Is My Attorney Speaking English?
Huh?
I recently had breakfast with some colleagues, one of whom made an excellent point regarding client relations, which was namely to think of the client first. Speak English not legalese. Just as a doctor needn’t delve into the intracasies of your cardiovascular system in order to provide valuable information as to how you can lower your blood pressure, attorneys need to divorce themselves from their inner law professor when counseling clients.
Let’s face it, attorneys love to talk shop. Get a group of us together and invetably all the usual topics will come up, ranging from the academic to the very boring. And no, most of us don’t know criminal law, so our conversational dinner table utility might not be what you’d expect. Especially in the bankruptcy field where real clients need real answers to potentially life altering questions, legal jargon only goes so far.
Practitioners need to realize that the base of legal knowledge they have accumulated is there to serve clients, not to confuse them. Of course, a potential client interviewing different attorneys will want to know that they have retained competent counsel and an encyclopedic knowledge of bankruptcy law and procedure is crucial to this end. However, concepts the veteran attorney takes for granted as simple or “basic” can often confuse clients and prevent them from obtaining the answers they need for some long overdue peace of mind.
In this author’s opinion, certain academic analysis of a client’s circumstances is crucial to proper representation although over emphasis of theory will often hinder the client’s search for knowledge. For example, a bankruptcy attorney can succinctly sum up the Milavetz decision and its implications without delving into the legislative history of BACPA and Supreme Court jurisprudence on the topic of commercial speech.
Know the law, use the law, but deliver the law to client’s in a form they can digest. The lesson is simple: be aware of your audience. Good attorneys can craft and utilize powerful, technical arguments for their clients benefit while still begining a consultation with a basic yet confident statement that “yes, you can keep your car.”
