Volume 20, Number 5 July/August 2003
TOO MUCH RAIN,NO ONE TO DO ALL THE WORK
THE FINE ART OF TURNING CLIENTS AWAY
By Lonny H. Dolin
You have done it. Your marketing efforts have paid off. You
worked hard to build your practice and your good work produced
more work, which in turn begat more work. As a result, you now
face a new "problem." Your office phone is ringing off the hook
with calls from people who want you to represent them.
When this first happened, you did what you needed to do to
maximize your office's ability to efficiently handle more work.
You let your staff screen your phone calls. You hired independent
contractors, temporary help, or attorney service organizations to
perform many of the time-consuming non-billable services you or
your already overworked staff used to perform: court filings,
multiple signature collection, messenger deliveries, large
copying projects, etc. You even hired on an associate or brought
in a partner or paralegal. Because you learned to manage your
office more efficiently, for a year or two you were able to
personally attend the initial consultation with every potential
client who called your office. If the case was good, you were
able to represent the new client. Things are now out of control
again. You no longer can meet every potential client, and if you
continue to represent new clients at the current pace, you will
be unable to give your existing clients the comprehensive
aggressive representation they have hired you to provide. As a
result, you have no choice but to turn potential new clients
away.
You may be thinking, "How difficult can it be to say no to a
potential client?" What is the problem with just telling the
people, "Sorry, we are not taking new cases right now"?
Unfortunately, this approach creates a horrible impression of you
and your office, eroding the good reputation you have spent years
building in the community. Such an approach also enhances the
likelihood that you may throw away the biggest potential case of
your career and minimizes your ability to continue to attract the
clients you want. Through the years I have learned that saying
"no" the right way to most of the 200 potential clients who
contact our offices each month is a fine art.
Set Up a Screening Process
In my practice, we found it cost effective over the long run to
hire sufficient staff so that each person who calls for
representation has direct contact with a pleasant, competent
individual. Within a day of the phone call, intake paralegals
first do a conflict check on each potential client. Once
conflicts are cleared, each intake is told that only a few of the
hundreds of individuals who call our office seeking
representation each month actually become clients. The paralegal
then explains the steps the intake will go through before we can
agree to represent him or her. First, potential clients must
answer a short series of basic questions about who they are, who
their employer is, and what employment-related concern they want
to review with me. If the matter is something I am not able to or
interested in handling, I will immediately send the intake one of
the numerous carefully crafted letters I have drafted detailing,
with regret, the reasons I am not currently in a position to take
his case. For example, the case may not be in my area of
expertise, the case may be beyond the applicable statute of
limitations, I may be unable to take the case on a contingent fee
basis as requested, or I may be so busy at the moment that it
would jeopardize my ability to competently handle my existing
clients' matters if I currently took on the case.
If the intake's case appears to have merit and value, I will
include in the rejection letter the names of competent attorneys
who might be able to handle the case. If the intake does not
appear to be strong on liability or is very weak on damages, I
will simply provide the intake with the phone number of our
County Bar Association's lawyer referral number. Your reputation
and goodwill in the legal community will suffer if you
deliberately refer bad cases to another attorney. Finally, if
relevant, my pre-consultation rejection letter advises the intake
about the short statute of limitations for dealing with
employment matters and gives the intake information on how to
contact the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the State
Division of Human Rights.
By taking the time necessary to personalize your rejection and to
provide the intake with relevant important information, you will
preserve your reputation as a competent, professional attorney
who cares about clients. You cannot maintain that reputation by
abruptly advising potential clients that you are too busy to have
any contact with them. It's also important that you put each
potential client through the initial intake process as quickly as
possible. Your goal is not to further anger an already distressed
person, who will be upset by your unwillingness to even meet with
him before you decide you won't represent him.
Questionnaires
Another successful technique used by offices inundated with
telephone calls from individuals seeking representation is to
screen potential clients through the use of a questionnaire. This
technique requires you to send each person who calls your office
seeking representation a detailed questionnaire by mail or
e-mail. The questionnaire asks for basic information, including a
written description of the events causing the potential client to
seek legal representation. The general rule of thumb is that
there is no charge for this review.
If the questionnaire is returned, it is reviewed by an attorney.
A letter is immediately sent to anyone the attorney is unable or
not interested in representing. If the attorney does want to
proceed further and interview the potential client, then he or
she is advised that a consultation fee is first required. The
consultation fee will cover the time previously spent reviewing
the intake's questionnaire and narrative and will also cover one
hour of interview time. Intakes are advised that if the interview
exceeds an hour, he or she will be billed at the attorney's
hourly rate. Prior to the interview and payment of the
consultation fee, the intake is advised in writing that an
interview is not a guarantee that the attorney will take the
case.
Make it clear that you cannot give any legal advice until you
receive and review their materials. Also, make sure you advise
intakes that they are to keep the original of all the materials
they send you; if you do not take their case, you will not be
returning the materials they send to you. In my field, it is also
important to remind intakes that they must fill out the
questionnaire as soon as possible to ensure that they don't miss
the short time limit for pursuing employment claims.
Post-Consultation Rejections
We agree to represent only about 10 percent of the handful of
clients we interview each month. Therefore, we reject most of the
intakes we interview. At the end of our consultation, if we know
that it would not be prudent for us to agree to represent the
intake, we advise the intake of that fact immediately. We have
learned that you can smooth over the rejection in person much
better than if you simply decline representation in a letter.
Moreover, we have learned that significant false expectations and
subsequent ill will are created when you delay telling an intake
you will not represent him or her.
Even if you orally tell an intake you interviewed that you are
declining representation, it's imperative to send the intake a
carefully crafted closing letter. This closing letter must make
it clear that you are declining representation and that your
declination is not to be viewed as an opinion on the merits of
the intake's case. Encourage the intake to consult another
attorney and provide the intake with names of other attorneys (if
the case seems to have merit) or the phone number of the lawyer
referral service in your jurisdiction. When it is called for I
would encourage you to take an active role in finding another
attorney for an intake you would like to represent but cannot. If
your rejection has not been taken well by an intake whose anger
may be problematic, you may want to follow up with that intake in
the future to make sure they were able to secure
representation.
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