Setting reasonable boundaries for yourself and clients is a well-being tool. Often when lawyers talk about managing client expectations, the conversation is about communicating to the client when to reasonably expect a response from the lawyer. Helping the client understand that the lawyer can’t always immediately respond keeps the client well-informed, happy, and well-served–which is just good business.
Lawyers want their clients to believe they are always available. In this competitive legal environment that incentivizes billable hours and retaining top clients, lawyers armed with technology that allows 24/7 availability and delivery of services with a few keystrokes may tend to push boundaries beyond what is “reasonable.” Lawyers may avoid an “out of office” when they are on vacation or unavailable, then do whatever it takes to respond and deliver immediately, assuming the client expects an immediate response and will hire another lawyer if they don’t get one.
The result is longer and unlimited work “days”, interrupted family events and vacations, missed child-care pickups, lost sleep, and little ability to recharge. As a profession, we can admire this level of commitment and willingness to pursue a matter despite personal inconvenience as encouraged in Rule 1.3’s comment, yet it sacrifices lawyer well-being and quality of the lawyer’s services. Beyond mere inconvenience, it can cause a lawyer to make mistakes, not deliver their best work, and burn themselves out by ignoring the mounting stress of always being “on” and not able to be present in their own lives.
Enter the “Client and Counsel Partnership Model,” explored in a recent CLE program collaboration between the Minnesota Supreme Court, the Minnesota State Bar Association Well-Being and Signature CLE Committees, the Federal Bar Association, and Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers. This model is the brain-child of Ben Carpenter, Senior Vice-President and Deputy Counsel at U.S. Bank (and Director on LCL’s Board), who developed and implemented “Guidelines for Promoting Well-Being in Outside Counsel Engagement” in consultation with its outside firms.
The Guidelines are premised on U.S. Bank’s expectation that its outside lawyers will take appropriate measures to promote their well-being, “since maintaining strong mental, emotional, and physical well-being is essential to lawyer competence.” Instead of putting the onus on outside counsel and its in-house lawyers to figure out how to do that, U.S. Bank identifies concrete steps it will take support counsel’s well-being, such as:
• Delaying non-urgent communications until work hours or including expectations for when a response is expected
• Encouraging counsel to set expectations for communicating their “out of office” status and backup contacts
• Suggesting flexibility in meeting format and communicating with each other
• Committing to manage workloads based on availability and urgency, recognizing that urgency should be an exception
• Encouraging counsel to resist the temptation to “over-deliver” if it means sacrificing work-life balance
• Considering alternative billing arrangements to reduce billable hour demands
• Ongoing joint well-being programming and continued collaboration
Whether you are a lawyer engaged as outside counsel or represent individual clients, a partnership model can provide a framework for engaging and communicating with your clients about expectations in a way that ensures excellent service from a position of strong mental, emotional, and physical well-being, which is so essential to lawyer competence. And it just makes good sense.