Newton’s law of universal gravitation states that every mass attracts every other mass in the universe with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. I have no idea what that means. But I do know that gravity operates with remarkable consistency inside a law firm. I witnessed it many times as a young lawyer. Difficult clients had an uncanny ability to migrate downhill with seemingly unstoppable force until they eventually came to rest on my desk.

A Farmhouse and a Shotgun 

One of those gravitational events is particularly memorable. During my first year of practice, a senior partner in the firm transferred a matter to me involving a bitter property dispute between a client and his father-in-law. The partner had recently discovered that the client had a tendency toward violence and apparently concluded that the matter had reached a point in its lifecycle where gravity required it to migrate to a younger lawyer. My new client was a very large young man—about 6’5″ and 275 pounds—with a long and unpleasant history of physical confrontations with his equally large and equally volatile father-in-law. As a brand-new lawyer eager to be helpful, I allowed the client to persuade me that the best way to resolve the dispute was for the two of us to drive out to the father-in-law’s farmhouse in the country and have a calm discussion about working things out.

That is how I found myself sitting on the back deck of a rural farmhouse wearing my finest buy-one-get-one-free suit from Anderson-Little. At the time I stood just under 5’8″ and tipped the scales at 160 pounds. Across from me sat my imposing client and his very large and very angry father-in-law. It did not take long for the “discussion” to deteriorate into a full-scale fistfight between the two men. I briefly considered intervening before quickly recognizing the futility of that plan. The fight eventually subsided and the father-in-law stormed into the house. A few minutes later he reappeared holding a 12-gauge shotgun. I took that as our cue to leave. I calmly told my client to follow me immediately to the car and not say a word. The father-in-law followed us the entire way to the car with the shotgun in his hands, walking just a few steps behind us like an armed chaperone making it abundantly clear that he had no interest in settling his differences with his son-in-law that day.  I lived to practice another day.

When I think about that day 34 years later, I want to reach back in time and grab that young lawyer by the Anderson-Little lapels and shake some sense into him. What was I thinking?  Was I afraid of disappointing the partner who had assigned the case to me? Did I lack the confidence to say no to my client? Was I just too naïve to know it was a bad idea? Or did I lack the experience to suggest alternatives to the client? In truth, it was probably some combination of all those things.

As Red (played by Morgan Freeman) observed in his parole hearing in Shawshank Redemption, you can’t go back and change the past. That young lawyer is gone. All that is left is this older lawyer with a lot less hair, a few more wrinkles, and hopefully a bit more wisdom. I’m a firm believer that mistakes are nothing more than opportunities to learn. That includes your own mistakes and the mistakes of others. And so, gentle readers, I share this story and the lessons I learned from it in the hope that you won’t find yourself staring down the barrel of a 12-guage shotgun. 

Ask for Help

Much of my error in judgment that day on the farm can be attributed to my lack of experience. In law school, they teach you about torts, contracts, civil procedure, property law, and a whole host of other substantive practice areas. But they don’t teach you how to say no. They don’t give much, if any, instruction on how to deal with a pushy client. That is something that you must learn through experience and/or good mentoring. I didn’t have either. The partner who assigned the matter to me was glad to be rid of this client and did nothing to warn me or guide me in how to deal with this person. I assumed the partner did not want to be bothered about this client, and so, I did not ask for his advice when the client presented the hare-brained idea of meeting his volatile father-in-law in the middle of nowhere.

What should an inexperienced lawyer do in this situation? Ask for guidance. Seasoned lawyers have dealt with overbearing and domineering clients and usually know how to handle them. More often than not, they will be glad that you reached out for help. I’m sure that, if I had asked one of the partners in the firm about how to handle the situation above, they would have insisted that I stay as far away from that farm as possible. They might have suggested alternatives like pre-suit mediation or a meeting at a public place like a courthouse. 

I do not mean to imply from this story that young and inexperienced lawyers are the only ones who make these kinds of mistakes. In my 25 years of handling legal malpractice claims, I have witnessed hundreds of situations where a seasoned lawyer allowed a domineering client to cause the lawyer to make bad choices. I have seen frivolous complaints that were filed by lawyers who trusted their overly aggressive clients without an independent investigation to verify facts. That lawyer often gets caught in the crosshairs of that client when the case gets dismissed.

I have also been in numerous mediations where, as the day unfolded, it became clear that there was no factual or legal basis for the claims. In many of those situations, the problem was not a lack of intelligence or experience on the part of the lawyer, but the presence of a domineering client who had effectively taken control of the case. Rather than standing up to the client and explaining the realities of the situation, the lawyer allowed the client to continue steering the ship. A similar dynamic often appears when it becomes clear at mediation that a party has an unrealistic view of the value of the case or the strength of the defenses. When the lawyer is unwilling to push back against the client’s expectations, the mediation usually goes nowhere. The case almost always settles later, but only after both sides have incurred unnecessary fees and expenses along the way.

Another situation arises when a client equates good lawyering with maximum aggression. The client demands scorched-earth discovery, unnecessary motions, or needless fights over routine scheduling matters. The goal is not to resolve the dispute but to punish the other side. Experienced lawyers know that these tactics often backfire with judges and increase costs for everyone involved. Yet under pressure from an insistent client, some lawyers abandon their better judgment and allow the litigation to spiral into unnecessary conflict.

AI Empowered Clients

An area of growing concern involves clients who arrive armed with research generated by artificial intelligence. With easy access to generative AI platforms, some clients now believe they have acquired a working knowledge of the law after spending an evening chatting with a chatbot. By the time they walk into the lawyer’s office, they are convinced they have uncovered the perfect claim, the decisive argument, or the litigation strategy that will surely prevail. A few hours with generative AI can leave a client feeling like the modern-day reincarnation of Clarence Darrow. The danger arises when the lawyer allows that misplaced confidence to steer the representation. Instead of exercising independent professional judgment, the lawyer begins to feel pressure to pursue theories or tactics suggested by the client’s AI-generated research. Like many situations involving pushy clients, the problem is not the technology itself. The problem arises when the client starts steering the ship and the lawyer forgets that the responsibility for legal judgment still rests firmly at the lawyer’s helm.

Fortunately, the Rules of Professional Conduct provide guidance about how authority is supposed to be divided between a lawyer and a client. Rule 1.2 explains that a lawyer must abide by the client’s decisions regarding the objectives of the representation. Clients get to decide the big-picture questions. They decide whether to file a lawsuit, whether to accept or reject a settlement, and in criminal matters whether to enter a plea, waive a jury trial, or testify. Those decisions ultimately belong to the client because the consequences of those choices fall on the client’s shoulders.

But Rule 1.2 does not turn the lawyer into a hired gun whose job is simply to carry out whatever strategy the client demands. The rule makes clear that lawyers retain authority over the means by which the client’s objectives are pursued. That includes matters of legal strategy, professional judgment, and compliance with the law and ethical rules. Lawyers are not required to file claims that lack merit, pursue tactics that violate professional obligations, or adopt strategies that are unwise or improper simply because a client insists upon them.

In other words, the lawyer is not just the driver of the car. The lawyer is also the navigator. Clients decide where they want to go. Lawyers are responsible for deciding how to get there. When a domineering client grabs the steering wheel and the lawyer quietly moves into the passenger seat, the results are rarely good for anyone involved.

We’re Not Doing That

Looking back on that day on the farmhouse deck all those years ago, the real mistake was not simply agreeing to meet a volatile father-in-law in the middle of nowhere. The real mistake was forgetting that I was supposed to be exercising independent professional judgment instead of simply following the client’s lead. Pushy clients will always exist. They existed long before generative AI and they will continue to appear in law offices for years to come. The lawyer’s job is not to eliminate those clients. The lawyer’s job is to manage them. 

And sometimes that management begins with five of the most important words a lawyer can learn to say, “No, we’re not doing that.”