When to Fire Your Lawyer

I’m so glad you could join me today, I want to talk to you about a topic that arises quite frequently and we get calls from across the province from people that want to fire their lawyer. They want to fire their criminal lawyer. And they have their reasons for this. And let me tell you the approach that our firm takes to this topic. And, you know, it’s an ethical approach. And I think every lawyer should take this approach and they don’t always necessarily do. So I sit down or our staff sits down with this person whose phoned us and I say, look, we really don’t want your case. You want to fire your lawyer but what you need to sit down and explore like, why do you want to fire lawyer? Are you telling me that your lawyer is not communicating with you? What’s the reason and what we do what invariably we hear from a lot of clients who want to fire the lawyer is the lawyer’s not keeping them informed. I can tell you this. Some of the best criminal lawyers in the province, they do a wonderful job but their customer client skills, their bedside manners, maybe not that great for some of them, I’m not saying all, but a few of them and I know these lawyers do wonderful work, but they have some disgruntled clients. So what I say to this client, especially when I hear it’s a good lawyer I know that lawyer, that lawyer’s good. You don’t want to fire that lawyer. The only problem is lawyer hasn’t kept them informed about the progress of their case. So what I say to the client I say, Look, you owe it to yourself and your lawyer to sit down and explain your concerns. It may be your lawyer may be doing a great case. In fact, you’ve told me it’s lawyer A, I know that exceptional lawyer, and maybe it’s just that they haven’t kept you informed. So we encourage that and a lot of these clients have been able to salvage the relationship just by having a candid conversation and the lawyer might apologize and say look I’ve been very busy. I’m doing a good job in your case, everything’s moving along perfectly. I’m sorry, I haven’t kept the communicate in forth. Now, if they take that approach, I think many relationships can be salvaged. I don’t take the approach and our firm does from an ethical standpoint that some criminal lawyers do a client like that follows them up and they say oh, we’ll take your case give me X dollar retainer, and you said that other lawyer an authorization and direction, your client’s fired you send me over your trust account fees, and I just we don’t need those cases. I don’t want those cases. I don’t want clients people firing lawyers. If, in most cases, it’s just a communication problem. Now, frankly, in some cases, it’s actually a client problem. The client’s very difficult is not the lawyer’s problem and that’s concerning as well. Now, if there’s true, I say to the client, look, if there’s truly a breakdown between you and the other lawyer, then after meeting with them, you’ll have to decide whether you will let them go that’s totally up to you. We are not interested in even talking to you further. We’re just encouraging you to patch it up. If you do fire them, you can reach out to us but we’re going to be cautious about taking on your case because I’m very cautious about taking on those type of cases. What I do is I say look, we always want to start with a legal opinion. I want to look at your file. We’ll charge you a small fee for a legal opinion. You may not like my opinion, because some of the clients’ problems is that the lawyers told them I can’t win your case.  Well my opinion may be the same. And especially if I hear it’s a good lawyer. Well, sometimes if I hear that it’s a good lawyer, I didn’t want the case because I know it’s not the lawyer’s fault. Maybe the lawyer, you know, sometimes it’s completely the client’s fault. There are cases though, when there’s a frankly a total breakdown in communication. Maybe the lawyer’s not a good lawyer even or are not doing good work. I don’t know. I always assume they are. I always assumed tell them to patch it up. And I’m not particularly interested in these cases frankly. I don’t want to see people firing lawyers across the province. So that’s the approach we take. It’s a different approach than many if not most criminal law firms. We don’t need another file. I don’t want another file. In fact, I prefer not to have another file from a person who might be a problem client. But having said that, there are situations where we provide an opinion, the person’s turned out to be a wonderful person. It was just, you know, they couldn’t work with that other lawyer. And then if we’re satisfied that once we give the opinion, we’ll take on the case, which is fine, but I just don’t like this approach of lawyers you know, someone phones me up I want to fire my lawyer oh okay, great give me some money and I’ll take on your case. I don’t think that’s the right approach. I don’t think it’s ethical. It’s allowed. But, you know, it’s just not the right approach in my view.