Josh and Aaron explore why FVF Law believes client relationships don’t end when a case closes—highlighting how ongoing connection, trust, and genuine care turn former clients into lifelong friends and advocates.
Listen here or read the transcript below. FVF’s podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, and more.
0:00:01.2 Aaron Von Flatern: Hey, Josh.
0:00:01.7 Josh Fogelman: Hey Aaron.
0:00:02.5 AF: Is it better to be loved or feared?
0:00:12.4 JF: Both.
0:00:13.7 AF: That’s what Michael Scott said in the show office. The Office.
0:00:17.8 JF: One of the greatest of all time.
0:00:19.9 AF: He said he wanted to be… He wanted people to fear how much they loved him. I want… So I raised this issue because we’re about to talk about former clients. And frankly, I want them to fear how much they love us. And I want them to be afraid that if they don’t call us with their random sort of one off legal questions about some employment agreement they’re about to get into or some land deal or some, question they have about a co-worker, legally, if they don’t call us with those questions, I will be mad at them.
0:00:57.9 JF: Yeah, we get offended.
0:01:00.0 AF: Yes, they should fear that.
0:01:00.9 JF: They should fear that. Yeah. It’s kind of, I’ve kind of dealt with this a few times throughout my career where you kind of learn ex post facto that a childhood friend of yours like you know, talked, hired, cheated on you and hired someone else oftentimes because they just didn’t really know exactly what the parameters of what you did. Where they didn’t want to bother you with something that they thought was too small and not worth your time. And any number of reasons that you’ve lost touch with them over the years. There’s many number of reasons why these things can happen. But yeah, I think we wanted to come here and kind of talk about what’s the value to us as people and as an organization of our friends and our families and those include our former clients keeping us in mind when they or their friends or their acquaintance or family members have a legal situation that they have questions about or might require attention. If they’re confused or concerned about whether or not it’s the type of situation that we as an organization would handle.
0:02:20.1 AF: We keep them in mind.
0:02:21.4 JF: Yeah, we do.
0:02:22.1 AF: I feel like I’m having a one sided argument with someone who’s not here.
0:02:24.7 JF: Yeah.
0:02:25.0 AF: And I’m just like.
0:02:25.5 JF: Practicing the best kind.
0:02:27.2 AF: I’m practicing.
0:02:27.3 JF: I love it when people aren’t there to defend themselves.
0:02:29.4 AF: I think of you all the time, former client. I do. And to be honest, we’ve had so many former clients that have become sort of integral to our lives because we lived under that file. We worked so hard to get them where they needed to go. It was so gratifying, and then when we say goodbye to them, I think they think that that means like that’s the end of it, doors closed. Whereas we believe, and I know that we are here to be of service, arguably forever. If something comes up in their family, we wanna know about it. And it’s not so much because we want to capture their business and make money off them. It’s because, two reasons. One, we care and we’ve just, when, you work for someone for years or, however long you care about them. And then two, we truly believe in what we do. And when you see them do something that costs them extra money or just is frustrating to them, you just have that feeling like, “why didn’t you call me? We could have helped.” And so title of this podcast, I believe producer Dave…
0:03:44.1 Dave Hawks: Friends don’t Let friends call other lawyers.
0:03:46.2 AF: Yes, this is true. Right.
0:03:48.8 JF: Yeah. You know, I think it’s really hard to have a conversation with someone that didn’t call you and natural curiosity requires you to ask some questions about how their experience with not you has gone or had gone so far. And you have to just sit there and cringe because, you know that mistakes were made or their case was handled improperly, or they just weren’t cared for the way that they could have and should have been cared for by an organization maybe with some better values.
0:04:33.2 AF: It’s usually not them. It’s like their brother-in- law or something. Right?
0:04:36.9 JF: Yeah, sure.
0:04:37.8 AF: And that’s been my experience.
0:04:38.7 JF: You hear those stories for sure. Yes.
0:04:40.9 AF: My client’s always like, yeah, I would have called you, but my sister, I, they…
0:04:45.2 JF: They had a friend and their friend was so and so. And yeah, yeah, it’s unfortunate because, part of our value system requires us to always want to serve our clients in any capacity that we are reasonably capable of doing. And we, while we’re personal injury lawyers, we do have generally an education in legal training and we have spent time developing relationships with other lawyers, vetting other lawyers, developing a network of credible attorneys in other aspects of law that we feel like if we can connect our clients with that have a legal problem of any sort they will most likely be in better hands than if they just have to go to the phone book and pick out a name. But also sometimes people might have something going on legally that we are able to help with that they might not really understand is within our wheelhouse. And we could have done something for them to make their lives better.
0:06:03.3 AF: Yeah. At least we can point out a direction.
0:06:06.2 JF: Yeah.
0:06:06.6 AF: And maybe the direction is this is not a legal inquiry. You need you need to call an accountant or something like that. But being a sounding board for our clients is something that I love doing.
0:06:18.1 JF: Absolutely.
0:06:18.7 AF: I think all of our lawyers love it. And so former clients, if you’re listening, please call us. But also, earlier today, you were credited with an idea that was at first rated as an 8/10 idea.
0:06:32.2 JF: Wrongly. Yeah.
0:06:33.0 AF: Later in the staff meeting was referred to as a 9/10.
0:06:35.9 JF: Still wrongly the better.
0:06:37.1 AF: And then I posited that perhaps this was not an idea at all.
0:06:41.0 JF: Sure. Yeah. That was also wrong.
0:06:43.1 AF: Do you want to describe the concept that you’re alleging is an idea?
0:06:46.1 JF: Well, yeah. I think we consider ourselves a community, and we truly value the trust that our clients place in us. It’s a big decision who you choose to hire to represent you in a personal injury matter, and keeping in touch with people after the business transaction has concluded can be challenging. But we also value highly the development of those relationships and believe that once you’re our client, you’re always our client. And so we’ve really done. We’ve made a massive effort in the past year or so to re-engage with many of our former clients and do a better job of including them in what we have going on as an organization. The relationships that we’ve built with like, Austin FC and Health alliance for Austin Musicians and other, community activities. And we’re bringing clients in and doing raffles for tickets to events, Trail of Lights, most recently we did… And making sure that we’re recognizing our clients on special occasions, like their birthday, sending them cards. Just creating an opportunity to keep the conversation going between ourselves and our clients so that they know that we’re still here and we still care about them and we still wanna be involved in their lives.
0:08:19.0 AF: I’m sorry that I called that not an idea.
0:08:21.0 JF: It’s an idea.
0:08:21.9 AF: That’s a pretty good idea.
0:08:22.9 JF: Thanks, man.
0:08:25.1 AF: Yeah, well…
0:08:25.2 JF: 10/10?
0:08:27.7 AF: I give… Listen, nine is pretty good.
0:08:29.5 DH: I don’t think it should be 10. I think you can argue your way up two whole points on the scale.
0:08:33.3 JF: You don’t think so?
0:08:34.1 DH: I don’t think so.
0:08:34.9 AF: Dave.
0:08:35.4 DH: Yeah.
0:08:35.9 AF: You don’t credit me enough, sir.
0:08:37.5 DH: I try to give you as much credit as you deserve.
0:08:40.7 JF: Producer Dave, I didn’t ask your opinion.
0:08:42.4 DH: And then a little bit more. Well, I think something that you said, Aaron, and talking about, like, I think about our, former clients a lot. Like, I see that daily with what we do in the communications and marketing effort, which is we are thinking about, “Hey, what. What are ways that we can let people know that we are available to them.” And as education being a part of our mission, like, how do we help people know that even though their case may have closed and they’re kind of in this next phase of life, we’re still there? And so that’s something that we do pretty regularly. And then I know, Josh, you made a joke about, like, oh, it feels like they’re cheating on us. And my thought is there is. It feels trivial to be like, “Oh, you called someone else and not us.” And even though that emotionally may feel kind of, cheesy or whatever, I think one of the reasons that that’s so true for us is that we don’t… And I’m speaking for the lawyers, and I’m not one, but what I see is that there’s not this identity of, “Hey, I’m a lawyer, so hire me, because that’s my job.”
0:09:53.1 DH: It’s a, “Hey, my character and my value is to care for and support and serve the people that I care about. And the way that I get to do that in my career is through this law license.” And so when someone you care about chooses to not utilize you in a way that you are an expert, that can be tough. And it’s not because you’re not getting their business. It’s because you’re not having the opportunity and the privilege to serve someone that matters to you. And so that’s why I think it can be kind of hard when someone doesn’t call you. It’s not because you missed out on money. It’s because you missed out on the ability to build that relationship further or serve someone that you care about. That’s what we talk about. It’s always, giving gifts. The older you get, the more you realize giving gifts is more fun than receiving gifts, because the ability to bless someone else is actually a lot more fulfilling than to be blessed. And so the desire for former clients and anyone to call us again and to stay engaged in that relationship is because it’s more of a blessing and more of an opportunity for us to get to serve someone than it is for them to choose to hire us. And for that to be a financial transaction. And so despite it feeling maybe kind of petty and jealous, like, from a relationship perspective, there’s actually a really fundamental reason why. And I think that’s so cool. And I get to see that everyday.
0:11:17.1 AF: I have a client that is, the case has been over for, I would say, five, six, seven years now. And I talk to this client probably every month and I love it. It’s just, it doesn’t, he doesn’t even live, in this state anymore. But he calls and checks in and I get information about how he’s living. He’s had very catastrophic injury. And so rather than saying, “Oh, well, this is all the money I could get you, goodbye forever.” We resolved his case, of course, got all the money that was available in that particular case and still continued to dedicate real resources to his case even after it was over. Private social workers helping him to connect with benefits that were out there. But to be honest, when he calls me, he doesn’t always have a problem. A lot of times he just calls me to tell me he’s sitting in some, area where he’s got a good view of the sunset and it’s just kind of interesting to talk to him. And so those are the relationships that make you feel really just happy and proud of what you do. And, we want that to continue and we’re looking for opportunities to build that with our clients.
0:12:41.3 JF: Yeah, absolutely. Right.
0:12:42.6 DH: Well, that was certainly one of the big perceptions that I didn’t have coming from a non legal background into joining FEF, which was when we were doing these staff profile videos and we were kind of interviewing everybody. What all the lawyers kept saying over and over again was that their favorite part was the relationships that they build with their clients where even when the case is settled, they’re still getting, holiday cards, they’re getting wedding announcements, they’re getting, new baby announcements. Like there was this consistent relationship that was like, “Oh, I’m still texting and talking to them regularly. Not because I have to, because I want to.” And so my preconception of like what a lawyer client relationship was coming into it was a lot of you email and then they email back a couple days later and then you email and then you get an email back a couple of days later. And so this idea of like texting your lawyer at any time of day to ask questions or to jump on a phone call, that was not something that I had thought of as normal. And maybe it’s not in the grand scheme of law, but to see us regularly be stepping out of a meeting to take a call with a client or to say, “Hey, before we continue this conversation, I need to just text back real quick.”
0:13:58.4 DH: And that level of availability was wild to me. And so to know that that’s something that is not just customer service, so that we get a lot of good clients, but, no, that’s the heart of the people that work here was a really cool thing to see. ‘Cause I don’t think most people understand that that’s the type of relationship they can have when the lawyer is really serving them well.
0:14:20.6 AF: Yeah, it’s an operating system.
0:14:22.0 JF: Well, it was kind of part of our mission to change the perception of what it means to be a personal injury law firm. And I feel like we’ve really made strides towards living that vision and living those values, and that’s something that we’ll will continue to do.
0:14:40.0 AF: Agreed. Good talk.