Healthy Relationship

The interviews indicated a strong consensus that legal professionals should have a healthy relationship with their client, and that this meant firms had to be client- centred. This contradicted the supposed RadicalZSausage Factory distinction, as lawyers from both sides of the spectrum espoused views such as the following:

A client-centred firm is what anybody should be.

(Shelly, solicitor, Radcliffe and Musk, INT) I think our relationship [with clients] has always been very good; the strength of this practice is that we do a lot for the client, sometimes more than we should do, offering them mints and ringing them. I think it's an approach that filters down from the partners. It's the way I've always worked and I would always teach people to do it that way as well. You don't get any extra funding, you do it because you want to.

(Nadine, partner, Swining MacSage, INT)

However, the lawyers' sentiments went beyond this professional duty and towards some degree of amity. Lawyers appeared to collapse the hierarchies that might be expected between such professionals and their criminal clientele, as in these examples:

You meet, or at least I have met, over the years I've been practising, a lot ofvery interesting people. From both sides of the fence, both criminals and other lawyers. They are charac­ters that I would not have met had I been in any other profession.

(Harold, partner, Radford Hope, INT)

What do I enjoy most about the job? I enjoy, at the moment, the contact with people... I like the unpredictability of the job: the fact that I'm dealing with people on a day-to-day basis and that these people are from all walks of life.

(Leo, senior partner, Radcliffe and Musk, INT)

The lawyers experienced their clients as rounded individuals and, resultantly, sev­eral eulogised the long-term relationships that had developed.

I think there is a difference in the relationship you build up between the police station and Magistrates' Court, which is literally a time thing. At the Magistrates' Court, you simply don't have that time because of the demands upon you whereas at the police station you don't have the time constraints. With what I do now, you get to know the clients, there's a certain amount oftime that you have to have around the police stations and make chit­chat. With 75 per cent of my clients, I know what they're about; I know how they grew up and how many kids they've got, I have that relationship with them.

(Maddie, police station clerk, Radcliffe and Musk, INT)

Though solicitors had more disparate and transient contact with clients, lawyers of all rank described the satisfaction derived from leaving a client happy. Accordingly, 29 out of the 35, from Radical and Sausage Factory alike, identified this to be impor­tant, as in the following:

It can be a very satisfying job - to see the gratitude of a client when you've done well for them. Some of these clients, you get to know them, long-term thing, and it feels good to do right by them. You're happy that they're happy.

('Thomas₁ partner, Swining MacSage, INT)

It is satisfying to have a positive effect on the client, to leave them pleased with a good result. I mean, compared to my previous job [Magistrates' Court legal adviser], this is more satisfying. It feels like you're helping people. You feel like you are actually making a difference in terms of applying law; you can actually apply it and try to get the best for the client in the situation.

(Leland, solicitor, Radford Hope, INT) Lawyers from all firms, then, presented an image of a healthy lawyer-client rela­tionship. This appeared to be a relationship constructed upon the positive attitudes that lawyers held towards their clients; clients were important, deserving and even became their friends. However, the following section documents data from the par­ticipant observation that puts a quite different slant on the issue of attitudes in the lawyer-client relationship.

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