Person of Significance

I am a plaintiff’s personal-injury attorney. The “personal” part of the description became readily apparent to me last week — as if seeing a house on a block for the first time, even though it had always been there.

Our firm spent the last few weeks preparing for mediation in which the plaintiff, our client, had her life turned upside down in a matter of minutes.

Here, the mediation became a substitute for a trial. The history behind this case was plentiful, which in many ways would have made for an interesting trial. It had been set to begin in court over the winter, and we spent many intense months preparing to try the case when, a week before trial, the date was continued.

The disappointment in being a week away from trial and having that stripped away was a blow on so many levels. It was like watching an action movie and the director yelling “cut” just when the high point was about to be shown.

In reality, nothing could compare to having to tell our client that the case was going to be delayed.

Again. While we, the lawyers, were preparing the case, our client — who had lived with the events for nearly five years — was mentally gearing up for not only testimony before a jury, but the entire day-to-day process of listening to other people tell her story.

I can only guess at the psychological preparation a client has to go through when they have undergone a traumatic event which leads to their involvement in a lawsuit.

We, as trial lawyers, know what it is like to live with a case for years, but I know the “living” with a case for a client stems from an entirely different outlook. Finally getting to a trial for a client is cathartic because win or lose, the lawsuit finally has an end. It is the day when you don’t wake up with a lawsuit that’s consumed your life for years that brings a release only your client can describe.

We all know how involved trials can be and the workup of a case to get it to trial. There are checklists we go through. We engage in rigorous discovery practice, motion battles and pretrial preparation. Once we get to the trial phase, the courtroom battles ensue. Miniconflicts over jury instructions, motions in limine, objections during openings, directs, crosses and sidebars — all normal events during a trial. These are hurdles a trial lawyer has to face in order to present their clients’ cases to a jury.

What isn’t so clear to us is the checklist a client goes through to prepare for depositions, settlement conferences, mediations trials and a client’s other involvement in a lawsuit. We don’t see the client every day and we normally don’t get to hear about how they really feel about their case, unless we are lucky enough to get frankness and candidness from them.

Also, in many ways, lawyers don’t always think about the client’s perspective when preparing and working up cases. We analyze, strategize and form plans. How a client is coping with the day-to-day effects of what brought them to our door in the first place is less thought about.

We may forget that, at the end of the road, the events leading up to the case you are so actively involved in belongs to a person. A person who has had something traumatic happen to them or a family member, yet has very little involvement in the legal battles which will ultimately determine and affect their lives.

We pick up and move on to the next battle, the next client who needs our help, but the client still lives with the trauma.

As I sat through the mediation last week, it struck me that the mediation was just as, if not more, important to the client than a trial. Although not formal like a trial, it is still monumental for the client, as they have to mentally be prepared to settle the case or walk away from a potential offer.

Mediations are also, in a way, more significant to the client in that they may view it as a sign that the person or company they believe harmed them or caused them pain is coming to the table and maybe silently acknowledging fault.

A trial may not have the same effect because it is less personal than the mediation format.

It became very personal for me when I looked over at our client, who after a tense introduction by the parties, openly shed tears as she thanked _everyone for coming.

I won’t ever forget that being a personal-injury attorney means not only representing your client to the best of your ability and being a strong advocate, but also that each case we work on has very real personal and significant meaning to our client — and we should never take that lightly or treat it as an afterthought.

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