Somehow I messed up the publishing of this post while we were on vacation. Here it is – about a month late.

I’m on a cruise as I write this. We departed Miami yesterday for a seven day trip. This is our first week long trip without kids and we’re having an excellent time. Of course, we could have spent a week in the county jail (without our teenagers) and would have been pretty happy.

We arrived at the terminal at about 1 PM yesterday and noticed a large crowd gathered around the door. As we approached, it became clear that it was a really, really large crowd of more than 1,000 people in a long, snaking line. The line was not moving. No one was entering the building.

We headed for the end of the line and started waiting. It was hot. People were getting cranky. Some were complaining. I wondered, out loud, what was going on. The printed materials indicated that check-in started at noon. I couldn’t imagine why the line wasn’t moving. There were no announcements coming from the cruise line people near the door.

A helpful older woman, overhearing my wondering, jumped in and told me that the computer system was down and that they couldn’t board anyone until it was fixed. I wondered how she knew and I stood there in the sun as my bald head started to burn.

About 30 minutes passed and the line finally started to move. It moved quickly, and within another 30 minutes we were all inside and headed through the process. All’s well that ends well, and I barely remember the line now that I’m busy stuffing myself at the buffet.

However, as I look back on the experience, I wonder why the cruise line didn’t make an official announcement. There were security people and cruise line people milling about, but no one bothered to tell us what was happening. I never actually confirmed that a computer problem had been the source of the delay. We were never told.

Informing us would have solved the problem for most of the people in the line. They would have been thrilled to have updates on the progress of the repair. They would have been far more tolerant of the problem if they had understood.

That’s true of our clients as well. There are delays for many reasons in family law. The court is slow. Opposing counsel sometimes won’t respond. Experts can take forever to produce reports. Our clients will wait, patiently, if they know what’s happening. They just need an announcement.

Why don’t we tell them what’s happening? I hear myriad excuses from lawyers, but the most common is that we don’t have anything to say. We don’t know what the problem is and we don’t have a solution. Our approach to that situation is often to simply avoid calling the client. We don’t make an announcement because we have nothing to say.

That’s not a good approach. We can solve the problem by simply explaining where things stand. I’ve found clients are thrilled with a call to report that we still have nothing to report. They just want to know where things stand. Even if where they stand is simply that we don’t yet know where we stand.

If you keep them informed, if you’ll give them that call, they’ll stand in line for a very long time. Then, when you have progress to report, they’ll be pleased to hear from you and won’t wonder why you didn’t call.