There is a famous line in the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke, “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” Such failures shouldn’t occur in attorney/client relationships.
This issue came to my attention during a trip to another jurisdiction over the recent holidays. That jurisdiction will remain unnamed except that I will state that it does not adjoin Illinois. In conversations with relatives and a client who relocated there I heard stories of missed statutes of limitations and unreturned telephone calls. While, in the latter case, the only harm done was that a lawyer lost a prospective client, in the former case, the facts may have rose to the level of malpractice.
So here are some practice pointers regarding attorney/client communication.
When I send out documents, such as trademark registrations or other documents that have to be renewed a number of years hence, I usually advise my clients to calendar those events. Of course, I maintain a calendar and timely remind my clients when those documents have to be renewed or maintained, but those events may not occur for another decade; e.g. in the case of trademark renewals. A lot can happen in a decade; clients can relocate, attorneys may relocate, their practices may be merged or sold and so it is important that both parties keep records of those dates. Nowadays, keeping a calendar is easy…while there are numerous specialized products for attorneys to use for this; on the client side, Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar are easily available. And if you are going to set up a reminder for a deadline, give yourself at least 30 days warning.
On the attorney side, a lawyer should get back to you within 72 hours, with reasonable exceptions, e.g. if he or she is in hospital, there is an illness or death in the family or the lawyer is climbing Mount Everest or canoeing the Boundary Waters. That may seem like a high standard but with the invention of the smartphone and tablet, it’s not an unachievable one. Now, the expectation here is not that the attorney, who is on a family vacation to Disney World, for example, will render a ten page legal opinion while sitting by the pool but the attorney can shoot out an e-mail letting the client know that he is with the family at Disney World and will get back to the client in 2-3 days when he or she returns to the office or will have an associate resolve the matter. And sometimes emergencies come up that must be handled quickly when an attorney is away. When a client receives a letter, for example, accusing it of trademark infringement, the attorney should (a) reassure the client ASAP and (b) write the other side advising it that you are out of the office and will attend to the matter as soon as you return. Similarly, if a media outlet contacts you with questions about a client, not responding promptly is likely to invite more questions about that client. And then, there are some instances when, for example, you are trying to settle a trademark infringement matter before a complaint is imminently filed against your client, when despite the best laid vacation plans, you find yourself pulling off the road frequently to e-mail responses back and forth. Sometimes substantive questions arise that can be answered relatively easily, in twenty minutes or so, so if I’m sitting in an airport lounge or in a hotel room, I find that, if at all possible, it is better practice to answer the question then rather than write that I’m on vacation and will answer the question when I return.
Clients need to know that there are some limitations to this. If a client wants more than a few paragraphs drawn up or an infringement opinion drafted, the attorney is not going to be able to do it from the side of a road or while waiting for his or her flight to take off. However, with the cloud and a good Internet connection he or she may still be able to give the client a sample agreement to review for discussion even when on the road.
So with a little conscientiousness on the part of the lawyer and some calendaring by the lawyer (and client) there should never be a failure to communicate. And if you don’t hear from your lawyer in a couple of weeks ring him or her up. Cell phones can still make calls and a telephone message will never be routed to your spam box or buried amid the 100 emails one gets a day.
