Client meltdowns are miserable. It’s painful to deal with the upset and get a client back on track. Trust is damaged and it’s hard to restore. Meltdowns stink.

Once it’s over and the relationship is patched up it’s worth taking a few minutes to reflect on the situation. Sometimes, not always, we can learn from the meltdown and take action to prevent future problems.

The difficulty I sometimes run into with after-action analysis is a tendency to believe that the problem discussed during the meltdown was really the problem. For instance, we recently misaddressed a letter and accidentally sent it the spouse’s address rather than to our client. The spouse informed our client and explained that her “lawyers were idiots.” This didn’t help our relationship with the client and the meltdown ensued.

The attorney managing the case was upset with the administrative assistant that had labeled the envelope. Blame was assigned. The attorney, exhausted by the upsetting client encounter, lashed out at the admin. The admin’s supervisor got involved. The attorney’s supervisor got involved. It started off ugly and ended uglier.

It’s unfortunate that the envelope was sent to the wrong address. But the problem likely started long before we mailed the envelope.

When a client melts down, when they reach the point of no return, it’s not usually, exclusively, about the thing that put them over the edge. The problem began much earlier when the temperature started to rise, long before it reached the boiling point. It’s likely that other mistakes were made – maybe a delay in returning a call – or a misspelling in a document – or an off-color joke – and those mistakes raised the temperature in the first place. The final straw – the misaddressed envelope – can’t really be blamed for the entire problem. And that administrative assitant can’t be assigned full responsiblity for the problem.