The Alchemy of Building Trust

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I have met many people on one of the worst days of their lives. That is the lot of the criminal defense lawyer, particularly those of us who represent indigent clients. We meet our clients after they have been arrested, interrogated, processed and, sometimes, fed a mystery meat sandwich. We greet them in an interview booth, separated by mesh or thick glass and often as not, the huge gulfs of language, culture and background.

Even with the benefits of more than twenty years experience and graying hair, I still find the first meeting with my clients daunting. I think it is one of the hardest moments a lawyer can face and I know my students find initial interviews, and all their client interactions, very challenging.

In this clip, my colleague and pal, Cheryl Bader, captures the difficulties students face and what we do to help them prepare. As Cheryl notes, our key tools for preparation are simulation, or mock interviewing, and reflection, which is just clinical legal education speak for critique and analysis that is designed to help our students become self aware. The three central questions in these initial interview simulations are deceptively simple:

1) Can the student accurately describe how they are introducing themselves and beginning the interview;

2) Can he or she consciously adjust that introduction; and

3) Can he or she hear and understand what the client is saying?

Most of us take it as a matter of course that we know what we are saying and hear what other say to us. But gaining insight into what we are really communicating and the degree to which we can all do a better job in listening to others is a huge step toward developing into a skillful professional.

Gaining a client's trust is quite simple in the way many profound things are simple - we all listen and speak, but to listen well and have another person hear what we really wanted to say is a very difficult thing. If we can do that, we can gain the trust of our clients.

Reflections on Relationships with Clients

In these three clips Ashok Mathai, Suzanne Volpe and Tamara Conway talk about their experiences with gaining the trust of their clients. Ashok shares the challenges he faced in the criminal defense setting. In his typically perceptive way, he frames the issue from the client's point of view. So often we, the lawyers, are so focused on how nervous, busy or tired we are that we forget to think about the other person in the interaction. Ashok begins from the client's point of view. He also reminds us to be conscious of both difference and similarity between us and our clients and to account for both. In the end, however, the quality of the interaction will be determined by how genuinely we listen and care.

Suzanne offers us a different slice, talking about a relationship with a client that, upon reflection, might have been more professional. Many of us, when we start out, try too hard to be friends with our clients - I had this problem as a young lawyer and as a young teacher. It can be very hard to negotiate those early years in the professional role, when many of us are not comfortable with our authority or the distance it can engender in our relationships.

Tamara Conway tells the punch line to a successful case. Although I have had experiences in which some of the impact of a bad outcome was mitigated by a good relationship and other experiences where a good outcome did not repair a bad relationship, more often I have found that success in the case promotes good feelings. I particularly like Tamara's smile at the end of this clip. I think this memory, of both the event and the feeling, will stay with her for a long time.

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-- Ian Weinstein

Fordham, Law School, Lawyering, Criminal Defense, Student Reflection, Mock Interview