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| Harjot Atwal |
I recently saw something on LinkedIn that goes like this: If you have had $86,400 in your bank account and someone stole $10 from you, then would you throw away the remaining $86,390? No, you wouldn’t. So, given that there are 86,400 seconds in a day, would you let someone annoying you for 10 seconds lead you to throw away the remainder? Instead, you should focus on the bright moments and celebrate your day.
Easier said than done! Firstly, I like to think I am a pretty patient guy, and I make a point of being so with my clients. If someone gets to the point where they are annoying me, you can bet they spent more than 10 seconds pulling off that trick.
For example, my mom referred me to almost all of her mortgage files from her financial services company, and we were just talking about a married couple who fired her but kept me on as the lawyer for their transaction. Personally, I don’t have an issue with the married couple, but I was reflecting with her about how it is annoying that the clients who get under our skin are the ones we tend to think about the most.
Why can’t I focus on the clients who go out of their way to say “thank you” to me? For instance, when I was really annoyed yesterday, why did I fantasize about getting this “Certificate for Not Losing Your [Sanity]” printed in colour and framed after I signed and dated it (and even went so far as to erase the reference to “dad” in Adobe Photoshop so it is ready to go)? I imagined hanging it on the wall behind my desk, and maybe filming a mock video of someone presenting it to me and posting it to LinkedIn.
I don’t know what the answer is with respect to focusing my mind on my many awesome clients. Maybe I need to start keeping a journal of clients with whom I have positive experiences and refer to it when I am annoyed, rather than engaging in dark, sarcastic humour. But that more positive coping mechanism is for another day. Today, I feel like venting. Why? Because sometimes it’s cathartic. It helps one to cope by trying to find the “funny” in a situation. So, I’m going to come up with a few different categories of clients that amuse me, which I know will continue to recur. Two additional articles on this theme will follow.
The fee-sensitive client who later appreciates quality customer service
I’m going to start with this one because it is the reverse of the above situation: The client who kept working with my mom but fired me.
Now, I charge for the work I do. If there is extra work that needs to be done to close a transaction, I charge for it. They’re not ludicrous amounts! I don’t even charge by the billable hour, and I know I don’t work on Bay Street. I charge (what I think are) reasonable flat fees.
Most of my clients don’t have an issue with what I charge them. They appreciate the fact that I give them my cellphone number, pick up their calls or call them back right away (sometimes well into the evening), text them in addition to emailing them upon request (so they don’t miss anything and can respond more quickly), save them time on their commutes if they are comfortable with DocuSign, Zoom and Treefort ID verification, sometimes close their transactions even though I receive mortgage instructions the night before the closing day (and have to scramble to get everything done), do everything from start to finish myself since I don’t have employees, have years of experience doing all of the above, and more generally do absolutely everything I can to ensure their transaction closes as smoothly as possible.
The fee-sensitive client enjoyed all of these attributes of my service. He even went so far as to say something like I am “one of the best lawyers ever” and that he would be recommending my legal services to anyone he knew. However, there were so many last-minute issues with his transaction that he didn’t fully pay attention to the numbers involved, specifically those involving my invoice for services rendered. When he realized what the amount was after closing, and even though I had given him a discount on the final bill without being prompted, he insisted to my mom he was going to use a different lawyer.
I even found a way to save him over $3,000 on his transaction, but he no longer cared about that. His whole demeanour and attitude toward me changed. He told my mom he was using a different lawyer for his next transaction, which was closing in a few weeks, and that was final! Personally, I was a bit relieved when this occurred. While I like being responsive to phone calls, I only have so much time to spend on the phone per day, especially when I have to actually get to the part where I do all the stuff necessary to close his transaction (and given that I have other files and clients to whom I have to devote my attention as well).
After his next closing, he told my mom he regretted going with a different lawyer. Apparently, that other lawyer only ended up charging him a few hundred dollars less than I did. But, the kicker was that he couldn’t get the new lawyer on the phone very much at all. He exclaimed, “The new guy isn’t responsive. I have no idea what’s going on with my deal!”
The next time he saw me in the office, he was all smiley and complimentary again. I joked with him a bit and smiled back, of course, but probably for a slightly different reason.
This is the first instalment of a three-part series.
Harjot Atwal is a real estate lawyer. In 2023, he opened up his own shop, Atwal Law Firm. You can reach him via email at harjot@atwallawfirm.ca, by phone at 905-264-8926 or on LinkedIn.
The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the views of the author’s firm, its clients, Law360 Canada, LexisNexis Canada or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.
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