A client’s trust in a lawyer’s judgment may be the most valuable currency the lawyer has — more than legal skills, experience, intelligence or knowledge. And yet a few months ago, when I wanted to share with my ethics students some thoughts about developing trust between client and lawyer, I couldn’t find a good, commonsense article that summed it up for them. So I decided to write something myself.
We are all the products of our own experiences. In my case, my first law job was working on a prison case where our client was accused of several counts of murder and aggravated assault. I was a total newbie, but even then I knew that I couldn’t very well go into San Quentin State Prison, visit our client in a tiny, roach-infested visiting “room” smaller than a water closet and say to him, “Trust me!”
