Don't Try Your Divorce Case in Letters (Six Mistakes Lawyers Make)
You should see some of the mail I get from other divorce lawyers. If you are going to write me a letter, try to avoid these six mistakes that lawyers make.
1. Don’t be a bully. I’ve been doing this for over thirty years and I have been around the block. You are not going to scare me into doing something my client doesn’t want to do. Does that ever work for you? Sometimes I think you are writing this letter to your client to show them how tough you are. Next time, maybe you should just copy me.
2. Don’t be rude. I have had lawyers call my clients liars, bounders, philanderers, gold diggers, no good run-arounders and worse. Here’s a newsflash for you. People are more likely to negotiate favorably with someone they like than someone they don’t like. Didn’t your mother ever tell you that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar? Or if you’ve got something bad to say about somebody, don’t say it? Instead of calling my client a liar, why not say my client is mistaken?
3. Keep your ego in check. A new client has brought me the file from her former lawyer’s office. It is three inches of letters between counsel. No settlement offer. No complaint for divorce. Just letters mostly about who is returning calls and who is not. The client has paid thousands of dollars for this contest of egos between lawyers.
4. Don’t tell me what the judge is going to do. We both know that you don’t know and I don’t know. I’ve won cases I should have lost and I’ve lost cases I should have won. A divorce case is like a football, in that it takes funny bounces, and you don’t always know where it is going to end up. Unless you have a crystal ball that is less cloudy than mine, don’t give me your predictions. That is like getting the critic’s review before the performance.
5. Let me have your proposal or your specific objections to mine. It is not helpful to tell me that your client rejects my settlement without giving me a counter. Then I have to write back and ask you for your specific objections. I am not going to bid against myself so don’t ask me to make a more “reasonable” proposal. When I get a letter, as I did recently, that starts out, “Jim, you’ve got to be kidding,” I stop reading. So if you have anything you want to say, say it before you write that sentence to me.
6. Don’t try your case in letters. I get long letters from lawyers telling me why their client is right and my client is wrong. That’s because lawyers are taught in law school that people will change their minds if you only talk long enough and persuasively enough to them. It takes a long time for lawyers to unlearn what they learned in law school and to learn how to practice law. People are not persuaded by argument. They are persuaded by asking questions and meeting their needs and interests. So most of my letters are one page or less. Sometimes once sentence, like “We do not agree with your letter.” We try our cases in court. Not in letters.
1. Don’t be a bully. I’ve been doing this for over thirty years and I have been around the block. You are not going to scare me into doing something my client doesn’t want to do. Does that ever work for you? Sometimes I think you are writing this letter to your client to show them how tough you are. Next time, maybe you should just copy me.
2. Don’t be rude. I have had lawyers call my clients liars, bounders, philanderers, gold diggers, no good run-arounders and worse. Here’s a newsflash for you. People are more likely to negotiate favorably with someone they like than someone they don’t like. Didn’t your mother ever tell you that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar? Or if you’ve got something bad to say about somebody, don’t say it? Instead of calling my client a liar, why not say my client is mistaken?
3. Keep your ego in check. A new client has brought me the file from her former lawyer’s office. It is three inches of letters between counsel. No settlement offer. No complaint for divorce. Just letters mostly about who is returning calls and who is not. The client has paid thousands of dollars for this contest of egos between lawyers.
4. Don’t tell me what the judge is going to do. We both know that you don’t know and I don’t know. I’ve won cases I should have lost and I’ve lost cases I should have won. A divorce case is like a football, in that it takes funny bounces, and you don’t always know where it is going to end up. Unless you have a crystal ball that is less cloudy than mine, don’t give me your predictions. That is like getting the critic’s review before the performance.
5. Let me have your proposal or your specific objections to mine. It is not helpful to tell me that your client rejects my settlement without giving me a counter. Then I have to write back and ask you for your specific objections. I am not going to bid against myself so don’t ask me to make a more “reasonable” proposal. When I get a letter, as I did recently, that starts out, “Jim, you’ve got to be kidding,” I stop reading. So if you have anything you want to say, say it before you write that sentence to me.
6. Don’t try your case in letters. I get long letters from lawyers telling me why their client is right and my client is wrong. That’s because lawyers are taught in law school that people will change their minds if you only talk long enough and persuasively enough to them. It takes a long time for lawyers to unlearn what they learned in law school and to learn how to practice law. People are not persuaded by argument. They are persuaded by asking questions and meeting their needs and interests. So most of my letters are one page or less. Sometimes once sentence, like “We do not agree with your letter.” We try our cases in court. Not in letters.
posted by James J. Gross at 4:01 PM
2 Comments:
Good post. I'm afraid these things seem to be universal - I've certainly experienced all of them during my 25 years-plus practising over here in England.
Brilliant. True here in Indiana - even if it is more in the context of telephone calls than letters. Or in the hallway of the courthouse.
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