How Does a Consultant Differ from an Attorney?

Every day I get some quote of the day.  These quotes are often promoted as funny, intelligent or whatever.  Today I received a quote that was tagged as a, funny quote from Arnold H. Glasgow 

"A consultant is someone who saves his client almost enough to pay his fee."  

The funny thing is that I don't think of the quote as funny.  It did give rise, however, to some thoughts about what my intentions are when I am retained by a client to either collect money that is owed to my client or defend them from someone who thinks that my client owes them money.  As an attorney, doing high value collections, I prefer the following quote:

"An attorney is someone who collects much more for his client than his fee."

When my client retains me to collect money, my primary and immediate goal is to collect every penny that is owed to my client, including every penny that they spend trying to collect the money owed to them.  100% on the dollar.  Furthermore, the word collect is an extremely important word. Getting a judgment is only a step in the possible process and certainly is not considered the end game.  My job is to put the money in the client's pocket and get everyone else’s hand out of that pocket.

In order to reach the ultimate collection goal, I do have to deal with reality. Along the way to my ultimate goal for the client, I have to pay close attention to what my efforts, or lack thereof, are costing the client and remain super diligent to make sure that we will collect more than the client will spend on our efforts.  This is where the rubber meets the road.  As our efforts proceed, the situation is continuously changing.  There is a constant balance between my effort and cost.  The more I do to produce results, the more it costs the client and hopefully the closer we get to collecting more of what is owed.  If I limit my efforts to collect in order to pay attention to the client's costs, it may often affect my results and reduce the amount that I collect.

I do not focus on the volume of my work.  It is the achievement of the maximum effectiveness of my work that guides my efforts and there is no set formula to accomplish this.  In this regard, there is no substitute for intelligence, organization, experience, awareness, diligence and attention to detail.

Thank you Kevin for reminding me of this.