Newcastle News Oct 2017

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Feature Navigating the monstrous maze: client care in Dickens “Is the Will considered a genuine document, Sir?” said Allan; “will you tell us that?” “Most certainly, if I could,” said Mr. Kenge, “but we have not gone into that, we have not gone into that.” Thus comes to an end the case of Jarndyce v Jarndyce. After years of dispute, the entire estate has been eaten up in costs and so the litigation has unceremoniously come to an end, to the hilarity of the lawyers and the crushing downfall of the disappointed beneficiary. Bleak House, Dickens’ famous satire on the venality inherent in the Court of Chancery, has become a byword for costs wasted, a justice system mired in delay, and grasping lawyers whose thirst for profit is disguised by a solemn manner and a dusty covering of respectability. Dickens was no friend to the legal profession. He was, however, one of the most acute observers of its foibles and mannerisms. The chapter in Bleak House which always astonishes me with its accuracy is not the set-piece door-of-the-court scene, but an earlier one entitled “Attorney and Client.” What happens is that the young litigant, Richard Carstone, goes to see his lawyer, the imperturbable Mr. Vholes. He is in despair at the slow progress of his case. He feels that once again he is no further forward. Mr. Vholes knows how to deal with impatient clients. He steeples his fingers. He tells Richard that they have put their shoulders to the wheel, and the wheel is going round. He embarrasses Richard by suggesting that Richard has criticised him for his lack of energy in the case. He tells the client that he cannot give any hopes of success. He hints at mistakes made by the previous advisors. Finally, with a deftness born of long practice, he extracts a banker’s draft for twenty pounds on account from his client, who goes on his way into the summer morning feeling obscurely better, “with his dejection insensibly relieved and his vague hopes rekindled”. Meanwhile, Mr. Vholes notes up the appointment and transfers it into his draft bills book. (Depending on which historic currency calculator you use, the modern-day value of £20 is somewhere between £1200 and £1900, which suggests that the going rate for a payment on account in a probate dispute has remained remarkably stable over the last 150 years). Apart from the repellent precision with which Dickens dissects the selfserving manipulations of the lawyer, the trouble with this chapter is that it rings a bell. It shouldn’t ring a bell. None of us is Mr. Vholes. Mr. Vholes is a horrible caricature of a dessicated attorney who has no empathy with the client’s needs. Mr. Vholes is so wedded to the procedures within which he works that he has no understanding that these are completely incomprehensible to normal people. Mr. Vholes takes it as given that his participation in the system is purely in order for him to make money and that the client is bound to understand this. We aren’t like that. Except. How many of us have had a client interview that might have looked a bit similar, if described by the master’s unfriendly pen? How often have you had to explain to a client that the things they think are important are actually not going to weigh very heavily with the court? How often have you spent longer dealing with your retainer and your costs, than with the issues? And how often has the client, to whom you have done your absolute flat-out best to communicate the risks in his case, said “Thank you Miss Collie, I feel so much better for speaking to you”, and gone away feeling obscurely happier? (Why do they do that?) The thing is that lawyers are rules-based thinkers. The way they approach a problem is to hold up its facts against a pre-existing prescriptive hierarchical structure, to see where the facts fit in. That’s the point of being a lawyer: that’s what lawyers do. That’s why most of us have at some point said something like “That’s just how the system works” or “There isn’t a space for that on the form” or “The judge will only look at the pleaded case”. Most normal people who are not lawyers are not rules-based in their thinking to nearly the same extent. They take into account a mish-mash of ideas and emotions. They focus on the end result, which the lawyer risks regarding as a by-product of the real activity of doing law. They give equal, or greater, priority to what they feel, compared to what the law says is (or might be) the correct answer. This last one is a particular stumbling block to communication between clients and lawyers because the lawyer not unreasonably thinks that the client ought to recognise the superior status of the lawyer’s technical knowledge, and the client thinks that the things which they are saying are important, are not being heard. What we need is a sort of translation matrix to allow lawyers and clients to talk, as if they were each space explorers encountering aliens from a far-away planet. The interface would start by explaining the different cultural assumptions that each side cherishes about the other. For example, lawyers might want clients to know the following things: • I am not any better or posher than you but I do have skills that you don’t have. So please don’t clutch your documents to your chest and read me out extracts from them. I can read much faster than you and absorb the contents with a speed you wouldn’t believe. Give me the damn paperwork and let me look at it. • The purpose of paying me as your lawyer is to have a specialist in your corner to explain and mediate the transaction or dispute you are involved in. I am not an attack dog. If you want to write insane frothingat-the-mouth correspondence to the other side, do it yourself. • The words that I use are not the same as the words you use even when they are in fact the same word. A lawyer uses a specific word as a tool, in the same way that a mechanic puts a 5/8” Whitworth socket to a different use than he would an enormous great mallet. We don’t adopt fancy language to make it look as if we possess arcane secret knowledge and thereby justify our bill. At least, most of us don’t. • The value that I bring is that I know a bit about the big rules-based structure in which your case exists. I have probably seen something pretty similar before. I am really good, not to put too fine a point on it, at spin. On a good day I will take your horrendous problem and weave it into a web of words which will make things change for the better. The client might want to say to the lawyer: • If I ask you to explain your bill, I am not having a go at you. I just want to understand what I am spending my money on. • If I ask why the other side are being unexpectedly difficult, or why a hearing didn’t go the way we thought, I am still not having a go at you. I am allowed to ask questions about my case which I am paying for and which affects my life or my business. 6 Newcastle News
Feature • I do understand the detailed advice which you have given me but I might nevertheless decide to do something different. It might be more important to me not to upset someone, or to get things sorted out within a short timescale. • I know you don’t have a crystal ball, but I need your best guess as to how long it is all going to take and what it will cost. I won’t throw my teddy in the corner if it turns out different, so long as you give me some warning. • I want you to tell me what I should do. I don’t particularly want to know very much about what the law is. If I wanted to know the law, I would have gone to law school. When he introduces us to Mr. Vholes, Dickens gives us a crushing indictment of the whole English legal system. He says: “The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by this light it becomes a coherent scheme, and not the monstrous maze the laity are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their expense, and surely they will cease to grumble”. The trouble is that many people think that this is, literally, true. Many clients start with the perception that the reason it is all so complicated, and there are so many rules, is so that we lawyers can make money charging for letters to and fro. Of course, we do charge for letters to and fro, so they aren’t wrong about that: what is wrong is the sense they have that we are deliberately inflating the process, the language, the sheer impenetrability of the thing, purely so that we can look good, and charge accordingly, for leading our clients through the “monstrous maze”. Our challenge is to explain to the client what we are actually doing and what is the point of us, without writing three-page letters explaining case law as if we were entering a prize essay competition at law school. Trying to see it from the client’s point of view, and using plain language is the way forward, although it’s easier said than done: I once had a client complain that he didn’t understand the phrase “save for” which I had used. “Save for? That’s easy, it means ‘except’ “. “Why don’t you say ‘except’, then?” I wasn’t able to answer that one. Ursula Collie EMG Solicitors Ltd AlphaBiolabs Bigger and better than before This month sees the launch of our new-look logo and revamped website. Our fully-comprehensive web pages still outline all the DNA, drugs and alcohol testing services that we offer, but we’ve made it easier to navigate. Our client base is diverse and wide ranging. It includes members of the public, businesses, family and immigration law solicitors, social services, academic institutions and even the media. Now, it will be easier for each and every one of our customers to find the right test they need. The public will access our Peace of Mind and home test kits. Our legal clients will save time by going direct to the relevant legal pages, each subdivided into the relevant headings: immigration, local authority, sample collection. We even have the option of instant quotes at the push of a button. Since it was established in 2004, AlphaBiolabs has consistently led in its field by investing in state-of-the-art testing services, winning awards and gaining accreditations for the quality of its work. And we continue to innovate the testing industry. This month also sees the launch of our SCRAM Continuous Alcohol Monitoring® (SCRAM CAM®) alcohol-testing bracelet. Worn on the ankle, the unique bracelet tests for the presence of alcohol in perspiration every 30 minutes. Alphabiolabs is confident that this form of continuous monitoring will provide local authorities, courts and child-protection agencies with the tools to change behaviours in alcohol-dependent clients. “There’s lots going on at AlphaBiolabs”, said Managing Director David Thomas. “It’s an exciting time for the company and we encourage our customers to keep an eye out for all the new services and innovations via our new-look website.” Newcastle News 7
Page 1 and 2: October 2017 Client Care in Dickens
Page 3 and 4: Editorial In the President’s colu
Page 5: Annual Dinner 2017 Newcastle upon T
Page 9 and 10: Atttention to detail. In these unpr
Page 11 and 12: The Great Legal Quiz finding it inc
Page 13 and 14: FAST Today’s conveyancing demand
Page 16: Seeing things from your perspective

Newcastle News Oct 2017

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