I make phone calls all day long. No one I call ever answers. I leave voicemail after voicemail, and I wait for a call back. I’m good with that system. That’s what I expect.

In fact, I don’t really start to wonder about the call again for a day or two. I don’t think about when the call will come until I spot it again on my task list. Usually, the fact that I’ve left a voicemail completely slips my mind.

I’ve had some embarrassing situations where the call has finally been returned, and I can’t recall why I placed the call in the first place.

I’m different, however, from our client. So are you.

We make phone calls for a living, and we’re not all that emotionally attached to getting a response. We’ll hear when we hear, and then we’ll take the next step.

To us, phone calls are just phone calls; it’s what we do.

To our clients, phone calls are something very different. For clients, phone calls represent major life events. They determine where the children will live, how much money they will have, and whether they will live in the house or away in an apartment somewhere. The phone calls feel like life and death events to our clients.

Life and death can’t wait on you to get back from lunch, back from the courthouse, or back from vacation. Life and death means NOW. Life and death requires a response. Life and death does not accept that this isn’t that big a deal to you or other lawyers—after all, it’s life and death.

We work for them, and they get to decide what matters. You’re right; they’re wrong. So what? They get to decide what matters.

Sure, you can set them straight, you can tell them how it’s going to be, and you can lower expectations.

But in the end, they all agree that phone calls are life and death, whether we like it or not.

Return the call  first and let other things wait. You’re not going to win this one. It’s life and death.