She called. She left a voicemail. She NEEDS to talk to you.

When are you going to call back? When I talk to lawyers I get the sense that they’re planning to call back within a day or two. It might be today, it might be tomorrow.

She’s sitting at home waiting for the return call. She may even call your office to let someone know that she’s running out to pick the kids up at school and can now be reached on the cell phone. She really expects a call – soon. She’s certain she’s as important to you as you are to her. She’s sure she made the right decision in hiring you and knows you’re someone she can trust.

She believes you’ll call her back within a few minutes, maybe a few hours. She gets calls back quickly from her friends, her pediatrician’s office, even the cable company. She can’t fathom that it could take you days to return her call.

Call her back. If you can’t call her then have someone else call her. We do more damage to the image of lawyers by our failure to promptly return calls than by anything else we do. Bar association image programs do nothing to help our image with someone that was in a crisis and couldn’t get her attorney on the phone. Call her back.

You can improve the situation – but you can’t entirely manage it – by better setting expectations. Explain your plan for returning calls at the initial consultation, explain it in your client handbook and have your voicemail system or receptionist explain it again. If your plan is to call back in two days then just say it. “We call back in two days. Take it or leave it. If you have an emergency or a crisis – it’s still two days.” By setting expectations in advance you head off some, not all, of the client upsets. You may also, if you tell people your policy, reduce your caseload so you can call back faster.