Stereotyping clients can negatively impact the lawyer-client relationship and legal outcomes. When lawyers make assumptions about clients based on attributes like appearance, education, or personality, it can damage trust and cause them to miss or misinterpret important case information. Lawyers must treat each client individually, without bias or preconceived notions, in order to accurately gather facts and provide the best possible legal representation.

1. Nelfi Amiera Mizan
Multimedia University
Effect of Stereotyping
Stereotype can be defined as the unfairly beliefs that all people or things with a
particular characteristic are the same. As the statement specified, each client is an individual, a
unique entity. Thus, during the session of client interview, lawyers must treat each client
differently as they have different personalities.
The most commonly judgment made towards clients are through their appearance,
education status and characteristics. When a good looking client with professional looks, ones
may directly conclude a positive outcomes. Most people tend to think that good appearance
comes with good brain, which most of the time is not accurate. When a clumsy client came
across with an outdated appearance, lawyers may tend to think that they know nothing and
conclude negative outcomes. Thus, a lawyer must not be judgmental and should be neutral at
all time.
It must be noted that serotyping may not only occur towards the client from the lawyer,
but also towards the lawyer from the client which both will obstruct the accuracy of
information processing during client interview session.
Firstly, by stereotyping the client, lawyers tend to judge the client’s action without valid
and sound proof. Jumping into conclusion only by one’s action indicate an unprofessional
lawyer. This will affect the bond of trust between client and lawyer. When the lawyer did not

2. trust the information given by the client, he may omit some important information given by the
client.
Secondly, by stereotyping the client based on their personality, lawyers may directly
conclude for a particular case. For example, seeing a well-educated client with high class
attributions make them believes all the information given without a research. This may affect
the outcomes of the case and affect ethical considerations.
Thirdly, by stereotyping and had misled all the information, lawyers may then disregard
the instruction from their client and evaluate for them differently from what being asked. This
is obviously contrary to what lawyers should do, which they must act in accordance with the
instruction from the client.
Forth, client sometimes may feel reluctant to give honest answers, thus affecting the
information process. Because of their fear being judged negatively, client usually did not reveal
some important information thus affecting the interview session. Lawyers must therefore
assure that the lawyer is completely non-judgmental and the session is conduct in a private and
confidential manner.
Nelfi Amiera Mizan
Multimedia University