Legal Clients Are Not Commodities

Personal injury lawyers who view their clients as commodities that exist just to make them money drive me mad.

This week I’ve already had two potential clients reach out to me on premises liability cases where they were represented by high-volume settlements that dropped the clients without doing any work.

One of the firms was in California and represented a Georgia plaintiff for a case that happened in Georgia (seriously).

These firms did nothing to investigate liability.

They ran up six figures in liens.

When the going got tough, the firms bailed.

No assistance to the client in finding another lawyer. No detailed explanation. They just withdrew.

In one case, the firm withdrew a little over a month before the statute of limitations is set to expire. That leaves the client little time to find a new lawyer and makes it hard for a new lawyer to take on the case.

Each of these firms cared about one thing: how easy could the client make them money.

Those firms have it all wrong. Clients are not commodities that exist to fund our firm. They are not there to make us easy money.

We exist to serve our clients. That doesn’t mean that we have to take every case.

But it does mean only taking cases we can devote time and attention to, actually working up the case and investigating it, and withdrawing in a timely manner if we do not think there is a viable case.

What do you think? Join the conversation with me on LinkedIn.