Rethinking the Lawyer Client Relationship: Resonance in the Practice of Law, Part One

Resonance in the Practice of Law, Part One: The Client

Navigating family law work demands more than knowledge of the law. It requires judgment, patience, strategy, and organization. Perhaps most importantly, it requires the ability to remain meaningfully engaged with people whose lives are changing in real time.

That last requirement is easy to overlook. And yet, if it is attended to, engagement offers lawyers the opportunity to find meaning and purpose in their work and a more meaningful relationship with their clients. 

Lawyers are trained to think in terms of issues, evidence, procedure, risk, offers, costs, and outcomes. These are the tools of the trade. They matter. A lawyer who cannot organize facts, understand the law, and move a file toward resolution is not doing their job. But there is another dimension of practice that is harder to name. It has to do with the way a lawyer allows the client’s story, needs, and objectives to affect their judgment without losing professional independence.

Hartmut Rosa, a German sociologist, wrote a book on “Resonance” that provides a useful language for this. In Rosa’s conception, resonance is not simply calm, agreement, or harmony. It is a relationship in which one side allows itself to be moved by the other and responds in return. That response is not merely transactional. It gives meaning to both sides of the relationship because each is no longer simply acting upon the other, but participating in an exchange that changes the quality of the encounter.

Resonance is also transformative. Where it exists, the parties do not remain exactly as they were. The client who is properly heard may understand their situation differently. The lawyer who is properly attentive may see the file differently. The result is not that the lawyer becomes the client, or that judgment gives way to sympathy. The relationship becomes capable of producing something neither side could have produced in isolation: a better understanding of the problem, a more grounded strategy, and a more meaningful form of advocacy.

The concept does not require both sides to have agency in the ordinary sense. A person can experience resonance with falling snow, music, a landscape, a fast motorbike, or the feeling of hang gliding. The point is not that the snow intends anything. The point is that the person is reached by something outside themselves and responds in a meaningful way.

This concept is explored in a specifically actionable way by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his work on what he calls “flow”. This is resonance at the level of activity. Flow depends on a balance between challenge and skill. It is an ordered engagement with a demanding activity.

At first glance, the practice of law can seem like the opposite of this. Law is often instrumental, transactional, adversarial, and subject to ruthless efficiency. We break human experience into categories. We convert conflict into pleadings, affidavits, disclosure requests, financial statements, offers to settle, conferences, and trial records. We evaluate risk. We decide when to press and when to hold back.

There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, it is necessary. Clients do not come to lawyers merely to be heard. They come because something important is at stake, and they need help acting within a legal system that has rules, consequences, and procedures. The lawyer’s obligation is not to be passively sympathetic. It is to assist, advise, protect, and advocate.

The difficulty is that the instrumental mode can slowly become the only mode.

When that happens, the file becomes a problem to be solved rather than a situation to be understood. Every development is interpreted through the frame of winning, losing, giving, getting, attacking, defending, or conceding. There are moments when those concepts are necessary. But if they become the entire frame, the lawyer risks losing contact with the human reality that gives the work its purpose.

Listen Before You Convert the Story into Issues

In family law, the first level of resonance is with the client’s story.

The client comes with needs, worries, expectations, and events. They may want a parenting schedule that reflects the needs of their children. They may fear financial instability. They may need to be protected, or to understand what is going to happen next.

The lawyer has to translate those concerns into legal form. That is part of the work. But the translation should not happen so quickly that the story disappears.

Allowing the client’s story to move us does not mean adopting the client’s emotions wholesale. It does not mean becoming angry because the client is angry, or frightened because the client is frightened. Lawyers must retain their independence. Sometimes the most helpful thing we can do is tell a client that their proposed approach is unwise, or unlikely to assist them.

But professional distance should not become professional numbness. The client’s actual experience has to matter. If it does not, we may still process the file competently, but we will not necessarily serve the client well.

Strategy Should Be Responsive, Not Automatic

Every lawyer develops habits. We have preferred ways of organizing files, conducting meetings, preparing offers, drafting affidavits, and approaching negotiations. These systems are important. But there is a difference between having good systems and forcing every client’s problem into the same system.

A file is a dynamic thing. Facts change. The client’s position changes. A child’s needs may become clearer. A valuation may shift.

A good strategy has to move with the file. A purely reactive lawyer may appear compassionate, but reaction is not the same as judgment. The better lawyer is neither rigid nor merely responsive. The better lawyer is attentive. They are moved by the developments in the file, but they are not controlled by them. They respond with judgment.

Understand What the Client Is Really Asking For

Resonance requires attention to what the client is actually trying to say.

Clients may be overwhelmed, frightened, or wrong about what the law can do for them. They may ask for a result that is not available. They may focus on a point that is emotionally important but legally secondary. They may want peace when the circumstances call for firmer action.

Even then, it is worth asking what the client is trying to articulate. Are they asking for protection, stability, or to be heard? Are they trying to preserve a relationship with the children, avoid financial collapse, or recover a sense of control after a period of chaos?

Understanding this does not mean agreeing with every instruction. It means understanding what is moving the client.

This is especially important because family law disputes rarely involve only one legal issue. Parenting, support, property, housing, income, identity, grief, and fear can all be operating at the same time. If we reduce the client’s case to a checklist of issues, we may miss the real pressure points in the file.

Maintain Professional Structure

Resonance should not be confused with informality. In fact, the more emotionally charged the file, the more important structure becomes.

Clients need to know that we are listening, but they also need to know that we have the matter in hand. They need to understand the position being advanced. The evidence must be organized. Offers must be coherent. Deadlines must be met. The law must be applied.

The lawyer remains an advocate. The lawyer still presses when pressure is needed. The lawyer still advises against bad decisions. The lawyer still prepares the file properly. The difference is that the lawyer does not confuse aggression with purpose or efficiency with wisdom.

Conclusion

The practice of law will always require instrumental thinking. It should. Rules, evidence, deadlines, and strategy matter. A lawyer who ignores them does not become more humane; they become less useful.

But lawyering cannot be only instrumental. Especially in family law, we are dealing with people at moments of transition, conflict, and reorganization. The work requires us to remain open enough to be moved by what is actually happening and disciplined enough to respond with skill.

That is the value of thinking about resonance in legal practice. It reminds us that a file is not merely something to conquer or process. It is something unfolding. The client’s needs move. The evidence moves. The risk calculus moves. Our strategy should move, too.

At our best, we are not simply technicians, and we are not simply fighters. We are advocates who bring structure, judgment, and skill to human problems. We allow the reality of the client’s situation to reach us, and then we move in return.

The next blog in this series will build on this discussion by exploring how lawyers can work effectively and professionally with opposing counsel even in highly contentious cases.