“If you have clients, everything else seems to work itself out.” These were the words of my law firm mentor Ed Mullins. So true for those of us who use our legal education and law license to represent others. Without clients, we can solve only hypothetical problems. We would have no justice to seek, no liberty to gain, and no fees to earn. Clients provide an opportunity to use our skills, grow our knowledge, and make a living.
As I survey the legal profession, I cannot help but see a dichotomy. It is not among the lawyers. It is with the clients. There are the clients that lawyers want to represent, and there are clients that lawyers avoid or ignore. The need for legal counsel is no less great for the latter group. Their problems are no less acute.
Many of us focus on serving those that allow us to earn a living. Some of us are so busy pursuing class action relief, negotiating the division of marital assets, or responding to government investigations that we become blind to the clients who need our services just as much but who lack the financial means to get our attention. If we take the time to look more deeply, we can find parallels in this dichotomy of clients and reasons to want to represent both.
My most valuable education in building client relationships came from my time on the ABA Litigation Section’s Corporate Counsel Committee. We often heard from general counsel of Fortune 500 companies about the traits they sought when retaining law firms and the best practices that kept their business. A former committee cochair, Bob Craig, would often preach that your invoices are your most important marketing opportunity—or an opportunity to lose business. “I read these,” Bob would quip. “Do you really want to charge me two hours to Shepardize a case?” I also learned that efficiency, frequent communication, responsiveness, and especially lead time were essential to the care and feeding of in-house legal departments.
Marketing to corporate clients is an art form. There are sophisticated pitches involving teams of law firm lawyers meeting with legal departments in boardrooms, with weeks of preparation, flawless PowerPoint decks, and polished lead trial lawyers with impressive win-loss records. Associates spend hours drafting white papers on cutting-edge topics to be sent out monthly to client distribution lists. Firm partners fly around the country speaking at conferences to display their expertise and build a brand. And, of course, there are the creative holiday gifts and sophisticated holiday e-cards.
The marketing leads to legal work, and the legal work leads to fees. Corporate America funds a large part of our profession. But corporate America and the firms that serve it also have a feeling of social responsibility. There are many in C-suites and leading legal departments who understand that the responsibility of a lawyer includes service to the needy and to the community. Their law firms share these values. This is where there is an intersection between the path to profits for corporate America and the path to justice for the underrepresented. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor recognized this in her 1999 Oregon Law Review article, stating, “While a business can afford to focus solely on profits, a profession cannot. It must devote itself first to the community it is responsible to serve. I can imagine no greater duty than fulfilling this obligation. And I can imagine no greater pleasure.”
For all the energy that is devoted to marketing legal work for corporate America, there often seems to be an equally strong but repulsive force for busy lawyers when they are presented with opportunities to represent the underrepresented. We know who these clients are. They are single parents being evicted by their landlord. They are disabled veterans who cannot navigate the federal benefits system. They are mothers with substance abuse addictions who have had their newborn babies removed from the home by social services. They are the homeless who are unable to expunge an old conviction that prevents them from working. No fees will be generated from these clients. There will be no flashy pitches for their business and no marketing strategies developed to increase the market share for this work.
There is, however, a feeling of social responsibility and duty toward the underrepresented. Justice Sonia Sotomayor once said, “We educated, privileged lawyers have a professional and moral duty to represent the underrepresented in our society, to ensure that justice exists for all, both legal and economic justice.” Many share this view. Some lawyers have taken on the cause of the underrepresented as their professional calling, taking jobs with legal aid groups or legal advocacy organizations. Many of us in private practice find our opportunities through pro bono service and impact litigation.
The reward is not the fee. Boston litigator and law firm partner Jim Rollins spent years leading a team of lawyers in a successful effort to free Walter Ogrod after nearly three decades on death row as a result of a wrongful conviction based on a coerced confession and unreliable statements of jailhouse informants. After his client’s release in 2020, Jim said, “It is a profound moment, filled with happiness and hope, not only for Mr. Ogrod, but also for other innocent, wrongfully convicted individuals.” The gratitude expressed by these clients cannot be measured. A thank-you note from a general counsel to the winning trial team is appreciated. An embrace from an individual who had no hope, who had an insurmountable problem, affects us in a different way.
Connecting lawyers with these clients is a constant focus of the ABA, legal aid societies, law firms, legal departments, the courts, and government agencies. Many firms have pro bono coordinators seeking service opportunities. Many corporate legal departments partner with law firms to handle pro bono engagements. Sponsors of impact litigation recruit law firms to take on monumental and complex litigation.
There also are efforts to modify licensing requirements to make legal services more affordable for the working poor and to fill other gaps in access to justice. Arizona, Oregon, Utah, and Washington State are at the forefront of these efforts. In 2019, Utah began licensing non-lawyer legal providers to assist in the areas of family law, debt collection, and landlord-tenant disputes, and, in 2022, the Oregon Supreme Court approved a limited-scope license to permit paralegals to provide legal services in the areas of family law and landlord-tenant law. In the state of Washington, laws enacted in 2012 allowed for Limited Licensed Legal Technicians to assist with family law matters, although the program was later sunset in 2020.
Corporate clients are in high demand, and competition for their work is intense. There is no shortage, however, of potential pro bono clients or clients who could benefit from licensed non-lawyer legal providers.
The differences in representing these two types of clients are in many ways outweighed by the similarities. Lawyers’ relationships with clients, whether corporate America or the underrepresented, all demand certain common obligations from lawyers—competency, responsiveness, diligence, care, and trust, among others. These client relationships require the use of our advocacy skills, legal acumen, problem-solving, and creativity. These client relationships have important goals, whether it be defending a high-exposure mass tort claim or avoiding eviction from an apartment. These goals are of great importance to the client, whether fee-paying or not.
And there is the professional satisfaction that comes from helping our clients—something true when defending Fortune 500 companies and perhaps more true and at a deeper level when we help an individual in despair. So as I observe this dichotomy of clients, I realize that drawing distinctions is unnecessary and to do so is a superficial exercise. Every grateful client can bring value to our practices. All clients, large and small, can challenge us, energize us, and enhance our professional satisfaction. For those of us caught up in representing corporate America, as we continue to look for gratification in our professional lives, we should also look to the words of Justice Sotomayor and consider accepting the moral duty of representing the underrepresented.
