Lawyers need to be one up from call centres

“Can’t you take a call now?” I wrote. I figured if the lawyer was responding to emails, we could also talk on the phone.

“No. I need to set a time in order to manage my day.”

How do you manage a day, I wondered? How do you even manage a call when you don’t know how long it will last? You can’t set times for the next call or meeting – only by guessing at the length of the call you’ve booked. That’s hardly management – more clairvoyance.

(As an aside, I use the telephone in what is now an unusual way. If it rings, I answer it. If there’s a person on the other end, I speak to that person. If there’s a voicemail, I respond to the voicemail. Old-fashioned, I guess.)

Nonetheless, I gave the lawyer a few times. I called at the exact time picked. I asked my question. I received an answer. I thanked the lawyer. The lawyer seemed put off.

“Is that it?” I was asked.

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“Yup,” I said, adding that we used four emails to set up a 45-second call. The emails took more time than the call.

There’s always a contest among professionals about whose time is more valuable – lawyers, planners, architects, engineers, and so on. My take is that I bill in six-minute increments, as do many other professionals. In billable time, this call cost me four or five times more to schedule than it took to ask the lawyer a question and receive an answer on the phone. If the lawyer charged me for the email exchanges, I’m out a significant amount.

Why not just make phone calls and be done with it? There used to be something billable called a “failed phone call”. There’s no such thing now. Leave a message and wait for a response.

Then there’s the other lawyer who tried to automate the client relationship. I wanted a simple contract between friendly parties. To sign on, I had to read pages of boilerplate about my estate, children, grandchildren, possible disputes, arbitration, mediation, and so on. I asked that these irrelevant matters be removed. I was told I had to “trust” the lawyer to have a good relationship. Why would I need a contract if all relationships were based on trust? Plus, if the lawyer didn’t trust me without signing on and a retainer, why would I trust the lawyer? For me, clarity was the issue, not trust.

I signed on after minor edits. Then I began receiving automated emails from the lawyer. The lawyer couldn’t turn them off but said I’d not be billed. Fair enough. But I can’t bill anybody for reading extraneous verbiage and multiple emails.

Here are ideas for lawyers:

1. Remember the call you may have made to a hospital trying to find out the status of a loved one. How do you feel about the never-ending recorded message about certain elevators not working, hours of operation, wearing a mask, having flu and COVID-19 shots, and so on? By the time you get to and then through the six numerical options you’re offered, you forget which one to choose.
2. Remember the time you tried to make a hotel reservation on the phone. The voice mail kept asking you to go to the web, receive a text (not possible in Canada), and continuing to ask for an “agent” or to “answer the phone” produced nothing but more recordings.
3. How about your experience with the phone company, cable company, transit company, and so on?

Here’s my big idea. Be better than a call centre. Be better than mid-level communications executives who think they can anticipate the needs of every caller.

Be better. Be professional.

Allan Bonner is a Canadian-based author, keynote speaker, and crisis management consultant.