McDERMOTT & McDERMOTT, LTD. MISSION STATEMENT – ATTAINING CLIENT TRUST VIA THE “GOLDEN RULE”
Throughout this Firm’s years of providing of services to its Clients, its Founders
(David and Deborah McDermott) either led the Firm’s legal team or actively participated in ensuring that the Firm’s MISSION was attained, i.e., attaining Client trust by not just by providing excellent service, but providing legal services in a way that achieved the Clients’ objectives as an honest, hard-working alter ego of each Client. Put another way, the path taken by our Firm in attaining Client “Trust” is by providing legal services as if we lawyers were the ones in need of the service. We follow the Golden Rule as espoused by Socrates (Dictes and Sayenges of the Philosophirs, 1477) “Do to others as thou wouldst they should do to thee, and do to none other but as thou wouldst be done to,” or [modernized shorthand]“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
In today’s current socio-economic sector, every service provider, company and/or corporation TELLS you repeatedly that you will get or are getting or got excellent service and they then expect you to believe this, but have you ever stopped to think about what YOU REALLY believe “excellent service” to be? Let’s look at a service provider you are definitely familiar with – the waitstaff/servers at restaurants you frequent. What do YOU want from this service provider (waiter/waitress)? First, you generally do not want to wait too long after sitting down for your server to come to your table. When they do come, a smile would be nice, followed by eye contact and a warm “hello”. Next, you want your server to get your drink order and ask if you are on any timetable by which you may need to be finished with your meal. You want your server to get your order correct; ask if there are any special instructions they should be aware of with respect to your order; bring your order to you within a reasonable period; and if that doesn’t happen, to apologize and give a valid (truthful) reason for the delay. [Are you getting the picture here?] I could go on and on detailing the duties you know this “service provider” (waiter/waitress) SHOULD provide to you (AND VERY OFTEN FAILS TO PROVIDE), but I don’t want to unduly waste your time in making my point, which is that every service provider’s duties are multi-faceted; require a certain amount of training (depending on the type of service) and care. This care is what I call “empathy” factor – the drive of the lawyer you choose to represent (treat) you as if (s)he was the “Client” in your matter.
You may wonder why I provided the foregoing example of “waiters/waitresses” that you deal with repeatedly in everyday life. Doctors and Lawyers are quintessential “service providers”. If you need to hire a lawyer and have never done this before, you may find the process overwhelming because unlike “you” being in charge of a waiter, most people are intimidated by and/or take instructions and directions from their lawyer (as they would from their doctor) and don’t quite know what to expect in that interactive process. Unfortunately, all too many lawyers and doctors often distance themselves from their Clients’ (patients’) situations and deal with their Clients (patients) as it conveniences their schedules and wishes. By way of examples, they may make you wait inordinate amounts of time before meeting with you (and never apologizing); not answer your calls; reschedule your appointments for reasons they never provide you; forget something important that you told or asked them to do; have their office staff insist upon calling them “doctor” (“the doctor will see you now”) or “attorney”– in other words, not treat you in the manner in which they themselves would like to be treated if the situations were reversed.
I’ll provide you with a “real-life example” of a Client that was referred to me by her Church. She (we’ll call her “Tammy”) was a 43-year-old mother of three teenagers (13, 15 & 16); a single parent receiving no support from the father’s children and injured herself (back and torn meniscus/knee) at work in March of 2013. The Workers’ Compensation Act states that the Employer MUST (with very few exceptions) pay all accident-related medical expenses and TTD (disability benefits) during the period when the Employee is totally disabled and not able to return to work. Tammy was totally disabled and not able to return to work and needed eighteen (18) months to recuperate. She could work no other job during that time because of her injuries and did not receive ANY money from her employer or its Workers’ Compensation carrier for these 18 months; got evicted and had to beg others (including her Church) for a place to stay and help to put food on the table for herself and her children.
“Tammy was represented by an attorney who had been referred to her by a friend. The employer failed to pay her medical bills; shut off her TTD, and she had no other income after the third month after her injury. Her attorney never filed the necessary paperwork to get her TTD reinstated, nor did he file to get her hospital bills paid. All he did (after she no longer had any money to pay for food, rent, or her other bills) was tell her to be at the Commission (Court) each date it was up for status. Nothing happened on all the status dates except that (each time) she had to find the money to take a train to Chicago, then bus (round trip), to the Commission, where she just sat all day, waiting for her lawyer to finally tell her what to do (which always was simply to come back on the next status date); and every date except for the last was to tell her to go home, and he would get yet another court date, to see if the claim could be settled. When the claim finally settled, it was settled for $21,200, and he (her lawyer) took $4,240 from Tammy for his fees, a loan processing fee ($100) for her to borrow money against her case proceeds at the rate of thirty-six percent (36%) per annum and various other “expenses” amounting to $6,312.99!! In addition to these “expenses”, Tammy had to pay back $1,500 to Public Aid and $8,000 on her outstanding loans. The amount Tammy received from the $21,200 settlement was $2,793.37. When I asked her why she had taken this amount for the settlement, she said she had repeatedly called him (he never took her calls or returned them), left messages asking him to call her back (this was before she was told the case had been settled), until the very morning she went to Chicago on the last status date. On June 15, 2015, he presented her with a Settlement Contract; told he had gotten $21,200 as a settlement offer which both he and the opposing lawyer had already signed. On the back page of the Contract, she saw: “Amount Employee will receive: $15,036.98”. She did NOT receive her money on that day because he told her he had to get her Contract “approved by the Arbitrator” and then he would receive the check, put it into his “trust account” and thereafter (after the $21,200 check cleared) he could give Tammy her money. On September 11, 2015 (87 days after she signed the Contract) she had to go to her lawyer’s office to sign a “distribution statement” that he had prepared, showing that she was to receive only $2,793.37 instead of the $15,036.98 she thought she was to receive. When she asked him why her amount of the settlement was so different and so low, he said: “You agreed to settle the case for $21,200 – this is what the net proceeds of this settlement are, after all the expenses and other deductions have been made against it.” When she argued “this amount is too low”, he told her that was all she would get because all the other amounts had to be paid out of the settlement “and if you don’t agree, I can’t give you your check today; if you do, you will finally get your money, and this matter will be closed.”
How did these “bad” things happen to this Client? The main reason is that her lawyer failed to have empathy for this Client. Many lawyers fail to have empathy and/or care about the injuries enough while they are handling a claim. Many of them think of their work as a 9 – 5 “job”, instead of an honorable “vocation”, requiring a “special commitment” called “empathy”. While at first blush this may sound odd, nevertheless, for some lawyers, it is true. For instance, some lawyers have a heavy caseload and fail to properly prepare their case or listen attentively to your actual injuries or simply are not willing to work hard (“9 – 5” lawyers) to obtain the very best outcome for your claim. This story is NOT, by any means, the worst case of representation by a lawyer in handling a legal matter – there are too great a number of cases where lawyers fail to file cases, take Clients’ money, don’t show up for Court cases when you are told to be there, don’t return calls, etc.
Many people, unfortunately, take the advice of a friend who says: “Go see my lawyer, he did a good job for me.” Many times, this friend used the lawyer for a Will or divorce or traffic ticket… but NOT the type of case you need the lawyer for, such as personal injury. In this instance, you may find out the hard way (if the referred lawyer lacks the necessary education, experience and/or empathy) that you should have chosen a lawyer whose practice concentrated in personal injuries. The outcome of your case and the experiences YOU HAVE while your case is being handled by an attorney can be VERY different from one lawyer to another, depending upon your choice of lawyer. A lawyer’s education and experience are NOT the sole important criteria in your choice of an attorney to represent you in your injury claim. There is an overwhelmingly significant element you want to receive from the lawyer you choose, which is almost impossible to know in advance – EMPATHY.
Merriam Webster defines “empathy” as: “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts and experiences of another...”. Coming full circle to the beginning: “How can you (a prospective Client) hope to find an attorney – one who cares about you and your case/claim; will honestly pursue your best interests timely with respect, honesty and empathy? There is no “exact” way the internet or even a personal consultation can assure you of making a good choice. There are some “core” attributes you should look to in making this choice, however. We believe in our MISSION STATEMENT, i.e., attaining Client trust, not just by providing excellent service, but by providing legal services in a way that achieves the Clients’ objectives as an honest, hard-working alter ego of each Client. Put another way, the path taken by our Firm in attaining Client “Trust” is by providing legal services as if we lawyers were the ones in need of the service. While our MISSION STATEMENT does not specifically mention “Education, Experiences or Empathy” as factors needed in providing qualitative service, we nevertheless believe these ”core” factors are all embodied within the concept of our “Golden Rule” (“EMPATHY” being the one almost always overlooked), and we follow this Golden Rule at our Firm by delivering to you significant amounts of all three factors.