The perils of youth for attorneys

I’m about to turn 27.

Some mornings when I get out of bed I hear a little creaking sound —only it’s not coming from the wooden bedposts. It’s starting to take just the slightest bit longer to recover from a sore muscle nowadays. And while my memory continues to be one of my strongest assets, I occasionally blank on items I could recall instantaneously in the past.

Times like those I think to myself, “This must be that whole ‘aging’ thing everyone keeps warning me about.”

The only problem is I’m still young when one considers the entire age spectrum of the legal profession. In other careers, youth is something to be sought, to be prized, to be held on to for as long as possible. When you’re a lawyer, however, youth means only one thing to your potential clients: lack of experience. And if you’ve opened your own law practice as a young attorney, that goes double.

I believe I encountered this dilemma myself after I opened my office in 2011. On two separate occasions, I was contacted by potential clients and agreed to conduct an initial interview in person. I instructed them that I would research their issues and let them know whether or not I would be able to assist. Before I could inform them of my decision, however, both contacted me to say that they would no longer be seeking legal representation from me. In fact, one even said that he did not have the money “to waste on an attorney” at the time, even though we had yet to discuss a fee arrangement or the possibility of doing the work pro bono.

Granted, I don’t have any concrete evidence to prove that these potential clients rejected my representation based on my age, but I can’t help but believe that meeting an attorney who looks like he’s just a few years out of college played some part in their decisions.

“Okay, Nick,” you’re wondering, “so how do I counter this problem if I’m also a young solo practitioner?”

My foremost piece of advice if this has already happened to you, or if you’re concerned that it will in the future, is to always be attentive to what your potential client is telling you—both explicitly and through subtle or nonverbal clues. Now, you’re probably not going to have a client come right out and say that they’re concerned about your age and lack of experience. That means you need to train yourself to be able to read between the lines of what your potential clients are saying. If they make a point like, “So it’s just you here?” and ask you, “Exactly how many of these cases have you done before?” you may want to take steps to assure them that you are fully complement to handle their case, regardless of your age or experience.

Unfortunately, those exact steps would be as varied and numerous as all of you, Constant Readers. I can offer you nothing more on that front except to point out that you must make sure you can actually follow through with the assurances you provide. After all, the only thing worse than a potential client who declines to hire you is a disgruntled client who wishes he hadn’t.

So the next time you feel a little ache in your back, don’t think of it as growing older; think of it as one more potential client who won’t be dissuaded from hiring you because of your age.