Interacting with Clients

More than half of the new lawyers who participated in the Building a Better Bar study reported that they interacted directly with clients during their first year (p 40). Client interactions were especially likely for new lawyers working in government, nonprofits, and small law firms, but occurred in some larger firms as well. Other research confirms that importance of client interaction in the work of new lawyers. The California Attorney Practice Analysis rated "advising clients" among the top 10 tasks performed by new lawyers (p 21), and NCBE's Practice Analysis rated several client-related tasks as more important than knowledge of any doctrinal field (p 42).

Interacting effectively with clients includes several related skills:

The ability to gain a client's trust
The ability to gather relevant facts from the client
The ability to help the client identify appropriate goals
The ability to communicate with clients in language the client understands
The ability to counsel clients while respecting their autonomy
The ability to manage client expectations
The ability to break bad news to clients
The ability to cope with difficult clients

Many lawyers must exercise these skills with different types of clients. Clients may come from different cultural backgrounds, may suffer from disabilities, and may have little experience with the legal system.

Client engagement skills are difficult to test on a written exam. To assure possession of these skills, jurisdictions should consider coursework requirements, experiential education requirements, and/or supervised practice experiences.