Ontario Lawyers' Assistance Program- OLAP

Readers will recall my tripartite mission statement: level with your client, charge fairly and get fairly paid, and provide personal service. Here are the six corollaries, the rules I live by to survive in private practice.

Don't flog a dead horse. Even if your client wants to pay you to do the flogging, sooner or later the client will want to flog you. They will have your bill assessed and report you to the law society. These floggings you can do without.
Don't take on a difficult client and don't rationalize yourself into doing it. A client's matter is often intrinsically difficult; those difficulties are compounded when your client is difficult, too. Sometimes you are too far along to jettison a client and you have to stay the course, do your best, and hope for propitious results. But why take on a case when a client, at the outset, looks like trouble with a capital T? Don't give undue weight to the law society's exhortation to provide access to justice and don't feel guilty if you steer clear of difficult clients. They will find a lawyer down the street to welcome them with open arms. I have never found money to be a sufficient balm for a troublesome client. I remember taking on what I anticipated to be a “straightforward” purchase of a home. The transaction turned out to be the purchase from hell with a client from the same location. At the conclusion, I was paid well for my trials and tribulations, but I was reminded of an old Yiddish saying: “I don't want the honey and I don't want the sting.”
Fire bad clients. It will do wonders for your mental health. Don't expect to change or modify a client's personality; that's for psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers.
Be diplomatic. You can't afford to be otherwise. When a client is rough and threatens to report you to the law society, don't call his or her bluff. My friend and colleague Eugene Meehan, Q.C., is fond of the saying, “Don't wrestle with a pig in the mud. The pig likes it and you'll only get dirty.” Amen.
You deserve to get fairly paid. If you can't get paid properly for what you do, you ought to be doing something else. You'll go broke if you give enough freeloaders a free lunch.
Don't do the work if you don't have the expertise; refer it to someone who does. The law society now has a referral fee rule that gives you an incentive to send the matter to competent counsel. Take a look at Rule of Professional Conduct 2.08(8) and what you have to do to comply with it.

At the Ontario Bar Assistance Program breakfast where I shared with colleagues my mission statement and how I put it into practice, I was asked how I inject some balance into my life. I confessed that left to my own devices, I am an abject failure in leading a balanced existence. I engage in voluntary activities at my synagogue and at a nursing home, but that's not enough. My work as a bencher is voluntary, too, but Osgoode Hall is not an oasis of tranquility, at least not for me. My secret is my religion. I look forward to the Sabbath each week. Beginning Saturday evening when I bid the Sabbath farewell, I look forward to the coming Friday sundown when I will welcome it again. On my Sabbath there are no clients, no files, and no phone calls. Of course, there is more to the Sabbath than that, but one day a week without clients, files and phone calls is heaven. My morning, afternoon, and evening prayers, and the multitude of blessings I say throughout the day, when said with proper intent are also an antidote to the stresses of our profession. If you don't remain healthy you won't be much good to your clients and to your loved ones. Most of all, you won't be much good to yourself.

Gary Lloyd Gottlieb can be reached at: glgqc@interlog.com

The preceding article is reprinted with the permission of the author, Gary Lloyd Gottlieb, and appeared in the October 4, 2004 Issue of Law Times. Mr. Gottlieb is a Toronto Sole Practitioner and a Law Society of Upper Canada bencher.

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