Advanced Client Counseling: How to Advise Challenging Clients

This is a LIVE webinar CLE offered on Zoom. 3 hours North Carolina CLE, including 1 hour of ethics.

The Mediation Center is an approved CLE sponsor under the regulations promulgated by the North Carolina State Bar Board of Continuing Legal Education.

ABOUT

Working with difficult clients can be one of the most challenging aspects of legal practice. As counsellors-at-law, attorneys need the right tools for understanding and communicating with clients, including clients who are irrational or hyper-emotional. These clients are best served when lawyers are able to share legal advice in ways that get through to these difficult clients. Giving accurate legal advice to clients is essential, but how the lawyer shares that advice is also important. After all, the best legal advice does no good if clients don’t understand it or won’t follow it.

There is no panacea for dealing with difficult clients, but when lawyers can recognize the client’s thinking traps and their patterns of irrationality that imperil sound decision-making, they can help the client overcome these obstacles. By so doing, lawyers comply with ethical duties about client communication and reduce the risk that their clients will be dissatisfied when the representation is concluded.

Using practical examples, this CLE will offer specific suggestions for improving communication with clients – even the most difficult clients -- in order to inform and counsel them toward achieving their best possible outcome.

PRESENTER

Sharon Tracey Barrett is a retired Superior Court Judge and a former Buncombe County District Court Judge. She currently serves as an Associate Judge and Justice for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and as an Emergency Superior Court Judge. Through a practice called Barrett Resolutions, Sharon works as a mediator and arbitrator. She is a member of the North Carolina Chapter of the National Academy of Distinguished Neutrals. She graduated cum laude from Boston College in 1983 and received her J.D. degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1986. She practiced law in Asheville for nineteen years, focusing primarily on civil litigation, until she became a judge in 2005. She was President of the Buncombe County Bar from 2002-2003 and served for many years on the board of directors of The Mediation Center.

All registration fees benefit The Mediation Center.