Oct. 19, 2022 – The most unusual exit of Jessica Kramer’s 13-year legal career came after a former acquaintance sought her out for advice.

At first Kramer, who practices at Kramer, Elkins and Watt, LLC in Madison, didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. But she came to suspect that the acquaintance’s motives for getting in touch went beyond the need for legal representation.

“That’s where I started saying I was unavailable and another lawyer can help you, and he would make excuses and insist that it be me,” Kramer said.

“At one point, he showed up at our office without an appointment. It was almost like he was trying to catch me and he wouldn’t leave. I ended up leaving the office through the fire exit.”

Panel on Problem Clients

Kramer is one of three presenters for ​a panel at the State Bar of Wisconsin’s Solo and Small-firm Conference entitled “Staying Safe: De-Escalating Difficult People and Securing Your Office.”

The conference is scheduled to take place Oct. 27-29 at Kalahari Resort in Wisconsin Dells, with a virtual replay scheduled for Nov. 14-16.

Kramer and the other panelists – including a taekwondo instructor – will discuss best practices for defusing tense situations with clients and recognizing behavioral red flags.

The panelists will also touch on the ethical issues raised when lawyers are forced to deal with difficult people, including declining representation and terminating the attorney-client relationship.

Mathiam Mbow, the taekwondo instructor, will discuss how to improve security in office spaces. He’ll also give tips on reading body language and how to protect one’s self.

Ire from Opposing Clients

When in doubt, lawyers should trust their intuition, says Jessica Kramer, one of three presenters for a panel at the State Bar of Wisconsin’s Solo and Small-firm Conference entitled “Staying Safe: De-Escalating Difficult People and Securing Your Office.”

Dealing with difficult clients and other people isn’t just the stuff of legal ethics hypotheticals. All too often, it can have serious real-world consequences.

According to the National Safety Council, workplace assaults in 2020 led to 20,050 injuries and 392 deaths, good enough to make assault the fifth-leading cause of workplace deaths that year.

Thankfully, Kramer’s fire-escape exit was a one-time event. But because she represents landlords exclusively, Kramer said she’s occasionally been the target of an evicted tenant’s ire.

She’s never been threatened, Kramer said. But she has heard unkind words from tenants in the courthouse hallway, restroom, and elevator.

“They see me as a person that takes that roof away from over their head,” Kramer said.

Out of an abundance of caution, Kramer removed her information from Access Dane, the website where county property tax assessment records are available to the public.

“In this day and age, it’s virtually impossible to completely hide because there are so many places where your information is out there, but I figured the county website is one reliable way for people to get addresses,” Kramer said.

Risk Varies by Practice

Because she practices landlord-tenant law, Kramer is largely insulated from the types of difficult client and witness interactions faced by criminal defense lawyers and lawyers who handle family law. Working in a law firm in the state’s second-largest city acts as an added bulwark, she said.

“If there are red flags in what the person is saying or how they’re acting, it never gets to me,” Kramer said. “A paralegal does the intake and they might be able to warn us of these red flags and we can make the decision ‘This person is not someone we want to take as a client.’”

What are some of the red flags? Kramer cites several, such as a client or would-be client calling or coming into the office for no reason or insisting on working with a specific lawyer.

Angry outbursts are another red flag, Kramer said.

“When a client or opposing party or witness becomes emotional in a way that puts you or your staff in an unsafe situation, it’s important to be prepared for a worse-case scenario,” Kramer said.

When in doubt, Kramer said, lawyers should trust their intuition. Kramer cites her experience with that former acquaintance, who insisted on working with Kramer even though one of her partners had experience in the practice area for which the acquaintance needed help.

“I had a gut feeling that this was creepy, that this doesn’t feel right,” Kramer said.

No Filter in Florence

Lawyers with more general practices, and those who practice alone or in small firms – especially in less densely populated areas – often find themselves dealing more directly with difficult people.

Greg Seibold, one of Kramer’s co-panelists, is a solo practitioner with offices in Florence, located in far northeastern Wisconsin, and Iron Mountain, Mich. Like most small-town solos, Seibold practices in a variety of areas, including criminal law, civil litigation, business law, and real estate law.

“You’ve got to avoid getting spread too thin because you have to be competent, but you also have to practice in multiple areas up here if you want to make a living,” Seibold said.

Seibold handles client interactions himself, having dispatched with an assistant several years ago.

“I don’t have somebody filtering potential clients for me,” Seibold said.

Seibold said he’s experienced a variety of difficult clients and other people during his three decades as a lawyer.

“I’ve had it come in all forms,” Seibold said. “A client who thinks they know exactly how things should go and what they’re entitled to and they get very demanding and having to kind of talk them down from their perch. People who you know coming in may have a dangerous background.”

Point Them in a Different Direction

“Being the lawyer in the room, we’re always supposed to be the bigger person and we need to respond objectively when people are getting out of hand and try to talk sense in them,” says Greg Seibold, a solo practitioner with offices in Florence, located in far northeastern Wisconsin, and Iron Mountain, Mich. He one of three presenters for a panel at the State Bar of Wisconsin’s Solo and Small-firm Conference entitled “Staying Safe: De-Escalating Difficult People and Securing Your Office.”

Given his direct contact with potential clients, Seibold has to be mindful of ethics rules while maintaining a firm but polite communication style. Sometimes, he said, that means he has to listen to someone he realizes early on that he won’t represent.

“Just because I answer the phone and talk to you about your matter doesn’t mean that I’m obligated to represent you,” Seibold said.

Seibold said he has a rule against giving legal advice over the phone, even if he thinks he’ll be able to represent the person.

“If you start talking to them about a potential matter that they want you to represent them on, they may divulge facts that could give rise to a conflict if you got a call from somebody related to the same matter,” Seibold said.

Seibold said he always declines representation in writing. But he said he tries to include a referral in the writing.

“I want to make sure that if I decline to represent them, I either give them another lawyer’s name or another resource that might be able to help them before ending the conversation, because think we are sort of obligated to point them in another direction if we can,” Seibold said.

‘I Told You So’

For Seibold, some of the most frustrating clients aren’t the ones who won’t take ‘No’ for answer, but those who won’t take ‘Yes’ for an answer – specifically, criminal clients who turn down legitimate plea offers.

“I may know that this is the best offer they’re going to get, and I can have a really good idea what the odds are if we take it to trial, and I tell the client ‘I can be Clarence Darrow, and you’re still going to lose if you take it to trial,’ and they insist that they’re not going to accept the plea,” Seibold said. “And you’re obligated to take it to trial and very often it’s an ‘I told you so’ situation.’”

The best he can do in those situations, Seibold said, is reason with the client.

“I try to find the fallacy in their reasoning and educate them about that fallacy, and help them understand why I’m saying what I’m saying, and how it leads to the conclusion that I’m saying,” Seibold said.

‘We’re Supposed to be the Bigger Person’

When dealing with difficult clients, Seibold said he steers by the light of his ethical obligations.

“Being the lawyer in the room, we’re always supposed to be the bigger person and we need to respond objectively when people are getting out of hand and try to talk sense in them,” Seibold said.

Kramer said she deals with difficult clients by remaining focused on the task at hand.

“I ask myself, ‘What is the job I’m doing in this case?’” Kramer said. “They’re making it personal – I need to not make it personal.”