What do You Want? Your Legal Goals

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Summary

If you want something from somebody else, meaning you are plaintiff, you get what you want either by persuading the other side to voluntarily do what you want or by winning a lawsuit and enforcing that judgment.

Details

When doing an intake, meaning a conversation with a prospective client to see if that prospective client wants to hire me and pay me money for legal services to attempt to help attempt the prospective client meet their legal goal, I will sometimes ask near the start of the conversation, what do you want?

Answers like - (i) get money; (ii) get the tenant to move out of my property; (iii) get the other person to stay away from me; (iii) to get property from the trust; (iv) defend a lawsuit and either minimize what I pay or pay nothing; (iv) get a default set aside; (v) force someone who promised to sell property to me to actually sell me the property; (vi) get out of owning property with another person or other people; (vii) draft a trust, contract or settlement agreement; (viii) represent me during an investigation - are great answers! I provide services to help achieve those goals.

Answers like - (i) get justice, (ii) cover my bases; (iii) protect my interests; (iv) prevent me from from making mistakes; (v) prevent me from being - may be great answers, but the don’t help me. I do not provide those legal services, and I wonder if anyone does.

Defining your legal goals in terms of tangible, measurable and demonstrable outcomes that the legal system makes possible is extremely useful for many reasons.

One, defining your legal goals in terms of tangible, measurable and demonstrable outcomes is the single best first step to determining the specific services and scope of an attorney-client agreement.

Two, defining your legal goals in terms of tangible, measurable and demonstrable outcomes is the single best first step to preventing unrealistic and mismatched expectations in an attorney-client agreement.

Three, defining your legal goals in terms of tangible, measurable and demonstrable outcomes is the single best first step to determining the specific procedures, documents, communications and other critically important decisions required to start to achieve those goals.

So, it is highly advisable and beneficial for a prospective client to be able to determine his or her legal objectives as soon as possible.

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