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Law schools don’t teach attorneys how to run a business. And make no mistake, a law firm is a business. There are also no rules as to how you have to run the customer service aspect of your firm. As a result you will see a wide approach as to how lawyers interact with their clients and treat them in general.
When you do hire an attorney for a work injury, it is not unreasonable to think that you will be able to talk to them when you want. The reality is that as part of some law firms not knowing about or caring about customer service, there are some law firms that hardly let you talk to the attorney at all.
We see this mostly with firms that focus on having a high volume of cases as opposed to quality cases. They often do a lot of TV or billboard advertising which can bring in a lot of cases of varying quality. So what happens is a lawyer gets assigned a few hundred cases. As a result they don’t have a lot of time to talk to their clients.
So what happens is they have clerks or secretaries that talk to you. These are not attorneys. Sometimes they call them your case manager. It is just a fancy way of saying that you will not get to talk to the lawyer. If you have a legal question or concern about your case, you will have to rely on a non lawyer to help you.
That is not right in my opinion and a terrible way to run a business. With some of these firms, you will only talk to your attorney if your case is going to trial or maybe on an occasional check in.
Compare that to the type of attorney customer service we think you should have. This includes:
- Having the ability to email with your lawyer.
- Having the personal cell phone of your lawyer.
- Being able to call the firm and speak to your attorney if they are available.
- Getting regular updates on your case when there is something to update.
This does not mean you are the only client of this lawyer or they are available 24/7 to you. It does mean that they are accessible. So if you shoot them an email at 10 a.m. you will get a reply usually by the end of the business day and certainly by the next day.
It also means that you can talk to a clerk or secretary on occasion, but if you have legal questions, you will get those answers from a lawyer.
Having a relationship with the handling attorney is important for a lot of reasons. The biggest one is that when they are talking with the insurance company or other attorney or if they are going to trial, they need to really know you and your case. While the clerk can add notes to your file, they don’t get to know the real you if they don’t talk to you.
I remember going to trial early on in my career on behalf of a worker with a significant back injury. The opposing attorney tried to make the argument that my client was not as badly hurt as he said and had a reputation at the company of not being a hard worker. Because I knew my client so well, I was able to quickly respond that this was his first work injury in 20 years and that he had three times received an accommodation for exemplary performance in the work place.
Little details like this matter and as an attorney you will only know them if you have a relationship with your client.
Asking how much communication you will have with your attorney is something you should do before you hire them. If you start to notice it is a problem during your case, you should call them out on it or seek a new law firm. It costs nothing to switch work comp attorneys and is usually not a problem if there hasn’t been a settlement offer or the case isn’t too old.
