Exploring Lawyer–Client Interaction

Personal injury victims involved in compensation processes have a worse recovery than those not involved in compensation processes. One predictor for worse recovery is lawyer engagement. As some people argue that this negative relation between lawyer engagement and recovery may be explained by lawye...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological injury and law 2012-03, Vol.5 (1), p.89-94
Main Authors: Elbers, Nieke A, van Wees, Kiliaan A. P. C, Akkermans, Arno J, Cuijpers, Pim, Bruinvels, David J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accidents
Attorneys
Communication
Compensation
Decision making
Empathy
Experts
Injuries
Interviews
Jurisprudence
Perceptions
Procedural justice
Qualitative research
Quantitative analysis
Recovery
Settlements & damages
Victims
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Summary:Personal injury victims involved in compensation processes have a worse recovery than those not involved in compensation processes. One predictor for worse recovery is lawyer engagement. As some people argue that this negative relation between lawyer engagement and recovery may be explained by lawyers’ attitude and communications to clients, it seems important to investigate lawyer–client interaction. Although procedural justice and therapeutic jurisprudence had previously discussed aspects relevant for lawyer–client interaction, the client’s perspective has been rather ignored and only few empirical studies have been conducted. In this qualitative study, 21 traffic accident victims were interviewed about their experiences with their lawyer. Five desirable characteristics for lawyers were identified: communication, empathy, decisiveness, independence, and expertise. Communication and empathy corresponded with aspects already discussed in literature, whereas decisiveness, independence and expertise had been addressed only marginally. Further qualitative and quantitative research is necessary to establish preferable lawyer characteristics and to investigate what would improve the well-being of personal injury victims during the claims settlement process.
ISSN:1938-971X
1938-9728
DOI:10.1007/s12207-012-9120-0