The Nutmeg Lawyer Denny Crane takes on the taxonomy of clients, more comprehensive than the ten most likely to get a lawyer into hot water:
1. The serial client. You’re not the client’s first lawyer or even the third, but you’re seduced in the belief that you’re somehow special, possessed of magic powers unknown by your predecessors.
2. Last minute Charlie. His summons arrived a month ago, but he’s waited until the last day to call a lawyer, knowing that lawyers really love rush jobs. After sifting through discovery materials amassed in giant trash bags (because this client knows how much lawyers enjoy a good mystery), prepare yourself for the suspense of wondering whether this client will show up for trial.
3. The irresponsible and noncompliant client. Appointments are often cancelled and seldom kept, court orders are suggestions, and directions are wishful thinking. It’s just as likely that this client won’t burden you with irrelevancies such as the whole story or your bank account with unnecessary deposits.
4. Blanche du Bois. Always dependent upon the kindness of strangers, this client will expect you to make all decisions, clinging to you with all the ardor of kudzu. Indecisive waffling is far easier on this fragile soul, trapped in desperate, desperate circumstances, who’ll toughen into a Steel Magnolia when it’s time to blame you.
5. The professional victim. Abusers as well as the abused fall into this category, whose lawyer soon joins the ranks of betrayer.
6. The bitter, hostile and greedy. No win will ever be sufficient, no Balm in Gilead, nor salvo will appease or succor the wounds of these scorched earthlings.
7. The disbeliever or negotiator. Evading the real issues, fudging on the issues and hedging on the truth, this client sidesteps reality. Simple indisputable facts such as "the sun rises in the east" become subject to debate as this client blurs and distorts anything to shape his own view of the world.
8. The Principled Crusader. Cause-oriented, maintaining "it’s the principle, not the money," this client harbors unreasonable expectations that no White Knight or hired gun can ever adequately fulfill.
9. The Expert Pollster. Lawyers are a vestigial organ, a mere formality, to these self-proclaimed experts who have legions of highly skilled, much-respected counsel consisting of the neighborhood yenta, Uncle Cedric, and the Internet aiding and abetting malpractice.
10. That hinkey feeling. You just know there’s something wrong, but you can’t identify it. Listen to your gut – and to your staff
Stumble It!
Reading the list was like reliving several nightmare cases. Fortunately, all of them gone -- I hope.
Posted by: Steve Cotton | June 22, 2009 at 05:47 PM
You forgot the Pandora's Box Client:
He/she's the one who swears on a stack of bibles in your office that he/she has never, ever, no, never been an accident before, then shows up for his/her deposition and spews a litany, dating back to 1989, of car accidents he/she has caused, survived or otherwise was intimately involved in.
Posted by: Kathleen Vanesian | June 22, 2009 at 12:56 PM