New Lawyers and their Transition into the Marketplace
by Thomas F. Liotti
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Q - How does the degree of client contact differ between matrimonial law or family law and, let's say, corporate law?

A - I think in two ways. Number one is the frequency of contact. It is not unusual to receive four or five or six telephone calls from the same client in a single day. That happens. In my office I deal with it by having other people, usually a paralegal or a young associate, handle the calls, because most of these calls do not deal with substantive issues. I call them ventilating calls. The client simply wants to ventilate, explode, share some thoughts with someone, and they turn to the lawyer, because the lawyer is handling the case. That is what creates the tremendous pressure. If you don't have the staff to handle it, then you as the attorney are subjected to these calls and, in addition, you are bombarded with letters.

I have one case now where I am getting a letter every day from a client, sometimes two. I read them all, you know, but happily they are letters and not phone calls, so I don't hear the emotion and the tones of voice, the other emotional factors which really, if you are not steeled to it, can really upset you.

Q - Let's deal with that for a moment. As a practitioner, how does the role of a matrimonial lawyer differ from that, let's say, of a corporate practitioner, particularly with respect to responding to client requests or demands and whatever else?

A - The demands for responses are much more intense. With a corporate lawyer, in the years following my leaving Freeport to go to the City, I did primarily corporate work. You would get an occasional phone call on a business matter and you deal with it and that's it.

With matrimonial cases, you get calls over and over again. The same questions are asked all the time. It is not unusual to get a phone call in the morning and you give the answer, and the next day you get a phone call with the same question in different wording, and you give the same answer in different wording, and the next day you get another call, and then in the afternoon you get another call to explain what you meant this morning.

It is a very grueling time-consuming emotionally devastating kind of practice. It takes a lot of years to get tough-skinned to know how to handle it and to be able to recognize the calls for what they are, and most of these calls are not to get information, they are really to have a listener and to have a client get from you what they want to hear, and often you cannot tell them what they want to hear because it would not be truthful, so you have to caption your answer in a way that will placate the client and not antagonize the client.

It is extraordinarily difficult to deal with these phone calls and inquiries. It is far more difficult than dealing with the straight practice of law in terms of writing papers and preparing cases for court and that sort of thing. That is predominantly the time consuming factor, especially in private practice, single practitioner.