Most law firms will tell you they take every client who walks in the door. That’s not a virtue. It’s a business model.
Jill was asked whether there are clients or situations she won’t take. Her answer:
The policy is simple. If a client is nasty to the paralegals, they get fired. Not reprimanded. Not managed. Fired.
I want to explain why this matters, because it tells you something about how a firm actually works that the website bio and the practice area page won’t.
A guardianship or probate matter is not a single transaction. It runs for months, sometimes years. During that time, the client will interact with the paralegals far more than they will with the attorney. The paralegals file the inventory. They chase down the bank records. They field the panicked 4pm phone call about the hearing tomorrow. If the client treats those interactions as opportunities to be cruel, the case suffers. Calls don’t get returned as quickly. Details get missed. Not because the staff is retaliating, but because human beings protect themselves from people who hurt them.
The firms that tolerate nasty clients end up with two problems. The staff burns out and leaves, and the clients who actually need attention get less of it because the difficult clients consume all the oxygen. Jill and I would rather lose the fee than lose a paralegal who has been with us for years.
There’s a second thing worth saying. When a client is abusive to staff at intake, it is almost always a preview of how they will behave when the case gets hard. Guardianship cases get hard. Probate cases get hard. A client who cannot be civil to the receptionist is not a client who is going to respond well when the judge rules against them, when the examining committee takes longer than expected, or when the sibling’s attorney files something inflammatory. The nasty-at-intake signal is one of the more reliable predictors we have.
The broader point is that a firm’s willingness to decline or fire clients is a quality signal, not an arrogance signal. Firms that take everyone are either desperate or don’t have enough work. Firms that filter — for civility, for fit, for whether they can actually help — are doing the client a favor too. A matter that doesn’t fit the firm is a matter that will be handled worse than it would be somewhere else.
If you are evaluating elder law or estate planning attorneys, ask what kind of clients they don’t take. If the answer is “we take everyone,” that tells you what you need to know.