More on Listening

Further to yesterday's post, Blawgletter talks about streamlining litigation. The context is business litigation, but the concept is the same: don't just do what you've always done before. Listen carefully to what you client is saying (and what he or she is not saying), and determine what they want. Then craft your litigation plan to achieve the result as quickly and efficiently as possible.

In the context of trusts and estate litigation, this may mean restructuring a trust document to allow family members to receive something where they were originally omitted as beneficiaries. At the Alameda County Bar Association Estate Planning Committee meeting I attended yesterday, the topic drifted to trust litigation. An attorney had a client who was a beneficiary of her husband's trust (husband is still living). She was concerned that her husband's children from a previous marriage were going to challenge the trust, which did not provide anything to them. One of the attorneys suggested finding a way to restructure the trust document to include a gift to the kids, and avoid the messy and expensive litigation that is likely to occur. The kids want something because they feel left out. It might not even be that much, but you have to start by listening to them. The spouse wants to avoid litigation and confrontation with the children. What does the husband want? If he wants to make his wife happy (which presumably does, and is why he is giving her everything), then he may be willing to listen to the options.

As litigators, it's too easy to fall back on the tools of our trade: pleadings, threatening letters and discovery, to "solve" problems. This piles up expenses and animosity and stress for our clients (and ourselves as well). Listening can avoid all this, and elevate the level of our practice.