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What DO clients want from their lawyers?

The Web page of the Effective Lawyer Client Communication (ELCC) project (based at Georgia State University) has some excellent links related to professional lawyer-client relationships. If you have not heard of ELCC, read its description from the page:

The goal of this project is improve lawyer-client communication by combining what has been learned so far within legal education with empirical social science research. We have selected the initial client interview as the focus for the pilot project. The initial interview is, of course, the one unit of service that is constant across all forms of legal service delivery. It is also one of the most critical units of service. The initial interview: (1) shapes client perception of the lawyer; (2) defines the service to be provided in terms of both problem and goal; and (3) is an important opportunity for client education, e.g. confidentiality, substantive legal rights, what the client can do for himself or herself, and the need to preserve evidence. In many cases the initial interview may in fact be the most significant communication before outcome determinative events such as hearing or settlement. By assessing effectiveness at the outset of the case, this approach provides feedback to lawyers during provision of service, thus creating the possibility for improved service and increasing the relevance of the assessment both to lawyers and clients. The use of customer satisfaction surveys is a standard procedures in most service industries. Our forms and procedures are modeled on the standard procedure used by health care providers.

One of the articles linked to is "What Clients Want From Their Lawyers." It's worth taking a few minutes to read. Excerpt (footnotes removed):

It is not unusual to hear lawyers describe such communication practices as patient listening and translation of legal issues into terms the client can understand as “hand-holding” – something to be

Estate planning is much more than legalities and tax consequences: Learn more at these seminars

Many of my friends and colleagues are wise counselors and decision coaches who help their clients to look at estate planning with a broad perspective, encompassing values, legacy, and other client-centered, extra-legal factors. Nowadays when I see a description of a CLE on estate planning that does not include these factors, I am surprised and a bit dismayed. 

Fortunately for their clients, more and more practitioners are focusing on this bigger picture of wills, trusts, and estates. For those who want to learn more about the comprehensive planning, there is an organization about which I have blogged before (e.g., here, here, and here): Purposeful Planning Institute.

PPI has two workshops coming up in Maryland next month. The announcement:

Primer on Purposeful Trusts
Date: Thursday, October 18th
Location: The Conference Center at Sheppard Pratt, 6501 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 

The Primer on Purposeful Trusts workshop will be a four hour interactive and intensive workshop designed for 10 to 16 professionals who assist clients in the design, drafting or administration of trusts.  We will cover the Seven Keys of Purposeful Trusts and allow all participants to gain hands-on experience through the visioning exercises and stories which bring the power of these keys to our clients.

It's a Bird, It's a Plane, No it's a Trust Protector Workshop  
Date: Thursday, October 18th
Location: The Conference Center at Sheppard Pratt, 6501 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD

This is a 2 hour workshop for estate planning attorneys that will include one hour of legal ethics CLE as

"Civility: It's a Skills Thing"—ABA award for civility in the law

From the 2011-2012 Annual Report of the ABA's Section of Dispute Resolution:

Chair’s Award for Civility in Law

Section Chair Deborah Masucci awarded the 2012 Chair’s Award for Civility in the Law to Colorado Court of Appeals Judge Russell E. Carparelli. The award recognizes lawyers who have taken meaningful steps to promote a more civil public discourse and who epitomize the highest professional standards of civility. Judge Carparelli was sworn in as a judge of the Colorado Court of Appeals in February 2003. He has more than 30 years experience as a litigator, trial attorney, trial judge, appellate judge, and mediator. Judge Carparelli has led numerous efforts in Colorado to improve civility in the law. One such program is “Civility: It’s a Skills Thing,” that demonstrates to lawyers, judges, and others involved in the legal process how to apply the principles derived from mediation and negotiation theory to promote civility in the courtroom, in business transactions, in litigation, and in involvement in public organizations and governance.

Some lawyers made a good living defending rats

 

Rat disguise

Long ago, lawyers defended rats and mice and caterpillars. In case you think I have taken leave of my senses . . .

 

From "Wild Justice" (Maisonneuve Magazine)

As outlined in E.P. Evans’ comprehensive 1906 work The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals, there were two kinds of animal trials during the Middle Ages: criminal proceedings against domestic creatures accused of individual crimes, and ecclesiastical tribunals to prosecute whole groups of vermin. The latter targeted animals like mice, locusts, weevils and caterpillars for such transgressions as ruining harvests or eating food stores. (Crimes against propriety could also incur the church’s wrath; a German pastor once anathematized local sparrows after their “scandalous unchastity” interrupted a sermon.) The animals were typically tried, en masse and in absentia, and issued a date by which they had to leave town or face the unspecified disapproval of the righteous. Needless to say, the results of such ultimatums were mixed.

Ever the opportunists, some lawyers built their careers by defending animals. A sixteenth-century French jurist named Bartholomew Chassenée made his name as the counsel to some rats who were accused, in an ecclesiastical trial in Autun, of decimating the area’s barley crops. Rats being rats, Chassenée could hardly rely on his clients’ sympathetic qualities to get them off the hook. So, like numerous lawyers before and since,

Conference in October: Lawyers as Problem-Solvers

From the Web page:

The University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law

Mental Health Law and Policy Journal

 Lawyers as Problem-Solvers: New Directions, New Voices

With

Afternoon Symposium: New Voices in Mental Health and Drug Courts

October 18-19, 2012

Online registration available here

Click for brochure [pdf].

Syllabus for Duke Law course titled "Well-being and the Practice of Law"

I have no doubt that many of you will find this syllabus of interest. Thanks to the course professor Dan Bowling for permission to post it here. Excerpt:

Course Title and Description: WELL-BEING AND THE PRACTICE OF LAW

Professor: Daniel S. Bowling, III. law.duke.edu/fac/bowling; bowling@law.duke.edu; dabowling@gmail.com; twitter@BowlingDan

        “The practice of law is not fully intelligible without reference to (the) great philosophical issues in ethics . . . (N)either is the practice of law fully intelligible without reference to the inner mind of each of us who engages in the practice of law.” - Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr.

"Well-being and the Practice of Law," will examine why the “pursuit of happiness,” a phrase written by a lawyer, has proved futile for many members of the legal profession and those aspiring to its ranks.There is considerable data (that predates the current recession in the legal market) indicating that lawyers and law students suffer from greater rates of depression and anxiety than other professions, along with accompanying social maladies such as substance abuse and stress-related illness. There is also considerable evidence of high career dissatisfaction among lawyers, and many others are leaving the profession or performing well below their capability. This seems unfathomable given the high levels of education, affluence, and respect lawyers enjoy (or will enjoy), factors which predict happiness and job satisfaction in other areas of life. Importantly, research indicates these problems begin in law school; that something happens between graduation from college and the beginning of practice that negatively impacts life satisfaction at a rate far beyond other professional or graduate educational models.

The class also focuses on a very important, but under-explored, question: what is the impact of all

This octogenerian lawyer would probably be at home at next month's Purposeful Planning Rendezvous

In just three weeks, the second annual Purposeful Planning Rendezvous will begin. I am pleased to be presenting again this year, and am looking forward with excitement to spending time with a group of committed and forward-looking professionals. If you have read my prior posts about the event (here and here), you may recall that this is a group furthering ways to broaden the concept of trusts and estates beyond the monetary and tangible. Their notions of legacy encompass much more, including significant and essential values, expansive wisdom, and sagacious foresight.

In reading this uplifting article about octogenarian lawyers who are happy with, and in, their practices (Chicago Lawyer Magazine), I felt certain that one of them would fit right in next month at the Rendezvous. I have been told by very senior lawyers that the broad definition of legacy being explored and furthered by the Purposeful Planning Institute, although not the norm these days, was common decades ago. Meet Harry Rosenberg:

[He] has spent six decades writing wills, setting up family trusts and handling estates. It's an area of law that almost demands a personal connection with clients.

And that's what motivates Rosenberg, 83, a partner at Reed Smith, who said he aims to give his clients comfort and peace of mind.

"I like the idea that I'm 75 percent a lawyer and 25 percent a psychologist, priest, rabbi or minister," he said. "I would be very, very uncomfortable working on SEC regulations, commercial code or big corporate work. It's just never attracted me. I've always been attracted to dealing with people and their families."

... He still gives his clients the sort of personal touch a person would expect from a solo practitioner. He insists on meeting with clients inside his personal office rather than a more impersonal conference room.

"I think this office tells something about me the conference (room) never would," Rosenberg said,

Applying science to trusts and estates: Psychologists study legacy

Lawyers working with clients in the areas of probate, trusts and estates are fortunate that more attention by psychologists is being given to how people behave when thinking about passing on property as well as non-tangible assets. For example, here's a new piece of research.

Abstract from "It’s Only a Matter of Time: Death, Legacies, and Intergenerational Decisions" (Psychological Science):

Intergenerational decisions affect other people in the future. The combination of intertemporal and interpersonal distance between decision makers in the present and other people in the future may lead one to expect little intergenerational generosity. In the experiments reported here, however, we posited that the negative effect of intertemporal distance on intergenerational beneficence would be reversed when people were primed with thoughts of death. This reversal would occur because death priming leads individuals to be concerned with having a lasting impact on other people in the future. Our experiments show that when individuals are exposed to death priming, the expected tendency to allocate fewer resources to others in the future, as compared with others in the present, is reversed. Our findings suggest that legacy motivations triggered by death priming can trump intergenerational discounting tendencies and promote intergenerational beneficence.

Excerpt from Discussion:

Our findings also make important theoretical contributions to research on the effect of death priming on prosocial behavior. Researchers who investigate terror management theory have examined the effect of death priming on individuals’ other-oriented behaviors and found that death primes increase prosocial behavior toward those who validate the individual’s worldview, but not toward others who violate it (Jonas et al., 2002). According to terror management theory, death priming does not increase prosocial behavior toward the latter group because the purpose of prosocial behavior in this context is purportedly to endorse other people who represent the individual’s worldview. Our work suggests an additional situation in which death priming can produce beneficent behavior: Not only does death priming increase the desire to help other people with whom individuals already feel a connection (e.g., those in our cultural groups), but it also induces a desire to connect with others in the future as a mechanism for establishing a legacy, which produces beneficence to these future others.

...

Intertemporal and interpersonal distance creates inherent barriers to intergenerational beneficence. We highlight, however, that these two components can, under certain conditions, combine to produce psychosocial benefits that promote intergenerational beneficence. The intertemporal aspect of intergenerational decisions can change the meaning of interpersonal trade-offs, transforming them into an opportunity for self-extension in time. These findings imply that the degree to which public policies can encourage environmentally and ecologically sustainable behaviors, for example, may depend on making individuals’ mortality salient and explicitly framing their decisions as intergenerational trade-offs. Taken together, the results indicate that people’s desire to extend themselves into the future and potentially beyond mortal life, such as when they create a legacy, is a deep and strong impetus for generative action.

Mismatches in time frame orientation can cause conflict: Lawyers & mediators, do you watch for this potential snag?

We don't all see time in the same way, and mismatches can cause misunderstanding, disputes, confusion. When I learned about this diversity of time orientation, aspects of many conflicts I saw as both a mediator and as a practicing lawyer made more sense.

I first became aware of time frame orientation many years ago when I took the Johnson O'Connor assessment and then referred at least 20 other people to their testing labs. Then, for a number of years, I administered The Highlands Ability Battery (THAB) to many clients, both individually and in group settings. (THAB is based on Johnson O'Connor.) As a result of these experiences, I came to appreciate very highly the value of knowing a client's time perspective or orientation.

What is time frame orientation? (Note: What Johnson O'Connor calls foresight is the same is what Highlands labels time frame orientation.) THAB's definition at the company's Web site:

Measures the individual's comfort with future projects and goals. People are divided into short-term. mid-term and long-term time frames. An individual with short-term orientation will want to work with tasks and problems that can be finished within a short period--i.e. in a few months. An individual with mid-term orientation will seek tasks and problems that have implications for other projects over a longer period--i.e. one-four years, An individual with long-term orientation prefers to work on long-term projects [five to 20 years out] that require strategic planning and execution of more distant goals.

In short, THAB sees the ability as the measure of how naturally you consider the impact of present actions on future plans. You can see where a difference in time frame orientation could have a marked effect on how a lawyer most effectively works with a client, both in the process of the lawyer-client relationship, and in the actual content of the case. For example, a person who scores in the long-term orientation range may have a problem bringing matters to closure; for them, there is always tomorrow so they may procrastinate or not focus on today.

In addition to these assessments, a couple of books can give you insight into how our notions of time are very individual.

First is The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life. For a short peek into the focus of the book, watch this video about past, present or future orientation. I am not sold on all that is presented in the book or the video, but the time lenses covered are certainly another good way of reminding ourselves of time diversity. (H/T: Scoop.it Science-News.)

Second is a book not yet available in the US titled Time Warped. Click to read more about the author Claudia Hammond's theories about time in "Every second counts" (The Guardian), an article to which I linked earlier this week. Excerpt:

[Hammond] also looks at our sense of time aesthetically and discovered that people visualise time in offbeat ways. Some see it as curling around like a Slinky or a roll of wallpaper; others may view days of the week as rectangles. ...

Click to watch a video of Hammond talking about time at the 2012 annual conference of the British Psychological Society.

Finally, consider regulatory focus theory. Some people

Does the billable hour play tricks with your mind?

We've looked before at how the billable hour can affect your brain, and how the effect can be akin to self-induced obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Click to read that post. But are there other ways the billable hour unconsciously affects you? Does it make time go slower or faster? Or sometimes the former, sometimes the latter? If the billable hour does play tricks with your sense of the passage of time, you may find some clues as to why in this article.

From "Every second counts" (The Independent):

Time is of the essence. Time heals all wounds. Time flies when you're having fun...

The platitudes exist because they represent broad, if scientifically unproven, notions that time is elastic. Time does seem to fly by when we're having fun. Likewise, it stretches out ad infinitum when we're willing it to zip past and deliver us with birthdays, Christmas Day or that longed-for holiday.

But how often do we examine the many nuances of our relationship with time? It is a construct, after all. ... Yet we rely on (and obsess about) timekeeping, time-saving and the rate at which we gobble it up.

There have been endless studies into time perception, whether or not time ticks away faster at altitude or whether there is any physical basis for the universal conclusion that time moves more slowly when we are children and speeds up as we grow older. Nobody knows the amount of time they will live in their lives and yet we claim time as our own, demand more, and feel cheated when we lose it.

Claudia Hammond ... has a better understanding than most of the ways that our perspectives on time can be morphed, manipulated and played with.

Click to read the rest.

Note: Related post: "How do you really know what time it is?" (io9). Excerpt:

What they've discovered is that your brain is one of the least accurate time measurement devices you'll ever use. And it's also the most powerful.

...

[C]locks may well be humankind's oldest brain-enhancing technology. They allow our brains to experience something we never could without machines: Objective time.