This is Going to Hurt

Generally speaking, my acupuncturist is pretty gentle, considering she’s the lady with the needles. But last time was a little different, and I was reminded of a valuable lesson.
After sizing up one particularly chronic pain point, Val said, “I know exactly what we’re going to do. This will really help, but it’s going to hurt. Quite a bit.” She was very right on both counts.
I thanked her for her warning, and we laughed about professionalism and all that, but it got me thinking.
With one qualification, professionals have an obligation to their clients or their patients to warn them when something out of the ordinary is about to happen.
Why is this? Mainly it’s about trust. Anytime a client is caught by surprise, the professional relationship is affected. Although the client may not say anything, the dynamic shifts, even if only by a little. If it happens again, the client begins to move into a defensive mode, and soon enough a chasm begins to grow between you.
Left unchecked, the professional and the client will start spending more time and energy worrying about the other party than about the professional problem at hand. And we know where that leads.
It’s primarily the duty of the professional to care for the relationship and be alert for the first sign of disharmony. But the sophisticated client also serves herself well to keep a finger on the pulse.
You could never make a full list of things about which you should alert your client, but most of us know them by sight. Unforeseeable work, unanticipated problems, work which is outside scope, or encountering particularly unreasonable opposition are examples. For instance, in early 2021, contractors were faced with a doubling, sometimes tripling, of material costs– who’s going to pay?
In all such cases, the client must be given a fair and early warning, and be fully educated as to the implications. If a course correction is called for, far better it be done with a full understanding and agreement, confirmed in writing. The key is always to ensure that the client’s trust in you remains strong.
In many cases, the hardest conversation has to happen in the first meeting, the one in which the client consults you on a “small matter” which quickly unfolds into a full reconstruction of the Quebec Bridge. If client and professional are not very frank and clear at this stage (and of course confirmed in writing), well, I don’t need to tell you how it will end.
There is occasionally a qualification to the fair warning rule. For various reasons, clients sometimes need a bit of shock treatment. For example, a cocky client who thinks his case is in the bag may need to take an early bruising at the hands of counsel opposite, or he may need to get whacked with a significant bill to make him understand this is serious business.
Even in such cases some warning is in order, so that you can record that the client was informed. You know that he won’t listen, and needs to find out the hard way, but an “I told you so” often goes a long way to reining in an ornery client.
This necessary shock treatment can be useful, either in bringing a recalcitrant client to his senses, or sending him storming off looking for a “better lawyer”. Either way, you win.
No matter the circumstances, if the client is going to be visited with some pain, you need to know how to handle it, and you need to communicate.