What FLavor Do You Want? I Don't Want Vanilla

The Trenches is a tough place.  It's even tougher when clients lack clarity.  When I say clarity, I mean a number of things.  I mean clarity about what is and is not an acceptable result.  I mean clarity about what a lawyer and the court system can and cannot do.  I mean clarity about what they need to do to achieve their goals.  There is nothing in the Trenches more frustrating than a client who tells you that they want their spouse to make the first offer, but has no idea of how to respond to it.  How will they know whether their spouse's offer is reasonable?  How will they know what response to make?  They hope their spouse will make a ridiculously low offer so they can just accept it, but if they don't, they have no idea what to do.  Not helpful.  Then, there are the clients who don't understand the practice of law, don't understand how the courts and the rules work, but nevertheless want to tell us how to file pleadings, how to write them and what to request.  They micromanage their case, which wouldn't be so bad, if they actually understood what we were doing.  They don't, but that doesn't stop them.  We spend a lot of time and a lot of money explaining and explaining again why we asked for the relief requested and what it means to plead in the alternative.  Exhausting.  It's just another day - here in the Trenches.