The Client

Meeting the client and selling your firm's abilities to the client's firm is about the toughest part of the business of being in the contract evidence collection business. Invariably you want a lot more for the work than the client thinks it's worth. This is partly a function of time estimates, or miss-estimates on behalf of the client most of the time. They always seem to think that you can everything they need in about half of what if really takes. Today was no exception.

I met Kristi at ten in the morning, right on time, in her office. It wasn't hard to figure out that this law firm was doing well. They had offices on the twenty-third floor of the One Norwest Center building (otherwise known as the "cash register building") in downtown Denver. Those are some pricey digs. She laid out the problem as her client saw it, a brief history of the situation, and then told me very briefly what the lawsuit was about - after I signed a non-disclosure statement for myself and on behalf of the company for which I worked. Then I got the rest of the information and the gist of the rest of the case. Well, that blew most of the morning. The way that chick negotiated, I was beginning to realize how they got the money for this office space and was seriously beginning to think that she must have had real balls. I was willing to bet that in other situations, the term "screaming bitch" would probably have been an apt description. She had things to do at lunch and some calls to make. We made arrangements to resume the meeting at two in the afternoon.

I needed a break like never before. I seriously thought about hitting the nearest bar and slamming down a few shots, but wisely chose just to go over to the Sixteenth Street Mall and get something to eat. After lunch, I made a few calls myself, and then just walked around the mall. During that walk I decided that there was something a little odd about Kristi, but I just couldn't put my finger on it. There were times when she acted more like a guy than a woman, but I finally wrote that off to just her job.