Attorney Clients LNCs Should Avoid

Watch for warning signs when you interact with attorney clients. You may see these when an attorney approaches you with a case. Learn to heed these concerning strategies and avoid these attorney clients. Often, these challenges revolve around your fee agreement. Trouble is ahead when the attorney attempts to talk you out of critical terms in your contract.

1. Avoid Attorney Clients Who Say, ‘My Client Will Pay’

It seems like an innocent enough request. The attorney’s client, the plaintiff, is funding a medical malpractice case. The attorney says, “I’ll just have my client send you the retainer. He’ll sign your fee agreement, too.”

Here is the problem: working directly with a plaintiff violates our ethical codes.

For example, we can not screen cases for people not represented by an attorney. Oh, but you say, “This is different. The plaintiff does have an attorney.”

How to Create Lasting LNC-Client Relationships

Wrong. Your client is the attorney. Your client must have the funds to handle a medical malpractice case. As the LNC, you don’t want to and should not have to pursue a plaintiff to get your bills paid.

2. Avoid the Attorney-Client Who Says, ‘I Don’t Agree with Two Clauses in Your Agreement’

The woman on the other end of the phone was an attorney who represented her mother. After spending a long time on the initial call discussing how her mother was abused and neglected in a critical care unit (this was already sounding fishy), she asked for our fee agreement. It said, among other things, “Hourly fees are subject to change. Charges are based upon the prevailing fee schedule when the work is performed.”

The attorney said, “I have two concerns. First, it says you may raise your rates. I have to agree to pay higher rates.”

I wanted to reply, “Does your electric company ask your permission to raise rates and allow you to choose to pay the same rate?” LNCs make a business decision as to when to raise rates. They don’t and shouldn’t give their clients the option to pay the older rate.

Avoid the Attorney-Client Who Consistently Tries to Renegotiate Your Fees

I explained to the attorney that our company would increase its rates sometime that year. Then, the attorney offered her second objection. “Your agreement says, ‘If it becomes necessary for your company to retain an attorney or collection agency for collecting outstanding fees or any other breach of this agreement, the client agrees to pay your reasonable attorney fees and costs incurred in enforcing its rights under this agreement.’” She said, “I would insist on having an independent arbitrator.”

I replied that we rarely had to send a client to a collection agency, but when we did, we incurred reasonable attorney fees and costs related to filing a claim in court. She replied, “I can’t agree to signing an agreement with these two clauses.” When she saw I was not going to budge, she hung up on me.

3. Avoid the Attorney Who Balks at a Retainer

“I should not have to pay a 10-hour retainer. This case won’t take that long to review.”

Here is another common argument. I agree that in some minor cases a 10 hour retainer is not needed. Emergency department cases, office records consisting of a few pages, and other minor cases exist. However, most cases involve many documents that must be organized, assembled, and reviewed. An attorney who does not want to pay a retainer of 10 hours puts the LNC in the position of having to return soon for an additional retainer or exceed the number of hours of the retainer and then begin the collections process.

Not all business is good business.

4. Avoid the Economic Buyer

You may have an attorney-client who is not pleasant to work with. You wish you had known this in advance when they first contacted you.

Typically, they are economic or price-driven buyers. I also called them tire kickers. Financial buyers are hard to please, demanding, and prone to arguing and nitpicking. They are attorneys. They love to argue. And they love getting a detailed invoice explaining why writing a report should not have taken 3 hours. “You should have been able to do it faster,” they claim. They love to micromanage every aspect of your work on the file.

How do you recognize the economic buyer? Their first question is often, “What is your hourly rate?”

I envision them having a legal pad in front of them as they write down your company’s name and hourly rate right below the name of the previous LNC they spoke to.

As you work through the conversation, you should explain how your services are unique and the benefits of working with you. If you cannot articulate this, you sound like every other LNC who is a generalist. You become a commodity. The attorney will judge you based on your price.

And we know that when you reduce a service to a price, the attorney will evaluate you based on your cost.

Be clear about what the attorney wants you to do and when. The economic buyer may wish to have the case completed on the weekend without paying a rush fee or for you to spend 3 hours driving to his office, meeting with him to discuss the case, and not charging for your time. Be clear on your rates and the client’s obligations to pay you—don’t violate your fee schedule to satisfy the economic buyer.

Instead, focus on your expertise. What problems can you solve? Who do you want to serve? When you recognize what sets you apart, you attract attorneys who need your services and want to work with you. As a result, the economic buyer fades away.

5. Avoid the Low-Profit Attorney Client

You’ve worked hard on your marketing to attract clients. You may wonder, “Why should I drop a low-profit attorney-client I have worked hard to obtain?” Some clients are not worth the effort it takes to work with them. Business owner Cheryl Schoen, RN, referred to these as the “black hole clients.” You give and give and give, and yet they are not satisfied.

Low-profit clients always demand logistics, operations, or customer service. They want changes in your work product but don’t want to pay for the changes. They want immediate assistance, usually at the last minute, and don’t want to pay a rush fee. And, they assume that they are the most important (and maybe only) client you have, and therefore, they are entitled to your immediate attention.

Don’t Hang onto a Low-Profit Attorney Client

He or she is hurting your business in ways that are not always obvious. The attorney making unreasonable demands on you prevents you from marketing to bring in more profitable business or paying attention to the less vocal client. It is a rule of a legal nurse consulting business that new clients enter your stream each year while others drop off.

The Solution

The sooner you address the behavior of the low-profit attorney-client, the better. Don’t equivocate. Implement a price increase. You should do this for all your clients about every year, and don’t show favoritism by allowing the low-profit client to escape this change. The client has the choice of paying the higher fee or walking away. If he walks away, you win because you can devote your time to other clients and business-building activities. If he stays with you, you’ve won because you’ve increased your profit.

Define a rush fee and stick to it. Say “no” to impossible demands. Set limits on what you are willing to do for this client. You don’t have to be reachable by cell phone – in the evenings, on weekends, or on vacation. I have talked to LNCs who took cases with them on vacation. They could not relax.

The only way you can lose is by allowing the low-profit attorney-client to continue to control you. It is your responsibility as a business owner to recognize that not every attorney who wants to work with you is your ideal client.

You set the price and the limits on what you can do. Otherwise, you are at the mercy of an attorney who will likely be an excellent negotiator but not someone you should work with.

My advice from the School of Hard Knocks:

Don’t agree to have the plaintiff pay the bills.
Avoid clients who want to remove clauses from your agreement.
Insist on a reasonable-size retainer.
Drop the low-profit client.

Join us for our 10th LNC success (R) online conference on September 26 and 27, 2024.

You’ll love the opportunity to gain knowledge, support, and network with colleagues. One of my sessions will delve into gaining mastery of difficult client situations.

Pat Iyer is president of The Pat Iyer Group, which develops resources to assist LNCs in obtaining more clients, making more money, and achieving their business goals and dreams.

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