Canada's great legal blog Slaw has a new post, "Dealing With the High Conflict Personality in Practice," that says that difficult people may have a personality disorder and that the prevalence of such disorders may be increasing, even in Canada. Using mnemonic tips, the post offers some steps that it says can be helpful in dealing with difficult clients (and other lawyers, for that matter). Among them:
When dealing with hostile correspondences, employ the BIFF approach:
- Brief: Keep it brief. Long explanations and arguments can be triggers for high conflict personalities
- Informative: Focus on straight information, not arguments, opinions, emotions or defending yourself
- Friendly: Express empathy for concerns and respect their efforts (E.A.R. approach above)
- Firm: Gently repeat information and close the door to further argument
Eddy's article, Responding to Hostile Mail (BIFF), elaborates on this further.
