What do you think about this situation? Someone refers you a client but you are conflicted from taking the case for some reason. What should you do? Should you tell the client to go back to the original referrer or should you refer the case out in hopes of getting referrals back to you?
I pose this question because I referred a case to someone recently. He couldn’t take the case because he had already represented one of those parties in a prior matter. He shot me an email back telling me this and offered that he could either 1. send client back to me or 2. refer the client to someone in his own firm. Since I was representing the client in another matter I wanted to make sure she got someone good that I knew to represent her in her other matter. Candidly, I also wanted to be able to give someone a case in hopes for a referral back in the near future for myself.
Good Guy, as I will call him, directed the potential client back to me. I then directed the client to Shadeball, as I will call him. I never heard back from Shadeball. Since I was representing the client in another matter, I asked her if Shadeball was helping her out with her matter. The client told me that Shadeball was not helping her out but, indeed, had directed her to a list of names of people Shadeball knew.
I might be overreacting, but it seems like it is a better in this situation to check-in with the original referring attorney as opposed to treating the client as your own and referring them out to your own list of people. Whether or not Shadeball’s motives were to be shady or not, it seems safer to check-in with the original referring attorney. “Good Guy” is going to get my next referral.
What do you think?