As a solo practitioner, I have had to learn some things the hard way. Some things I wish they had taught in law school:
1. We had a basic class in interviewing a client. However that was the extent of it. The practice of law involves managing the client. You have to train them not to call at all hours of the day and night, to pay their bills on time and not to expect more than they agreed to pay for.
2. Some clients are really smart. These are the dream clients. They are organized, they write out what they want and ask really intelligent questions.
3. A lawyer is not a bus. They don't have to take every client that wants to hire them. But some clients have a really sad sob story. These are usually the ones that don't have money. Some of my biggest mistakes have been letting them convince me to hire them and then get stuck with a nightmare case.
4. The clients who demand the most from you are the most unwilling to adequately compensate you for their time. They expect you to work miracles, but they don't value your expertise.
5. The clients who think they have a simple situation to handle usually don't. This is especially true in probate cases where anything out of the ordinary perplexes the clerk whom you are filing the papers with. They have to have a long consultation with management, require an obscure notation in the filed documents and require you to come back again to file later.
6. On a related note, some clients phone you with a "simple" question that is horribly complex and requiring research and expect you to answer it instantly and for free.
7. Clients don't tell you everything. I found bankruptcy clients especially prone to this fault. If they had an asset or debt they didn't want to list in the petition, they wouldn't tell you about it unless you pressed them on it.
8. People basically distrust lawyers. This might stem from the media that portrays lawyers as sneaky and nasty. Some lawyers might be like this, but most are decent. People who have been involved as a party in litigation might perceive lawyers as being this way because the court system is adversarial. A trial lawyers is supposed to make the other side look bad and they may make nasty allegations to that end. But not all law is like that.
9. Being a lawyer is a heavy responsibility. You have some one's financial or family life in your hands and you can't make mistakes without consequences. You can argue theory in law school, but when it comes to reality, it's a lot different. You have to know what you are doing or learn it quickly. Dabbling is dangerous.
10. What you think you know about an area of law will invariably change and a smart client will be the first one to let you know about it.
Sometimes I wish law school was less theory and more practice so I wouldn't have to learn these things the hard way.
