Vlog: Client Contract Section #2 - Duties & Responsibilities

Transcription:

Hey guys, it's Matt. This is going to be part two going over my contract with my clients called the fee agreements. This is section two, duties and responsibilities, the scope of services. I want to make very clear up front that the only work that I'm doing is your personal injury case. Of course, I'm more than happy to refer you to a good family lawyer, a good criminal law lawyer, but my case is your personal injury case. That is the only thing I'm doing. I'm not representing you for anything else. Next part is honesty. I will be completely and brutally honest with you about your case, even if it's not good news. And I expect that my clients will be honest with me if we can't agree on that. Um, I'm not the right lawyer for you. And I always like to tell clients that for some reason people feel that they don't want to tell their lawyer what they think are the bad parts about their case. They think something's going to hurt their personal injury case. What most people don't understand is that there's hardly anything that I can't deal with as a lawyer. Oftentimes evidence is inadmissible. For example, if you had a drug addiction and your medical records or if you have an outstanding bankruptcy or if you had a prior personal injury case, whatever it is, it might not even be admissible in court. The jury might not even hear about it, so it's a nonissue. Other times, as long as I'm aware of it, we can investigate, figure out what the real story is and deal with it. The only thing that will really hurt your case is not being honest with your lawyer. 

Next part is the new client checklist. One of the first things that a lot of folks say after they hire a personal injury lawyer is, "Hey, what's next?" And lots of times folks don't even hear from their personal injury lawyer for weeks after they hired them and they go, what the heck is going on? You know, I thought I just hired this personal injury lawyer. Why aren't they doing anything? Well in reality, there's a lot of administrative work that happens right off the bat, whether it's evidence gathering, evidence, preservation, contacting witnesses, ordering medical records, ordering police reports, filing a lawsuit, serving a lawsuit. There's months of administrative work just to get your case off the ground. And so what I like to do so the client knows what we're doing and knows that we're working is I send every client a 30 day checklist and we're going to be in contact over the next 30 days of your case telling you what we've completed and what's going on. 

Of course, we both agree to communicate with each other. You know, you're not going to post on social media about your case or in fact anything for the duration of your case. Even something that you think is completely meaningless. Like, I'm having dinner with my family today. Here's a picture of my dinner with my family. Well, an insurance company is going to take that out of context. They're going to say, well, look at Mrs. Smith now. She looks so happy in her social media pictures. Look, she's having a dinner with her family. Clearly her life is wonderful. Clearly she's not seriously injured. Because as we all know, we only really post our highlights on our social media. So even if it's something very benign, the insurance company's going to take it out of context and it will hurt your case. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen social media help a case. It's always used to attack someone's credibility. So please don't post social media during your case. 

The next section is evidence responsibility. I don't have your cases evidence, you have your cases evidence. Now there's some stuff like your medical records that I can order or a police report that I can order or witnesses that I can contact, but we really need your help to identify and gather all the evidence in your case. I can't tell you how much it will hurt your case down the road If I find out later, Oh Hey, there's a whole bunch of text messages about this case or you know, I didn't have any photos about it, but my friend took photos and they were all on her iCloud photos, you know, that type of thing. So we really need your help to identify and gather all the evidence and that's the ongoing participation that you know, you're hiring a lawyer to handle your case, but there's going to be a lot of work for you. 

Lastly, you have sole settlement authority. A lawyer can't settle your case without your authorization and a smart lawyer is not going to settle your case without your written authorization in a really smart lawyer is not even going to settle your case unless that written authorization at least includes a rough accounting of your settlement so that you know how many dollars you're going to get before you sign on the dotted line. And that's a really important part that a lot of folks don't appreciate because people will say, how will I know that, uh, the lawyer fee is going to be fair or you know, after the lawyer pays the litigation costs, you know, I don't think I'm going to get any money out of the settlement. Why should I hire a lawyer? All right, I like to tell folks, look, if you don't like the deal and the lawyer didn't do a good job for you, you have the authority not to settle your case. It's always your decision. So settlement authority is always with the client.

 Lastly, and this is important, a violation of those duties. So we just went through, gosh, seven or eight duties, scope of services, honesty, the new client checklist, we agree to communicate the social media disclaimer, evidence, responsibility, ongoing participation in the case client has sole settlement authority. So those eight things, if any of those are broken or violated or I feel like the client wasn't keeping their end of the deal, the representation is going to be automatically terminated. So that's an important thing that when we start working together, we both have to trust each other. And if we can't and it's not working, we're not going to continue the representation.