Client-Centered Counseling: Reappraisal and Refinement

Abstract

B. The Binder and Price Counseling Modk2oClient-centered counseling is a critical component of client-centered lawyering. 21 Client-centered counseling may be defined as a legal counseling process designed to foster client-decisionmaking. 22 Its goal is not only to provide opportunities for clients to make decisions themselves but also to enhance the likelihood that the decisions are truly the client's and not the lawyer's.To accomplish these goals, client-centered counselors must attend to the means they employ in the counseling process, as well as the end of client decisionmaking they attempt to achieve.Binder and Price describe a relatively straightforward, but highly structured, legal counseling model 23 to be used in litigation contexts. 4 With respect MANUAL at 117, 118 (lawyer should keep client informed of developments in his case by sending copies of pleadings and correspondence; even though client is unlikely to understand the information he will at least know that the lawyer is doing something); Bebout, Promoting Clients' Acceptance of Lawyers' Fees in THE PRACTICAL LAWYER'S MANUAL at 139, 140 (same; clients also need to be conditioned to pay lawyers' fees).20.The Binder and Price model, though by far the most popular model of clientcentered counseling, is not the only one.See, e.g., T. SHAFFR & J. ELKINS, supra note 1, Ch. 7.This article addresses differences between the Binder and Price and other models when relevant to the topic under discussion.21.See Ellmann, supra note 16, at 744. 22.I prefer the term "client decisionmaking" to "client-centered decisionmaking" because of the former's emphasis on the client as actual decisionmaker.In theory, a lawyer could be client-centered in his approach and still act paternalistically towards the client, so long as his actions were designed to serve the client's interests as he understood them.On this reading of client-centeredness, even the most traditional, paternalistic lawyers could embrace the term.Both Paul Tremblay and Mark Spiegel have used the term "client decisionmaking" at times in their work to signify client-centered counseling.See Tremblay, supra note 16, at 545 n.125;