Client-Centered Communication: How Effective Lawyering Requires Emotional Intelligence, Active Listening, and Client Choice

For the lawyer-client relationship to work effectively, lawyers need to provide clients with competent, understandable, and relevant legal advice. This proposition is so central to the lawyer's role that it is difficult to challenge. Yet, we suggest, this proposition belies the complexity of the responsibility, given the decision-making process that clients are going through (or should be going through) when deciding to litigate or to settle through negotiation or mediation. The educational literature contains much advice for lawyers on the benefits of dispute resolution processes, how to select and navigate through them, but much less on how lawyers should guide clients through a decision-making process, and what skills or competencies a lawyer may need to develop in order to effectively assist clients in that decision-making process.