Some people don’t like lawyers. When we parse words, say we didn’t mean what we said, play games to prove we were right or get out of something we said we would do. . . it drives them crazy.
It’s hard to blame them. When it comes to words, we’re tricky.
We choose our words carefully because that’s how we protect our clients and ourselves. We hide behind our words because we don’t want to reveal what we really think or how much our client is willing to accept.
We’re notorious for being hard to read and hard to pin down.
But we need to know when to turn it off.
When we speak with a client or prospect (or a friend), ambiguous language and exploiting loopholes is off-putting, frustrating and breeds mistrust.
We may win a lot of battles with our clever ways but in the end, we lose more than we’ve won.
If we want people to like and trust us, hire us, and stay friends with us, we need to speak clearly and plainly. No loopholes, no footnotes, no arguments preserved for appeal.
How do we do this? I’ll let you know when I figure it out.
How to get referrals from other lawyers
