Michael Kemp, The Daily Record Newswire
Plenty of businesses are open or on call around the clock. There’s no particular reason that a bookstore or a dry cleaning business needs to be open all night, but a taxi company, or a towing company, or even a plumber might want to be available at all times to deal with odd hour calls or emergencies. Caribou Coffee wouldn’t do much business at 3 a.m., but it would be a pretty poor hospital that was open 9 to 5.
“Hello, you’ve reached 911. I’m sorry, we are currently closed. Our normal business hours are….”
Most law firms don’t have to be open 24/7, but of course, that doesn’t mean that your clients don’t call, or email, or worse, text, at midnight on a Saturday night. Sometimes they expect an immediate response, but most reasonable clients understand if you don’t get back to them until Monday morning.
For most solo practitioners, however, you get the messages.
A lot of your business is probably run off your phone. Even if clients don’t have your mobile number, you probably get your emails on your smartphone, and maybe even have your office line ring to your mobile when you are out of the office. And when your client sends you a message, in some form, you get it.
Sometimes they are innocuous; the client was thinking about the case and decided to send you a question. Even if you decide not to answer at the time, it’s impossible to have a question posed to you without thinking about it, at least a little. Sometimes the client sends information you requested; and the longer you’ve been waiting for it, the harder it is just to ignore it. Worst of all, however, are the rants.
It doesn’t matter what your area of practice; some of your clients will send you fuming emails, incoherent voicemails, or text messages that go on for pages in unabashed disregard for the 140 character intent of the format. The rant may be directed at an opposing party, or counsel, or the judge, or you, or just life in general. They’re fueled by anger, or alcohol or drugs, and the client needs someone to vent to (or at). Lucky you; you’re the person they’ve chosen. Or at least, you’re one of them.
This column was inspired by a recent episode of one of my favorite TV shows, in which someone posted an injudicious tweet from the company Twitter account after a long day of work. Injudicious tweets can haunt you, even if no one ever sees them. As can text messages, answering a phone call when you shouldn’t, or replying to an email.
Solo practitioners are particularly vulnerable to this, because as well as the increased level of personal and persistent communication, there is a lack of oversight. You can’t go to your boss and ask the best way to reply to this angry email. Late-night calls are not screened through a receptionist who can filter out the drunken, angry clients who want to talk about whatever perceived slight his soon-to-be-ex- wife did this time, avoiding the response which I know family law attorneys want to give on a weekly basis: “Just grow the hell up.” Those calls, or texts, or emails are not going to end well.
Not that it doesn’t happen during business hours. It’s just that during business hours, you know to expect it. After hours, it gets more problematic. At midnight on a Saturday night it’s much more likely that you may be tired, or have had a few drinks, or even yourself feel a little miffed that the client is using you as a sounding board (or punching bag) whenever they feel the need to vent.
If you’ve never felt this way at all, you’re a better person than I am — which is, granted, a fairly low standard to meet. But I don’t think I’m entirely alone in this.
At your better moments, you just shake your head and put your phone back down, and try to enjoy the rest of whatever you’re doing. It’s an annoying but momentary interruption. On your worse moments, you start to reply.
“Dear [form of address my editors won’t let me write],” you begin. And then you take a deep breath, try to relax, and go back to the above (recommended) method of dealing with this.
Hopefully, you’ve never actually replied while in the grips of tiredness, alcohol or anger. I haven’t, but I distinctly remember a time where, out at a bar with friends late at night, I received a pages-long client email filled with alcohol-fueled vituperation (and an appalling grasp of grammar) against the judge, the client’s ex, and me the night after a scheduling conference where nothing had happened. Luckily, a friend (also a lawyer) was out with me and saw my face turning a shade of exasperation I usually reserve for my dog and waiters who miss the indefinite article when I order “a Jameson and a coke.” He managed to talk me down from replying, which I probably would have done. It was my first year in practice. I was so young; I didn’t know what I was doing. We’re all like that on my father’s side.
So what do you do? Client counseling may help that, but has the possibility of chilling the attorney-client relationship. You can turn off email and call-forwarding after certain hours, but that leaves you open to missing genuine client emergencies. This solution is particularly practice-dependent. A criminal law attorney might need to be available for the 3 a.m. “Guess where I am” phone call, but if your estate plan has waited 61 years, it can wait until 8:30 the next morning.
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. It’s not so much finding a solution as identifying and being ready for the problem. Clients will contact you at the most inconvenient times. But if you already know what you’re going to do in that situation — knowing that no one is looking over your shoulder and that your future interactions will be influenced by your prior communications — you’re more likely to act appropriately. Or at the very least, not send a wildly disproportionate response.
