Karen Jackson, Solicitor and Founder-CEO of didlaw, is involved in a great deal of mentoring work with junior legal professionals in relation to managing clients. Find out her guiding principles in this piece…

Being a lawyer is always a challenge. All part of the fun. It’s certainly a reason why a career in law is for someone who constantly wants to grow and learn. The lessons never stop! I routinely talk to my colleagues about issues we have dealt with over our careers and we all agree: you never stop learning. Every. Single. Day.

When it comes to managing clients, this is a learning curve that never drops off. You are dealing with people and their needs and foibles. What works with one client doesn’t necessarily work with another. It’s why it’s important to get to know your client, their needs, how they work, so that you can anticipate how to make the relationship succeed.

Having a good relationship with your client is every bit as important as doing great work and giving sound legal advice. It will help you out of scrapes and reduce the stress too. An example I like to give is when you’re aiming to complete a piece of work for a client and you are running late on the deadline. If you have a good relationship the client will appreciate that things don’t always go to plan and will give you more leeway. I once wrote to a client at 6pm “I have not done your work today as promised due to a number of factors. I can work late tonight to get it done or I can do it first thing tomorrow when I am fresh and you will get the best of me”. The client replied by return saying of course she was happy to wait, that she appreciated my honesty and that we could reconnect in the morning. Problem solved. Stress removed.

With our duty to always act in the client’s best interests, things can get tricky when you tell them something they don’t want to hear. I had a client who had been horribly bullied at work but who had no real legal claims. Her only option was to resign and bring a constructive dismissal case. I advised her on the challenges of such a case and told her that if I were in her shoes I would look for a new job and move on rather than destroy my mental health with a long legal battle. My client appreciated the radical honesty of my advice.

There are lawyers who will encourage people to pursue difficult claims without having any regard to the life impact of doing so. Not me. Another client might receive this same advice and push back hard, accusing me of gaslighting her. This is what I mean: one size does not fit all. All you can do is be explicit about what the challenges are for the claim, give solid advice, provide realistic costs estimates and allow the client to make their own decision. If they go in with eyes wide open you cannot be at fault.

But what happens when clients push back against your advice and you know they are headed only for failure? And the client relationship sours. This can happen when a client sincerely believes that they have been discriminated against, for example because of sex, but you tell them that on the evidence they are highly unlikely to succeed. This will not go down well. The client may accuse you of sabotaging her but you have to do it. Your job is to assess the claim, give an advice on merits and to signal where the claim may fail. You have a duty to do this. I often find in a situation like this that the best way to handle the client who feels disappointed in you and perhaps distrusting of you is to make it more personal. Tell her that with your knowledge and experience you do not want to send her down a road with no clear end in sight. She may challenge hard on this if you are junior but you can tell her you have discussed her case with your supervising partner and they agree with your assessment and have many years more experience.

I find making advice quite personal helps in moments like this: tell your client that you completely understand how she feels but that if you were in her shoes, based on what you know, you would not pursue the claim. Few people have difficulty with honesty and if your client dislikes you for doing this it may be time for the retainer to end. If the client does not have trust and confidence in your advice you are obliged to cease to act under SRA rules.

There will be times in your career where it feels awkward to push back but you have to. Most clients will respect you for it, the odd one won’t. I will never forget a client in my early days, when asked a question I did not know the answer to and telling him I would have to check. “My regard for you just went up to a whole new level. I have never met such an honest lawyer!” Honesty is always the best policy even when it doesn’t make you any friends.

This post was written by Karen Jackson, Solicitor and Founder-CEO of didlaw, a discrimination law boutique specialising in disability discrimination and women’s rights.