I recently sat in a meeting with a client regarding ongoing litigation and noticed the gap that exists between lawyers and other professionals when a lawsuit is pending.
Imagine a client that is being sued for millions of dollars regarding a dispute about a construction project gone awry. The plaintiff's complaint is about 30 pages long with over 200 numbered paragraphs full of dollar amounts and references to hundreds of attached pages of exhibits. The client needs to prepare an answer to the plaintiff's complaint. He spent the first weeks/months gathering the information to respond to the complaint and now it needs to be organized and written up. But the client's project team is not composed of lawyers and they don't have experience with drafting answers to complaints. The clients have the information but the lawyers have the drafting experience. What the client needs is direction.
Tip #1: Break the complaint up into sections. Answering a complaint with hundreds of paragraphs could be overwhelming for a client. Like any other task, breaking it into smaller pieces should help. Usually there are natural section breaks in the complaint. The beginning of the complaint consists of general introductory facts about who the parties are and their relationship to one another. After that it gets more specific and if written well it will have headings for each claim with the supporting claims below. Walking a client through the different sections in the claim can make it less intimidating.
Tip #2: Show the client a sample of a reply to a complaint so that they have an idea of what you expect. It is one thing to tell a client what information you need from them but it is quite another to show them. If there is a certain format or level of detail that you require, showing them a sample will help them gear their answers to your preferred style. Be careful though, because if you show the client a completed response written by a lawyer he may try to write in that style. But you just want him to answer the complaint in plain language. The lawyers will provide the legalese.
Tip #3: Go through the first few items in each section of the complaint together. Doing this will get the ball rolling and show the client that writing a response to the complaint is not so hard. For example, you can say "Now, paragraph 15 says that you were responsible for the delays in the excavation of the site because you did not have the digger on site and ready to go. In plain English, what is your response to that? Is that an accurate description?"
Tip #4: Set deadlines. Most people like to procrastinate, usually in the face of a challenging task. It may be helpful to give the client some deadlines for providing answers to the complaint. For example, "By the end of next week I need to have the answers to the claims in paragraphs 1-50, and by the week after 51-100."
Tip #4: Set deadlines. Most people like to procrastinate, usually in the face of a challenging task. It may be helpful to give the client some deadlines for providing answers to the complaint. For example, "By the end of next week I need to have the answers to the claims in paragraphs 1-50, and by the week after 51-100."
Have other suggestions or tips for helping a client answer a complaint? Send them to me at judahqfish@gmail.com.
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