The Duty to Align

We know that the Alignment Principle tells us that everything is peachy when the Giftings of the professional align perfectly with the Needs of the client. The professional gets to be well compensated for doing what he or she loves to do, and the client gets a fair price for the exact result they needed. What’s not to like?

But the whole thing only works when the match between Giftings and Needs is exact. The less precise the fit, the more likely there will be dissatisfaction, price-wrangling, professional complaints, and generally nightmares for professional and client alike.

So the question is: who bears the responsibility for ensuring perfect fit? Well, let’s think about the store where you buy your high-end running shoes.

In any self-respecting sports shoe store, the clerks themselves are runners who know all the critical stuff about running shoes. When you walk into the store, they’ll want to engage you to learn something about your running level and preferences, but they’ll also just be watching the way you walk and stand. They know, both theoretically and experientially, the relationship between shoes and runners.

The clerk also knows that each of us is unique, both in physical requirements and in preferences. For a whole lot of idiosyncratic reasons, there will be a shoe which is heaven, and one which is hell.

Some buyers are pretty knowledgeable, or pretty opinionated, or both. Others are novices, and wide open to suggestion. But except in rare circumstances, it’s the clerk who is the expert and who is in the better position to get the right shoe on the right foot. His responsibility is to know his stuff, be observant, listen carefully, and to apply his Giftedness to your Need. If you hobble out in bad shoes, you’re to be blamed for stupidity, but he’s the one who really failed.

The truly expert divorce lawyer is no different. The client may come in to your office full of hurt and rage, thirsting for revenge. But you can’t allow that – if you do, both you and the client will pay a dreadful price. As will the kids, and the whole system of justice. And society in general.

It’s your job to focus on financial issues and child issues and all the related nuances according to principles that you, as a professional, understand. It’s your job to educate, moderate, and guide the client. You’ve been here before, she hasn’t.

And yet just as the professional in the shoe store understands that every foot and every runner is unique, the good divorce lawyer understands that notwithstanding her expertise and experience, every client and every situation is unique, too.

It’s the responsibility of the professional to know his game and to identify issues of which the client may not even be aware, and it’s also the responsibility of the professional to continuously “read” the client to ensure that the alignment remains perfect.

It’s the professional’s responsibility to know the client, to probe, to intuit, to keep educating himself or herself and the client as the process unfolds. Only in this way can we be sure that the Giftings and the Needs remain in perfect alignment.

And that’s what real pros do.