I recently read the book “The Trusted Advisor” by David H. Maiser, Charles C. Green and Robert Galford. The book is really for business consultants trying to convince clients to buy their services and later buy into their services (the advice the advisor provides). Surprisingly, a lot of the advice can be adopted by divorce lawyers. Furthermore, most of the advice can be implemented in a single phone call or meeting with a potential and or current divorce client.

Being trusted makes the divorce lawyer’s job easier. It takes less time to establish trust with a client than it does to explain every little step of the divorce process and get approval from the client for each step.

The client is coming to you to make a problem go away. The client cannot completely abandon the problem to you unless they trust you.

The client has hired other professionals such as landscapers, plumbers, therapists and doctors. The level at which the client likes those professionals, recommends those professionals and gladly pays those professionals is commensurate with their level of trust in those professionals.

The ‘Trusted Advisor’ outlines five stages of trust that any divorce lawyer can keep in mind for any phone call. In fact, I’ve provided a checklist at the end that every divorce lawyer should use when talking with a client to ensure that every conversation builds deeper trust between the client and the divorce lawyer.

Step 1: Engage

In the context of a divorce lawyer/client relationship, engagement is asking a client if they can talk. This is in contrast to lecturing the client about their case and then asking them to provide feedback after.

“Do you have a minute to talk about your case?” sounds a lot better than “I need your signature on the motion I just prepared.”

Step 2: Listen

A divorce lawyer will be full of “tough love” advice…but that must wait. To gain trust, a divorce lawyer should listen first.

The client controls all of the facts. The divorce lawyer applies the law to the facts, not the other way around. So, a divorce lawyer must ask for an update on the facts before opining on presumed facts.

After the client is done pouring their heart out (the client entitled to do this, they are going through a divorce), ask follow up questions from the standard Who, What, When, Where, How?

Examples: “Who told you that?” “What makes you think that?” “When did that become known?” “Where did that happen?” And the best lawyer question of all, “How do you know that?”

These questions are in addition to your standard, cold lawyerly questions in order to gather relevant information. The purpose of these questions is to build trust more than to gather knowledge. You are a lawyer, systematically gathering relevant information should already be your skill set.

Step 3: Frame

Now it is your time to speak. Framing is summarizing the information that is legally relevant so the client acknowledges that you heard them, understand them and can apply the information they just communicated.

You are a lawyer. You have been dying to do this since the client first opened their mouth. You are not showing off how quickly you can process information, you are building trust. You must finish listening to the client before you begin framing their information.

Most of what the client just said will be irrelevant. That’s okay. You were listening to them to find the relevant parts and to repeat them in a logical order. You are a lawyer, that comes easy to you.

What does not come easy is framing the issue is framing the facts in an emotional context as well as a logical context.

Emotional framing is simply listing the relevant facts in a logical order and then commenting on how these facts make you feel and must make the client feel.

Example: “This is really disappointing that he would do this. I once had a client who went through the exact same thing. You must be really frustrated.”

Framing is not providing a solution! You must repeat back to the client the relevant facts, your reaction to the facts and empathize with the client’s reaction to those facts. The legal solution (which you are dying to explain) will come next.

Step 4: Envision

Finally, the lawyering part. Now you can comfortably opine on a legal strategy and what the expected results of your strategy would be.

You might be in love with your strategy and expected result but your client may not have bought in yet. So, ask if the client would be satisfied with the results of your strategy.  

Ask the client if they’d like to hear alternative strategies and the expected results of those strategies. Those alternative strategies and results might be terrible…but they will just further convince your client of your original strategy.

Step 5: Commit

Once the client has bought into one of your strategies, tell the client what you are going to do and when you are going to do it.

The first thing you are going to do is “send you an email memorializing what we talked about today so we can work together on all our shared goals in the future.”

Understand that the client will read this email of action steps many times. They will wake up at 3 AM worried about their case, read email of subsequent steps and then sublimely drift back into slumber confident that you will perform these steps.

You are a lawyer, so you will be dying to include in the email that there is no guarantee and it all depends. Clients don’t want to hear that. So, just explain that all of these steps depend on other steps being accomplished successfully.

The client will feel so much better after a conversation that includes all five steps. Amazingly, all five steps can be accomplished in a single conversation with a client.

How can you be sure that you accomplish all five steps with every client conversation? Use the below checklist.

  1. Remove all distractions. Close your laptop or put your phone away (if the meeting is in person or on Zoom).
  2. Ask permission to talk to the client. “Do you have 10 minutes to talk about X?”
  3. Ask them to tell you about X.
    1. Do NOT interrupt.
    1. You are allowed to say
      1.  “yes,” “uh huh,” “really?” until you are ready with your follow up questions.
      1. At any time it seems possible, ask the client, “how do you know that?”
    1. Close out with some “who,” “what,” “when,” “why” questions.
  4. Summarize the facts they just told you.
    1. Ask the client if your summary sounds right.
    1. Tell the client how the facts makes you feel.
    1. Tell the client how you presume the facts make them feel. Ask the client if that presumption is correct.
  5. Tell the client your legal analysis.
    1. Suggest and explain a strategy
    1. Explain the expected result and ask the client if they would be satisfied with the result.
    1. Ask the client if they would like to hear another strategy (even if the alternative strategy and results are terrible).
  6. Summarize the next steps.
    1. The oral summary will be short. The real work will be in the follow up email.
    1. Send out the follow up email immediately.
      1. Include in the email that “all of these steps presume that the prior step was accomplished successfully with the same facts we discussed today. I am confident that we can work together to achieve that.”
  7. Tell the client when and how they can reach you for the next conversation.

Even if you fumble through these steps, you will be communicating in a way that validates your client more effectively than 90% of your self-absorbed and ill-prepared peers.

Of course, you have to do all the things you promised to do for your client. Furthermore a disinterested third party, the judge, will decide the merits of all of that work while another professional, the opposing counsel, actively attacks your work.

You will do your best for your client no matter what the opposing counsel says and no matter how the judge rules. The client will understand either way…because they trust you.