Lawyers: Don't Let Clients Make Assumptions About Your Role

If you consistently clarify and document your role with all clients, this will go a long way toward ensuring you never find yourself having to deal with your client making assumptions about your role as their attorney. The hard part, however, will be in trying to identify all the times an assumption might be in play. My best advice is to suggest you try to place yourself in your client’s shoes and consider what they might be thinking about a conversation or how they might be responding to a given set of circumstances. Simply stated, learn to come at it from the other side of the attorney-client relationship.

Clarify your scope of representation before you get caught up in a client’s mess and confirm that in writing. Set forth what you are willing to take on and, particularly with any kind of limited scope representation, what you aren’t going to be taking on. For example, if you are willing to handle the personal injury but not the work comp component of a claim, put it in writing. The goal is to always make sure all clients have an accurate and thorough understanding of what you are and are not agreeing to do.

With this advice in mind, let’s take this a step further. Consider the following. After first meeting with you, two adult children schedule a follow-up estate planning appointment for their parents. A corporate client asks that an opinion letter be drafted for sophisticated investors. At a real estate closing the purchasers ask you, the lender retained attorney, a legal question. A non-client calls hoping to briefly chat with you about a small matter. A fellow guest at a social function asks for your legal thoughts on a legal issue they are facing. One of the corporate officers of a firm client asks for legal advice from you, a firm attorney/corporate board member. Or perhaps the adverse party in a matter you are involved in is preceding pro se and has a quick question.

At ALPS we have dealt with claims that have arisen out of all of these situations and many more just like them. Your ability to remain consistent in your actions over time will be just as important as the documentation piece. In spite of documentation to the contrary, your subsequent actions can unintentionally create an attorney-client relationship with a related party and that can create additional problems. If you state and document that you represent an entity yet through your words and actions begin to enable a corporate constituent to conclude you also represent them, that may very well end up being the case and now you’ve got more than just a conflict problem.

An important question is how far does this go? Sometimes an attorney will share that they viewed some small request as something other than legal work. They will say “This was just a favor for a friend, and I was going to look into it when I could.” I love that one. It’s so easy to run with the assumption that the request for help was viewed by the friend as a simple favor and nothing more. However, what if the friend actually felt relief knowing that their small legal matter was now in the competent hands of their attorney/friend, and they expected nothing less than an excellent outcome?

Should you ever find yourself in a similar situation, remember it was you who voluntarily placed yourself in the role of attorney. View the favor as real legal work and follow-up in a timely and responsible fashion. Understand that friends, family members, and even staff will sometimes sue if their matter is forgotten about or handled negligently. Oh, and the fact that no fee was involved is irrelevant. The standard of care isn’t any less just because you agreed to provide your services for free or viewed the matter as a favor.

Assumptions can come into play more often than you might realize and that can lead to serious problems if you never stop to question them. To assume otherwise is to make an…. well, you know the rest.