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My sibling was fairly neurotic and I believe it’s one of the major reasons we never got along, so I know the feeling; and they inherited that from our mother. When they would go on one of their insane and anger filled tirades or crazes, the only way to get ahold of the situation was to absolutely scream at them because they would endlessly beat a dead horse, kick you while you were down and constantly rag on your ass. I always had a much more stoic and martial attitude that I inherited from my father, which naturally made our personalities almost completely incompatible with each other. The most extreme arguments we ever had always reminded me of this scene in Rush Hour; which is exactly what I wanted from them. Stand still, quit moving, sit down and shut the fuck up, or I will twist the knife as hard as I can until I make you stop it. They had no capability to control and moderate themselves and just Did. Not. Know. When. To. Stop.
In your case though, I’d imagine this is somewhat more common. Aren’t most of the people that need legal assistance precisely those kinds of people that possess problems with others and the law?
I'm fairly neurotic at a baseline. I've spent the better part of the last 5 years progressively addressing both the symptoms and the root causes. I also inherited it from my mother. My dad is stoic in the extreme. I'm currently playing a mix of hawaiian slack-key guitar music, some classic exotica, and Spanish New Age Flamenco music (Govi is AWESOME) because its soothing without making me sleepy.
I sympathize with the neurotics, but if they're not at least trying to be better and curb their worst tendencies... I want them far away from me. This includes some of my family members.
YES.
And more to the point, those are the cases that by definition tend to drag the longest. So they're the 'stickiest' clients. Which means even if it starts out where only 10% of my caseload is those types, eventually, if I don't filter, those cases become 50% or more simply because they fill all my time and crowd out new clients and I slowly close out matters for the more reasonable clients.
I've adjusted my intake process to account for this and I quote a significantly higher retainer if I suspect you'll be that type of client.
Damn. Are you sure we aren’t related and have the same parents? Whatever I have I above the neck I definitely inherited from my father, but even so, nowhere near the frequency he had it; as I couldn’t keep up with him. He had them in the extreme, extreme. My more natural joyfulness and aloofness and temperament I took more from my mother, but I did have very hard boundaries in certain places that I took from my father.
I’m also above average in neuroticism but I never had it to any crippling degree. It’s not a ‘bad’ thing intrinsically like people think, and it also poses problems that are known in the scholarly literature of the five factor model; namely that all the negative emotions load together on a single factor. I tend to remember negative experiences more strongly than positive ones, but it leads to being introspective and provokes one to learn from their encounters. Letting those emotions consume you is always a bad thing, but if I think of neuroticism I think again of a Nietzschean aphorism:
“One needs a little chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.”
My mother and father were very different people with very different backgrounds. My sibling and I naturally followed their steps in being equally dissimilar, though the associated dysfunction between us was still strongly sibling in nature, despite its intensity. Not in a rivalry sense; we just objectively did not like each other. We always got along more the less we had to interact and the greater the distance was between us. They also had problems throughout though. They were very bullying (and I mean that in the direct and literal sense) and a pathological liar among other issues they dealt with. Perhaps it’s a good sign that I don’t get along with people like that. I don’t usually talk about my sibling out of respect for them. If I draw from my own experiences I don’t have a lot of positive things to say. Better to preserve their memory by not speaking on it.
Is the economics of your job more volume based or particularly case based depending on if you land some big fish/problematic client? I can’t imagine getting paid is all that fun either, if these clients are so erratically beset with issues; I’m sure it can be like pulling teeth, because they never want to pay you your fee or can’t get it together. Makes me have more sympathy and pity for public defenders. Lol. How does your retainer vary based on client? Can you do that legally? Like if you’re an asshole, there’s an X% markup on services? I’m sure it’s not like that, but you get the vibe I’m presenting.
If you have any cases that have ever stood out in your mind that you just hated dealing with, I’d love to hear an anecdote you’re willing to share.
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I work in a very different field but consistently find that those of my clients which are least profitable are also by far the most troublesome.
Yes, although in my particular specialty, getting paid is usually not that big a problem.
There's definitely a mismatch between how their their demands are and how easy they are to work with. For me, the big concern is that they're slightly more likely to file a professional complaint than average.
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