I used to think my mother was the most gullible person in the world. My siblings and I could do whatever we wanted to in high school, and she would automatically believe any explanation we could possibly give, no matter how preposterous the explanation might seem.
Years later I began to rethink this. It occurred to me that my mother’s supposed gullibility was the result of willful ignorance; that is, that she deliberately put her head in the sand. Alternatively, I thought it might be a master stroke of genius. By vesting so much faith in our honesty, by refusing to even consider the possibility that we could possibly lie to her, she was consciously motivating us to earn that trust.
I realized when I first began practicing criminal law that I may have inherited some of this gullibility. Clients would tell me things and I would believe them. I have to admit, for example, that I believed the old “I found the gun in the park near where some children were playing and I picked it up to protect them and was heading to the police station to turn it in when I was arrested” story at least the first time I heard it.
My gullibility is the kind of trait I might relay in an interview in which they asked about my greatest weakness and I decided I wanted to answer the question honestly. But I’m not at all proud of it. In fact, during my first week as a first-year public defender doing misdemeanor trials in front of a judge, I took two cases to trial that should have settled. The problem was, I believed the client in each case and assumed the judge would as well. Fortunately, the stakes are never terribly high when it comes to misdemeanor trials and in both cases my client ended up getting the same sentence he would have had he taken the plea bargain.
Still, it’s not exactly a characteristic a criminal defense lawyer likes to advertise. We’re supposed to be street-wise. We need to know what will fly with a judge or jury in order to properly advise our clients.
I have definitely gotten wiser with experience. In addition, I almost never take a case to trial without running the basic facts past by my wife first. She thinks like a prosecutor. If she doesn’t buy my trial theory, it’s a good bet a judge or jury won’t either.
The new and improved me was therefore surprised by a recent experience I had trying to collect the remainder of an unpaid fee from a client. “William” was my very first client when I opened my firm last fall and, for that, he will always have special significance for me. William is also the only flat fee client from whom I didn’t insist on all the money upfront. Consequently, he is also the only client who still owes me. And I won his case too. It’s not as though he had any beef with the way I represented him. In fact, he was as pleased as punch.
The problem is, William is a very charming and engaging guy. He is a former pro athlete, and I like him. And just like I believed him when he told me he would pay me the remainder of my fee when he got his next pay check AFTER our trial date, I believe him every time I contact him and he comes up with a great story about how he now has the money to pay me and will be putting the check in the mail soon, my friend. Because he calls me his friend. As in, “I haven’t forgotten about you, my friend.” And then he sends me photographs of himself at the beach with his kids.
Of course I believe him. If I didn’t believe him, I might have to consider the possibility either of writing off the money as a lesson learned or of initiating some type of collection action, neither or which I want to do. Like my mother learned, it is so much easier to just believe him.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
The biggest problem with unpaid fees is that the client who owes you money is unlikely to refer other clients to you.
Your best move with William is to send him a nice letter forgiving him the balance of the fee. It’ll pay off tenfold.
Mark:
You are probably right, and in fact this is what I will do. It is very unlikely that I will ever see the rest of that money. And I can engender some goodwill — and hopefully future referrals — through this gesture of goodwill.
But I do it under protest. Other lawyers had warned me about not getting all of the money upfront. And they were right.
Yes, yes,
I cannot count the number of times I stood in District Court (misdemeanors) ready to start a trial, when the Defendant’s Attorney would ask for a continuance; a critical witness, “Mr. Green,” had not yet arrived. Many Judges, who remembered how difficult it was to collect fees from their clients, would immediately continue the case due to the absence of “Mr. Green.”
H.B.
Mr. Burger! It’s good to see you here! You have been completely remiss on the series of guest posts you promised to do for me. But I will forgive you. I know that you have been at trial.
One of the first times I was ever in court in Philadelphia — as a summer intern — I heard a lawyer ask the judge for a “Rule 1 continuance.” Being the dutiful law student that I was, I had my rules of criminal procedure at my fingertips and quickly looked to learn the basis for this continuance. I was then baffled to find that Pennsylvania’s rules of criminal procedure begin with Rule 100. There is no such thing as Rule 1. Except that there is.