10. Having your friends and loved ones handle your case for you. The new wife who calls to make the appointment for your child support reduction case. The sibling or parent who just needs to talk to your attorney so they truly understand why you can't follow the attorney's advice. The significant other who calls 12 times a day to provide strategy for the case. We don't care if you gave us a release to talk to them. This is your life, and if you don't care enough to deal with it, why should we?
9. Promise to send us things, get us answers, or drop off documents, and then not do it. Promise us again and then not do it again. We kind of feel like directions on a shampoo bottle: lather, rinse, repeat.
8. Micromanage us. This is your life. We get that, and you know that best. We know the legal process. That's one of the reasons we're hired. We know the rules, the people and the system. Don't tell us how it works. It's what we know best.
7. Don't listen to what we tell you, and ask the same questions over and over again. I can name a half dozen clients right now for whom we feel we should just tape record what we say to them on the phone, because every day we have to repeat ourselves verbatim. I'm not talking about once or twice, but every day for weeks and weeks. What we tell you won't change simply because you keep asking.
6. Tell us all we care about is the money. Really? Please tell that to our families, who watch us toss and turn at night because we're worried about you and your case. Why is it that the folks who say this are always the ones for whom we knock ourselves out, going above and beyond: going to their house to check on them, finding them outside help for problems, arranging for clothing and food?
5. Never call the office. Never return our calls. Never answer a letter. Never comply with discovery. We hate finding out what's happening in our client's life from the other attorney. We despise having to make excuses why we have no response to requests. We worry that something terrible happened. We know the client is doing or agreeing to something about which we'll only find out after it's too late. We know we'll hear from them when the court orders them to pay the other side's attorney's fees for their non-responsiveness.
4. Related to, but not the same as #5....Call the office every 2 minutes until someone answers. Don't leave a message; don't assume we're helping other clients and are swamped. Need an answer to your question so badly that you keep calling, and then ask us something like how many days it should take the mail to reach you. We know you called. We have caller ID. We want to give your call the attention it deserves. If we don't answer or call back IMMEDIATELY, it means we can't do that right now.
3. Pay for our advice and then do exactly the opposite. This is not the same as #7. The reason you hired us was??? "No" means "no"; it does not mean "go ahead, just don't get caught." How we feel about what happens next is kind of like how the plumber feels when he comes in to fix something the homeowner screwed up. Too bad we're not allowed to charge double. Did I mention, these folks always blame us when things blow up in their faces?
2. Don't pay the bill. Don't call to talk about it. Don't send a few dollars. Simply ignore it. Wonder how PEPCO would feel if we did that to them? Oh, that's right; we'd be pounding this out on a manual typewriter in the cold and dark.
1. Mistreat my office staff. This is my all time #1 pet peeve. It is so far above all of the others as to leave them out of view. First of all, my office staff are nice folks. They have been taught extensively to treat the client with respect and courtesy. Some clients really wear on them, but they don't bite back (OK, there was that one time, but the client was MASSIVELY abusive). Second, the folks who mistreat my staff are usually sweet as pie to me. Do you think the staff don't tell me how they've been treated? We understand high emotions and frustrations: we didn't cause them and they're not an excuse to behave badly to us, so don't.
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