Addressing the Challenges of Working with Attorneys

So this week we're going to talk about addressing the challenges of working with attorneys. So welcome. This is a topic— I hope this— I don't get much pushback on this, but I really want to be boldly honest, because I can tell you from personal experience, and this is just my experience, you may never find this depending on your interactions with the attorney clients. I think everybody is different. Attorneys are people, so they kind of get a bad rap. I'm sure you've heard every attorney joke there is out there. There's plenty of them out there. Some not so nice attorneys, lawyers, liars. I mean, you've probably heard the gamut. They run the gamut. So this, this video might be a little bit controversial, but I'm gonna address the dynamics of working with attorneys as clients. And a lot of times as a bookkeeper, we, we tend to be introverted accountants. We tend to be introverted as, as people. And a lot of times we'd rather just deal with like back and forth with email and not really talk to them. And you can find that if you work with attorneys that you might find that they're a little bit intimidating. I think sometimes that intimidation is something that's a story in our head, but we kind of look at them as on a pedestal. They had a high level of schooling, they passed a really, uh, hard test to become an attorney at bar, the bar. And it can make you feel a little bit like they know so much and I think by nature of their job they can have a domineering behavior. They can exhibit that. So I know I found this in the American Bar Association. So I'm not speaking out of turn here that 65% of legal professionals reported experiencing stress in their interactions with their clients. So that can be us interacting with our attorney clients. It can be the attorneys interacting with their own clientele, and it can take an emotional toll If you work in with clients in the legal industry, that's just the fact of life. So it's essential to acknowledge that many attorneys, they're human. We had a conversation the other day about working with attorneys, and how sometimes they can be— depending on the practice area, it can be a different circumstance. Work with an immigration attorney, they have big hearts, they're very loving, warm, and giving. Work with a family attorney, and they're, they're helping people come into the United States legally. They're doing this good thing. When you work with a family attorney and they're living in a world of divorce and child custody, and some of that can stress and their job can be deflected back onto you, just much like a husband and wife and something's not going well, who's the first person they kind of take it out on? Us. So it's, it's a, a strat— I'm gonna give you some strategies that I've learned over working with attorneys over these years. A lot of the strategies and tips I'm gonna share today came from my business partner Sarah, because she is just amazing with dealing with people. She used to work in the hotel industry, as did Steve, my other buddy on the podcast. Both of them have had life experiences that have really helped them direct how to convey information to somebody and also stand your ground when you do this kind of interaction with somebody who might be verbally not so kind, let's put it that way. So number one thing, stand your ground, maintain your position. If you know that you're in the right, maintain your position and don't allow the attorney to intimidate you. That's really critical. They see weakness, it's their job to pounce on that. I know myself that I was often compelled to accommodate every request from the attorney, even if it was out of scope. I learned that if I give that little of a pushback that this is not included in your job or your scope in the job that you purchased with me, that I need to stand my ground on that because they keep push, push, push, push, push. You keep expanding, expanding. Now scope creep is happening. So you really wanna make sure that you stick to what it says that your, your job is there. The National Association of Legal Professionals did a study and found that 40% of attorneys reported feeling pressure to maintain that dominant presence in their client interactions. Understanding that dynamic is also a way that you can prepare yourself for any potential pushback. And I can tell you, I can tell a brief story. I was having this exact thing happen to me. Was working with an attorney, also working with Sarah, and I had my own attorney clients on the Artisan side. And I had this one client in particular, and she was brutal. She was harsh. She was demanding. She just thought she was the only client and I had to drop everything. And I was accommodating, accommodating. And I probably, in retrospect, know that I might have had a hand in creating this perfect storm because I was accommodating and really bowing to everything she asked for and jumping on it. It was almost like a texting scenario with answering the emails. Um, she had a specific day the work was gonna be done. She always asked for the work to be done on an outside day of that, like she was getting more for what she asked, what she paid for. And this was a situation where I was kind of defeated. I went to Sarah, and I, I told her what I wanted to write back, and she completely ripped up what I was writing back and took it from a stance of a much more powerful, more direct conversation with this person. And I can tell you that the whole dynamic between myself and the attorney has shifted. I get pleases. I get thank yous. I remind her when she tries to push on a Tuesday when the work is done on a Thursday, that she needs this stuff done today. Sorry, your day is Thursday. And I don't even say sorry. She taught me that too. Don't ever say sorry. So, um, unless you truly are sorry, then you say, uh, I extend my apologies. Don't ever say sorry. It's kind of a weak way of, uh, communicating. So the first thing you should do when you're, you're faced with the confrontation like that is to assess the situation. See what happened. Is the attorney being particularly harsh because of an error? Which in this case, this attorney did multiple times. If an error happened by my staff, we could process 10,000 transactions, one single misstep. And to her, all the work was shoddy. And it was often a, a situation where I had to remind her that we processed, you know, out of the 10,000 transactions, we did 9,999 correct. and we're human. And that's something you might need to remind them. Uh, research indicates that attorneys in family law and criminal defense are the most particularly susceptible ones to stress. So they're stressed on their side, and that stress can be deflected to you. So just know that in your understanding of how to work with the attorneys, that you might find that in these two particular practice areas, there's a high level of stress in their job to begin with. So showing compassion and a heart with them might actually get you a little further. but also stand your ground. Very, very important. So a lot of the communication techniques, um, when you respond to a snippy email, avoid using the word you. And I found that from Sarah. Don't use the word you as it can come across as accusatory. So you're reading this, you did this, you did that. You don't wanna have that. You don't wanna have that in your, in your language back to them. I really recommend getting You.com as the AI source to rewrite your emails. It has been fundamentally the, my best use case for AI at this point where AI is, is still in its infancy. It does a phenomenal job. You can pour your heart out and say all the nasty things you wanna say back to the client, and then plunk it into that and say, make this sound more professional and less accusatory, and it will rewrite it in an amazing way. You still have to kind of tweak it, but at least it will rewrite it in a better way. You'd be surprised at the, what the output is on some of those use cases of using AI for that. Always maintain composure in any heated discussions. So another tip is to— if you have a thing going back and forth by email, pick up the phone, do a Zoom meeting. It's harder to be harsh face to face. It's easy to do it on email or text. It's just easier to do. That's why social media— sometimes there's a lot of bullying on social, social media because they can do it It's like being mighty behind the email or the social media spot. Jefferson Fisher on Instagram, who was at ClioCon, unfortunately had to leave because of the hurricane. Follow him. He has so many great tips. I highly recommend you follow him. And I think if you do work with attorney clients, it's important to— it's an important goal to cultivate relationships with these people. The more you have a relationship that's somewhat a little bit on the personal side, I mean, I had— I can't tell you how many of my clients texted me and wrote to me and like, I hope you're okay during the hurricane. These are things that you don't get if you have no personal relationship. If you're just sending messages, here's your data, here's your data. That's the relationship you can have is, here's your data. It's the data person sending me back my financials. Have that relationship. Take the time. If your client is not responding, pick up the phone and don't say, where's my documents? Say, hey, I'm just checking in on you, and, and I haven't heard from you, and There's been no response, and I'm a little bit worried. That can shift an entire relationship or conversation. And truly, as we go into the future with all this AI stuff, and who knows what's gonna be out there, the relationships are what matter the most. I hope this is helpful, and until next week, bye now.