How Are You Preparing Your Client?
Unlock the secret of success in the courtroom: thorough client preparation. This episode is a wake-up call for all attorneys who underestimate the importance of client deposition or role at mediation. We unravel why investing your time in understanding the client’s mindset can turn the tables in your favor and cement trust. The true value of a lawyer isn’t just represented by the number of cases they successfully close, but also by their ability to prioritize client experiences.
We also devolve into how attorneys can efficiently prepare their clients for depositions and mediations. It’s a harsh reality that due to insufficient guidance from their lawyers, clients often resort to platforms like YouTube for answers. We put a full stop to this common occurrence, stressing the necessity of having at least two preparatory meetings. By taking control of their cases and ensuring a smooth client experience, we, as lawyers, can significantly bolster their reputation and increase their case value. Stride into this episode as we unveil the keys to successful client preparation and testimony.
In this episode, you will hear:
- The importance of client preparation and perception
- How lawyers can better prepare clients for cases
- How to avoid YouTube searches from clients and ensure client satisfaction
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Supporting Resources:
Do you have a question? Or an idea for a podcast episode? Please email Elizabeth directly: elizabeth@larricklawfirm.com
Episode Credits:
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Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick: Hello, and welcome back to the podcast, Trial Lawyer Prep. I’m your host, Elizabeth Larrick, and I’m glad you’re here with me.
This is a podcast designed and dedicated to lawyers trying cases, personal injury, employment law. Business law, maybe a little bit of criminal law too in there, but [00:01:00] basically we have set up this podcast, I’ve set up this podcast to talk to you about preparing people to testify, how to get the best testimony possible, how to use focus groups, to dive into what the jury is going to think, to find holes in your case, to find blind spots that you may have, We have some folks that come in along the way as experts to help us.
We just heard one in last episode talk about our image and gave us a few tips about things that we can wear. Definitely sometimes fun things to talk about. Today is a little different. We’re going to talk about how are you preparing your client. Now I have been on the road a little bit for the past couple of weeks doing some speaking engagements and working with some clients in different places.
And anytime I go to a speaking engagement, I always like to have conversations with folks and just ask, Hey, how are you guys doing stuff or how are things [00:02:00] working for you? What’s not working for you? And I was a little shocked that so many conversations that I had with attorneys telling me, We just have generally one meeting with folks.
We tell them to tell the truth and say yes or no. It’s okay to say I don’t know or don’t remember. That’s pretty much the gamut that we run. We really don’t need to spend too much more time with folks. And it really got to me thinking like, huh, am I the only one out there doing this phases and steps and multiple meetings?
No, I know that I’m not because I just taught a class of witness preparation and I know that there are other people out there doing kind of a multi phase, multi plan. But that led me to what maybe we should be talking like. Asking some questions here. And so that’s what this podcast is really going to be about.
It’s asking some questions. My first question was like, do you have a plan? Because when I was having these conversations with lawyers and again, I’m just being [00:03:00] curious, Hey, everybody’s got different constraints to different firms and times and expenses, and you guys decide how to spend your time. But really what struck me was.
Most people don’t have a plan at all, and the crap that they’re doing with clients. And let’s just run the gamut here. Deposition testimony prep, motion prep, mediation prep really doesn’t follow a plan. It’s just we need to do some kind of call to tell people where to go and what to wear and really what’s going to happen.
But it doesn’t really sound like you do any preparation either. So are you having a plan for preparing folks? And do you have a plan to prepare yourself? Cause what that makes me think of is you aren’t really prepared to talk about the facts with folks or case weaknesses that you’re really just hoping for the best.
Just hope for the best. And [00:04:00] a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure on this client’s nice enough, I think that they’re going to present fine. It should just be fine. Which is telling me like, wow, either there’s just not a lot of stock and not a lot of value in a client deposition or a client role at mediation or, and a lot of times I will tell you from my experience working as a solo, sure.
There were times before I was doing multi step prep with people that, yeah, people would get in there. And say things that were damaging to the case, and they would not follow what I had advised them to do, and it was really frustrating, and it was like they were bombing their case, which, you know, as a personal injury lawyer, you can’t let any kid die.
Piece of value go down. You need every piece of value to stack up when you’re fighting the insurance companies. I get it. We can be really jaded about having a bad experience or multiple bad [00:05:00] experiences, but I just go back to, let’s just look at this. Did we have a plan? Did we cover the full plan and did we spend time ourselves getting ourselves ready and what we need to talk about?
Did we spend time listening and talking with the client? Uh, on multiple occasions, just make sure we know what is in that brain or what’s going on inside that brain. The other thing that I heard, because of course, a lot of people that I talk with know that, oh, you like to do days and days of preparation.
And they say, my clients are just, they’re just not sophisticated people. This is just, this is the prep they need. Just tell them to tell the truth. And again, that led to me more questions of, are you, is this just coming out of laziness? You’re just putting this label on people. Do you really think your clients are dumb?
Is that really it? Hey, these people just are dumb. When you tell me they’re unsophisticated, that’s what I assume. They’re not [00:06:00] smart enough to understand what a deposition is and questions and preparing for that, which then of course leads me to the question, do you care? Oh, of course. But really do you?
Because if things are important. You spend time on it and you spend money as well, right? So if you want to find out what’s important to somebody, look where they spend their time and their money, right? That’s will tell you what’s important. And the thing is, if you don’t spend your time preparing your client to fulfill their role, testifying to fill their role at mediation, and they may not have a big role at mediation.
Um, but you know, they Again, I’ve fallen in all into the same traps that most people have. When I came into practice, I didn’t know what I was supposed to prepare people for. And I did, Hey, here’s a video, watch this and follow this. Or we send this letter out, or just [00:07:00] tell the client not to talk at mediation.
And what I found was really disappointing. Like I was disappointed just generally, they were disappointed. Everybody’s just really frustrated and there’s a lot of lost trust. And once I started to really sit down and spend a little extra time with people, especially like for mediation preparation, and they were able to in that moment at mediation, when they’re getting hammered by the mediator, they’re hearing something that.
I’m cringing and I’m just thinking, all right, I hope they remembered what I said when the mediator leaves the room and they turned to you and they said, wow, that’s exactly what you told me they were going to say. And I was totally prepared for that bad news or I was totally prepared for that badgering.
So wow, thank you. Like absolutely. And that’s really what we want to do is stay ahead of the surprises. But if you don’t, if you don’t [00:08:00] spend that time on those important things, it’s gonna end up costing you in the end. It’s gonna either cross value to the case. It’s gonna definitely cost you in referrals because that client’s just gonna say, yeah, we, the case got done, but boy howdy, it was miserable, and The other thing that I also hear from lawyers many times is, you know, they just blame their behavior on, this is the insurance company, or this is opposing counsel.
This is just the way that it is. And from the very jumpstart, and why I’m so passionate about preparing people for deposition and testimony and feeling that this is a place where people fulfill their role in their case and work through some of the crap, mental crap that they’ve been put through when you go through an injury or losing a job.
I believe that there was a better way to serve our clients. I knew it didn’t have to be that we had to blame other people. I knew [00:09:00] that there was something that we could do to take control to at least there are things that we can’t control, but there are things we can do to make people’s experience.
Better to help them through this crappy time or this crappy problem. That’s most of the time. This is just a crappy problem. We have to deal with and that’s really what led me to spending so much time and hours learning the witness prep and being uncomfortable trying something new and taking extra time and but what happened was I I saw almost immediate results, right?
This is something where I feel like, Hey, this is not like, you know, doing social media marketing and see in six months and you hope it works out. You know, your return on investment is almost immediate. And that’s, what’s so fantastic is you got to believe in people and you got to believe. They’re, you know, you’re quote unquote [00:10:00] unsophisticated people, they’re folks, they are getting through the world, they got house payments, car payments, they got kids, they got other problems, just like you do, and guess what, they solve them and move along the way, they’re going to be able to figure out how to navigate a deposition, it may be a little bit different preparation style for you, but hey, that just helps you grow when you face situations like that.
The other thing I always want to remind people of is. The number one social media for kids 13 all the way up past 65 is YouTube So if you aren’t taking the time to walk people through preparing for deposition preparing for mediation They’re gonna go online and they’re going to try and find answers. I don’t care how sophisticated or unsophisticated they want to know.
They want to be prepared because nobody wants to be humiliated. Nobody wants to be [00:11:00] embarrassed. And so, yeah, they’re definitely going to. And trust me, the preparation and the information on YouTube about depositions is not what you want your clients to be looking at. It’s that sit and suffer. Talk about this.
Often that makes me cringe when I see, okay, this is just going to be a terrible experience. You’re going to suck at it and you’re just going to have to sit and suffer through this and say as little as possible. Oh, that just makes me so disappointed. But I get it, that makes it really easy for us as lawyers, doesn’t it?
It does. And whatever fear we have, we just get to stuff it into those four instructions. Tell the truth. Say yes or no. Do not offer anything besides yes or no. It is 100 percent appropriate to say, I don’t know, or I don’t remember. Hey, now listen, there’s some good things in there, but let me, if that’s all we’re telling folks, which is pretty much a lot of the information on YouTube, Along with some really awesome deposition testimony, which I encourage you, if you have [00:12:00] time, to go see what people are looking at.
It’s pretty entertaining. But you don’t want people, you don’t want your clients doing that behavior, and that’s my point. Don’t, don’t let somebody else prepare your client, because it’s going to be YouTube and it’s not going to be what you want. At the end of the day, if you don’t have a plan, But you do care about what happens to your clients in deposition and in mediations and you do want to have The right case value and you do want to have clients that send you people and refer people then I just challenge it It’s just a very simple challenge.
If you’re sending your clients an email or a letter with instructions About the deposition or and again when I say instructions, I’m not saying like where to go Yes, please send them a letter or email telling them where to go at what time very important But if you’re sending instructions just pause take that letter set up a phone call set up a zoom call That’s even better and just have a conversation about what [00:13:00] the instructions you have in your letter and then ask them if they have questions Right and then have one other meeting.
My challenge is just have two meetings with folks just And again, this is not scary stuff. You know, these people, you know, what depositions are. And just see if you’re going to have a little bit better result, because I guarantee you that second meeting, you’re going to learn a whole lot more about what your client thinks, how they feel, and the expectations that they have of you and of that deposition, and they’re going to bring you a lot more questions.
And they’re going to feel a lot more prepared spending that extra meeting, 30, 45 minutes with you. Now, obviously you want to go above and beyond the challenge. It’s been extra, you know, spend a whole hour with somebody in that second meeting. Take a moment yourself and prepare, go through some of the things in the case, be able to have a conversation with them.[00:14:00]
What I find is if you don’t have a plan, what generally ends up happening is, You jump from one to ten you go from here’s the deposition you’re gonna get a lot of questions It’s always answer yes or no little information and then you jump to a ten and you start role playing They’re gonna say this about you and they’re gonna ask this question and people are just like whoa What they can’t it’s so much information.
They can’t process it and jumping in straight into roleplay They can’t process what, there’s no context, so therefore it just flies out the window. It doesn’t stick in the brain. We want things, we want your instructions, we want your, your help, your instructions, your help, your thoughts. They want all those things, but if there’s no context, it just, it’s not sticky.
It just flies in one ear and out the other, right? But if you provide a little bit of context. Have that conversation with [00:15:00] them. Have that first meeting. Hey, just want to go over some of this stuff. We’re gonna meet one more time, but I want these things to marinate with you. Sweet. We have more questions.
It’s not a problem. And give them that opportunity then to talk just a little bit more than they would in that 30 to 45 minute one solo meeting. All right. Now if you’re folks in my audience thinking, gosh, Elizabeth, I’m the person in the audience that does that multiple step thing and prep that you talk about, and we do talk about expectations, and we do sit down and help organize, and we use visuals and kudos to you.
Just know that you’re, you’re standing out there in the 10%, I think about 80 percent of folks. Don’t have a plan. And again, this is my personal research, which, you know, I love research. It’s my focus groups are about. Just get a little pat on the back, but also just know, keep at it. I know that it can be draining and I know that it can be frustrating.
Trust me. This is not smooth sailing. There’s always going to be challenges. People are [00:16:00] challenging, but. Again, the return on investment here, investing in your client, investing in that relationship, it’s going to be instant. Even if things still don’t go as well, trust me, your client’s going to know you tried, you were there, you wanted the best for them, and you wanted them to fulfill their role, right?
I always talk about it that way. So people know you have a place here. It’s not just a bunch of lawyers pushing paper and forcing you into situations like settlements or trials. I hope this Episode was helpful. Again, it was just one of those things that in my last couple of weeks in my travels and in talking to people, I thought, wow, maybe I ought to just stop and have a conversation about this because it’s real basic.
It really is. Of course, I live in a world where this is what I do. So. Should I be shocked? I’m not really sure, but I’m always going to be curious, right? And I’m always going to be asking people how they do it because I want to know [00:17:00] there may be some nugget or some tip or some little thing that somebody else does that works wonders on folks.
And that’s what I want to do because I want to learn more as much as I can from everybody out there. But also again, pass on what I know to help you be better lawyers, to help your clients better. Build those relationships, get better referrals, build that case value in there. If you have An idea for an episode or a question, please don’t hesitate to email me if you’d like to be in the podcast.
I would love to have you in the podcast. As you can tell this year, I’ve really focused on having people on as much as humanly possible. Although we did have a little break for our grief week, our grief month, I should say. Uh, a couple episodes on grief, but if you have anything, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.
I promise that I’ll answer your email. It’s Elizabeth at Lyric Law Firm. Of course, the email is always in the show notes. Thank you so much for being an audience member. I really appreciate it. To [00:18:00] help other people find the podcast, please rate and review on your podcast listening platform or find. And until next time, thank you so much.