the call, the highest compliment I have heard is simply “Thank You for understanding. No one I have spoken with about this ever shared what you did with me.”
What did I share with them that was so different? Simple, I was honest, practical and realistic and I wasn’t giving them legal advice, I was giving them life advice.
This is what I want from my own attorney. This is what I know my clients want from me. And this is what you should be looking for when you are choosing an attorney to help you with one of the most important areas of your own life.
How do you find an attorney that fits the bill. Simple – Talk. Interview as many as necessary and look at both the substantive advice as well as how the person is able to connect with you as a human being. If the legal advice sounds good, but you leave the call feeling unconnected, intimidated, or less secure than when you called – keep shopping.
There are many very good attorneys out there who understand exactly what I am saying and who have built their own lives and practice around it. You deserve to find one!
The interaction of people with each other has been reduced to a photo on a Facebook page. We are creatures that yearn for others and interaction as a society. You are right on when you say they are asking for a “person” to help them. It is back to the good ole days when we used to call up, talk to someone who cared, and we would get what we needed. You hit the nail on the head with personal interaction. We will need that in the future more than we ever have.