Day 196 - Run a Meeting with a Client in Full

Date: July 21st, 2010

I've been taking baby steps at work for the past month or so, all leading up to eventually being a real lawyer.  Each brief I write needs fewer corrections and each phone call I take needs fewer follow ups.  I still have miles and miles to go, but I'm starting to really notice progress.  Even so, it has been small, incremental, comfortable steps.  So, when one of the attorneys I've been working with said I should handle a meeting in a divorce case completely unsupervised, I felt substantially more nervous than I expected.

Every other meeting I've done has had a safety net.  Did I forget to have the client sign some paperwork?  That's ok, the attorney will remember.  Did I forget to tell the client about this right or that piece of evidence that we need?  That's ok, the attorney will tell them.  But now I'd come to realize the double-edged sword that is being treated like a peer at work.  Peers don't need a babysitter.  Peers don't need a friendly, paternal reminder to get everything signed and sealed.

I was all for this intellectual peer business when it came to discussing the law and being strategic, but clients are real, honest to goodness people.  In a bout of complete disconnection from reality, I spaced that even though I was running the meeting, my boss was right down the hall.  I thanked my lucky stars that the client I was meeting with was for a divorce case, which made the paperwork and advice pretty straightforward.  Does the client want a divorce?  Yes.  Then our advice is: file for divorce.  Ooh good, I knew that one.

Even knowing that I was dealing with a simpler case, the meeting went better than I expected.  I magically remembered that we were just a few feet away from the attorney about halfway through and that I could, in my impish youth, leave a meeting to ask a question.  Which I did, before realizing I already knew the answer.  It felt a little like being off-book the first time in a play.  Remembering the lines is a struggle, but if you dig deep, they're there.  I'd previously believed that I was, in no way, ready to meet with a client on my own, but being thrown into it, I managed to at least tread water.

As for the client?  She's just one of several divorce cases our office handles every day.  I'm sure to her it made no difference that she was there for a monumental step in my life and I knew intuitively that telling her that was not really something I should do.  Moreover, I knew from the nature of the meeting that it was a major step in her life as well.  It made me wonder how many times I was doing something mundane and seeing someone realize their own abilities or potential for the first time.  Or how many times, when I've passed someone on the street, I've been seeing them on an important day for them and just didn't realize it.  Or even how many times I've missed seeing someone's struggles because I've been wrapped up in my own.  It was a good reminder.