Brown & Little, P.L.C. » Entries tagged with "Clients"
Rejection
If you haven’t experienced rejection, you are either delusional, or you haven’t been doing anything worthwhile. Rejection is an integral part of life well-lived. You can’t be everything to everyone, and someone is bound to be looking for something else. It’s just as true in your professional life as it is in your personal life. If you’re smart, you deal with it and learn from it. I got a little bit of rejection recently. It’s nothing special, really. I fought hard for a client, and despite the results I achieved, they ended up switching lawyers before the real battle started. Although it’s nothing new, it still stung. I thought I had built a relationship. I cared about the client and his family, … Read entire article »
The Numbers Game
Meeting prospective clients, I encounter varying degrees of knowledge about the process of hiring a criminal defense lawyer. Right now, most of my clients are referred to me by other lawyers. Referrals from previous clients come in a close second. Those two types of clients rarely ask a lot of questions for some reason. Occasionally, I get a referral with several degrees of separation. Those prospective clients tend to have questions. Lots of them. Often, the consultation feels a bit like a job interview. I try my best to be brutally honest. Whereas the majority of people only care that someone they trust told them to call me and that I have a nice office, suits that fit (more or less), and a bar number, … Read entire article »
Filed under: Clients
Taking a Vacation
I’m slowly getting back into the swing of things after the longest vacation I’ve taken since I began practicing law. From planning the vacation, to preparing for it, to actually taking the time off and trying to enjoy myself, the experience taught me quite a bit. It drove home a lot of points about the nature of what I do. I should never view any non-work-related plans as concrete. As hard as that’s been for me to swallow, with my current practice, I know that it’s true. I represent a fair number of clients each year, and at any given time, many of their cases are at very different stages. I’m never at a point where I have no clients, so there’s always somebody who’s my … Read entire article »
Filed under: Clients, Practice in General, Solo Practice
Managing Caseload
Most lawyers plan for when times are bad. We tend to only joke about what we’d do with an enormous caseload if times got great. I’m certainly guilty of making off-handed comments about too much work being a good problem to have, but in reality, when too much work really does become a problem, it’s probably worse than the alternative. Before I had any real experience, I looked all over the place for guidance about caseload. I spoke with public defenders and met some who had 30 open felony cases. I met some with 60. Several public defenders who handled misdemeanors as well as felonies told me they typically had over 100 open cases at any given time. Relying to some extent on the stereotype … Read entire article »
Filed under: Clients, Practice in General
Punctuality
When I was a little kid, one of my teachers loved to say this to the class: “to be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late, to be late is to be dead.” Awfully melodramatic, especially for someone talking to a room full of ten-year-olds, but it must have sunk in for me at some point. I still remember it, obviously, and I’m compulsively early for anything work-related. Starting out in law, a mentor told me one secret to success in criminal defense was showing up on time. Making it to every hearing before it’s supposed to start, he said, would already put me one big step ahead of all but a select few of my colleagues. He told me … Read entire article »
Trogdor!
Figuring out when and to what extent to involve a client in the inner workings of a trial can be tricky. It’s his life and they’re his objectives, so you obviously can’t ignore him. He should know what’s happening and at times even have a say in what you do, but you also shouldn’t spend all of your time leaning over explaining why you can’t use your peremptory strike on the prosecutor or why the prosecutor’s “prejudice against gang-bangers” doesn’t bring up equal protection issues. Like pretty much everything in the world of criminal defense, it’s all about balance and exercising well-reasoned, independent, professional judgment in the midst of the institutional chaos of trial. Voir dire is a time when client input seems most important to me. … Read entire article »
Sexy Sax Man
I have some great clients, but my case load would really be a lot better if I got to defend this guy too: Sax Man Serenade Prank – Watch more Funny Videos H/T Kris … Read entire article »
Filed under: Uncategorized
What the "Hot-Shots" Do
I judged a law school moot court client counseling competition last week where the competitors were supposed to play the role of a lawyer in an initial consultation. One competitor struggled at times formulating questions, and he told the judges that was because he was concerned about asking too many questions. He didn’t want to know too much. Of the three judges, two of us practice criminal law. The third, a transactional lawyer, deferred to us to instruct the competitor about what to do about that dilemma. I answered by telling the competitor it wasn’t really a single dilemma with a clear answer I could give him right there, but more of a daily reality of practicing law in a field where you represent people. To know what … Read entire article »
Filed under: Clients, lawyers, Practice in General
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