NIU College of Law Health Advocacy Blog

Lesson 1: Expect the Unexpected At the end of August, I had my first client interview scheduled. Prior to the interview, we received a referral that explained a little about the client’s legal issue. I was pretty confident going into the meeting. I felt that I had done my research, had my questions, and was prepared for his answers. When our client arrived for our meeting, I asked him to tell me what brought him in. It turned out that his problem was entirely different than I anticipated. When he started to talk, I initially got a nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach. I then started to feel anxious and frustrated. When it turned out that the legal issue was different than I expected, I kind of felt like I was drowning. I did not think that any of my questions were relevant, and I did not know what to do or say next. I did not know how I was going to conduct this interview when I did not know anything about the area of law to which the client needed help with, and I was not prepared

The first time I heard about a power of attorney for health care was during my summer internship after my second year of law school. As I watched my supervising attorney help a client create one, I never imagined that in a few short months, I would be doing the same work that a practicing attorney had been doing for many years. Toward the beginning of the semester, Professor Boraca introduced us to an idea she called “Power of Attorney Day.” She explained we could plan this event for later in the semester where we would spend an afternoon preparing powers of attorney for health care for the guests at Hesed House. I immediately was excited because this sounded like a great opportunity to make contact with clients. Although I felt a little nervous about executing my first real legal documents, I was already anxious for Power of Attorney Day. One of my fellow student attorneys coordinated the project and did a great job making sure we were ready to go on the day of the event. There was a

I recently conducted my first client interview at the Health Advocacy Clinic. The client and I sat in a large open conference room along with another clinical student and my supervisor. Before the interview, I developed an outline and a strategy for conducting the interview. My goals were to establish rapport, get accurate information, and communicate to the client his next steps. I went in with a 4 page outline of relevant topics to cover and rehearsed my questions. I prepared very concise questions and I expected to get clear and concise answers. During the intake interview, I accomplished many of my goals. I established good rapport and learned about the client. But I did not get clear information regarding the client’s issue; or at least the amount of clarity that I was expecting. The interview brought some frustrations. I had specific and organized topics in my outline, but the answers I got were sporadic. In addition, the client brought in a large amount of unorganized paperwork.