How to deal with difficult clients in a legal practice

Any business that deals with customers will have its share of difficult clients.  Legal practices are not exempt from this rule, in fact, they may see more than most as legal proceedings can be emotional for clients. 

Difficult clients can adversely affect your practice, by wasting valuable time and resources, giving your practice a bad reputation, or even just being emotionally draining for you and your team.  This is why it is important to be able to deal with difficult clients, as dealing with them can minimise their impact on your practice and reduce any stress they place on you and your team.  Dealing with difficult clients also demonstrates your practice’s customer service, and can help you retain customers, and generate positive reviews for your practice.

It is clear that dealing with difficult clients is important both for your practice, and the well-being of your team.  That is why we decided to take a look at the best strategies for dealing with difficult clients.  

How to identify difficult clients

Before we look at how to deal with difficult clients, let's first take a look at how you can identify a difficult client.  Broadly speaking a difficult client is any client that has a negative effect on your practice.  Examples of difficult client behaviour can include the following:

• Being disrespectful or rude to you or your staff;
• Not responding to your attempts to contact them;
• Not keeping appointments;
• Believe they know better than you in your profession;
• Unrealistic expectations or deadlines;
• Indecisiveness; and
• Failure to pay.

These are just some examples of the behaviours of difficult clients.  Unfortunately, we can’t cover every possible scenario.  This should however give you a general idea of what a difficult client looks like.

How to deal with a difficult client

Now that you know how to identify a difficult client, we can look at how to deal with them.  Broadly speaking there are three important skills for dealing with difficult clients.  These skills are as follows:

• Patience:  When dealing with a difficult client patience is one of the most important skills you will need, as it allows you to remain calm and professional.
• Communication skills:  This involves both listening skills and your ability to convey ideas effectively, as miscommunication is never helpful when dealing with difficult clients.
• Conflict resolution skills:  This helps you deal with difficult clients as you can find favourable and acceptable solutions to the client's, and your, concerns.

These skills are vital in dealing with difficult clients and beneficial for anyone working in client services.  It is advised to cultivate these skills in yourself as they will assist you in dealing with clients in your legal practice.

8 Steps to deal with a difficult client

Now that you know what skills are most important for dealing with difficult clients, we can take a look at how to apply these skills.  These 8 steps provide one of the best strategies, to help you deal with a difficult client effectively.

1. Stay calm

No matter how your customer misbehaves, you must remain patient and calm.  Maintaining a calm demeanour allows you to remain professional, express yourself clearly, and provide a positive example to others.  This can improve your reputation and it helps you to not escalate the situation, as a disgruntled client will only become angrier if they are met with anger.

2. Document everything

While a written contract that clearly defines both your client’s and your responsibilities when working together can help prevent misunderstandings, they can still occur.  That is why it is important to document every interaction with a difficult client.  This includes all communications or meetings, with times, dates, and subject matter.  This will prevent any he said, she said disputes later and provides material that can be referenced if needed.

3. Prompt replies

When dealing with any client, but especially clients expressing an issue, it is important to reply to them quickly.  Prompt replies help to establish a clear line of communication and make the client feel validated.  At this stage replying is not about immediately solving the issue, but you should show commitment to helping the client.  Informing them that you will look into the issue, or trying to arrange a meeting with the client to discuss the issue is a great way to show that you want to help.

4. Actively listen to clients

Part of good communication skills is active listening.  This involves listening to the client's concerns, and complaints without becoming defensive and without interruption, while showing them that you share their concerns and want to find a solution.  This will make the client feel understood, and listened to, which is sometimes enough to calm a difficult client.  Active listening involves repeating statements back to clients to ensure understanding, asking follow-up questions and acknowledging that you hear and understand the client.

5. Problem identification

The first step to solving any problem is to clearly identify what the problem is.  This remains true when dealing with difficult clients.  It is important to take a close look at the problem and what caused it.  A problem can sometimes result from a simple miscommunication or unrealistic expectations that were never met.

6. Provide a solution

Once you have identified the problem the next step is to provide a possible solution.  It is important to note here that there is a difference between difficult clients and unhappy clients.  If the problem your client has is due to something you or your team did wrong, it is important to take responsibility and offer a solution to fix the problem.

However, if the fault is from the client miscommunicating or misunderstanding something it can help to gently correct them with the help of relevant information.  It is important to not blame the client directly. Instead, state the problem arose from a miscommunication, as assigning blame can make the client defensive.

7. Walk away

You should always try to resolve a client's problem to preserve your professional reputation.  However, some difficult clients will frequently produce problems, at which point it can be better to terminate your professional relationship with the client.  As further dealings would incur costs of time and resources to meet their demands, that can impact the profitability of your practice.  Sometimes terminating the client relationship is the best solution.

8. Review

While nobody likes a difficult client, they can help us improve.  That is why no matter what the outcome is with a difficult client it is important to review what happened.  This can help you identify why the problem occurred and see if you can improve your processes to avoid it occurring again.  This helps to improve your practice and reduce the number of problems you have with clients in the future.

Conclusion

We hope these steps have shown you how to deal with difficult clients effectively. While it isn’t foolproof, and some clients will still be difficult regardless, these steps provide a good guideline to address any issues that may arise.

Additionally, improving your communication skills can really help you not only to deal with clients but communicate effectively in all areas of your work.

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