The Open and Shut Case

Lawyers who think they have a slam-dunk case usually come to grief. With their clients, with the courts, with their peers, and ultimately with themselves. And those lawyers who know better themselves but let their clients think they have a cakewalk are no wiser.

By the time a contentious matter gets to your desk it has had plenty of time to marinate and grow ten different possible outcomes. For you to seize upon your client’s version and run with it is simply foolhardy and professionally dangerous. Your client may have all the diaries and notes and invoices and photographs in the world, or so they think, but often the other side can match them document for document, and if not, may have a more emotionally appealing case or one which is more aligned with natural justice.

The first task of the lawyer considering taking on a new client and a new case is to disabuse them of the notion that this will be a cakewalk, that “justice is on their side”, and all will turn out like a Hollywood movie. It ain’t so. Clients don’t like to hear this, and many will move on to someone willing to tell them what they want to hear.

The essential problem with the client who thinks he has an open and shut case is that he has an open and shut mind, with not even a hint of grey. In his mind, “justice” and “revenge” are synonymous, and he deserves both. You, as a professional, know differently.

If they say they’re going to leave you and move on, let them. Encourage them. Facilitate it. It won’t end well for them or for their new lawyer, but that’s not your problem. Don’t risk your reputation on quixotic cases. This is a law office, the magician is down the hall.

Otherwise, any intrinsic conflict of interest will only grow and grow until in desperation you try to extricate yourself from the nightmare, only to find that the client has already trashed your reputation on social media and the court won’t let you off the record at such a late date. Now you’re stuck in the worst of all worlds, dutifully doing your best for a client who hates you and is trying to recover every nickel he’s paid you and from whom you won’t see one more penny. Involuntary pro bono for the client from hell is probably as bad as it gets.

Safe practice means that you set out your take on the case, warts and all (especially the warts) in precise and unambiguous terms and have the client sign off on it. Then you do this continuously throughout the matter.

It also means that you shift the risk to the client, that is, you always have a significant chunk of client money in your trust account, rather than a significant chunk of your time, money, and reputation left dangling.

Life is too short to work for free for a client who doesn’t like you and who will happily crater your reputation. If the client doesn’t this is fair, tell them to call Perry Mason.