On the other hand, no client likes to feel shunted off to the side with a junior without knowing that it's going to happen or being introduced to the junior lawyer first. The lawyer should consider what common courtesy requires and be sure there are no surprises for the client. The client needs somebody at the firm to be the contact person. That person should be a lawyer, although the client should realize that many routine questions can be handled by secretaries and support staff. If the contact person is unavailable, there should be back-up contacts.
Nothing annoys clients more than unreturned phone calls.
Every law firm should have a policy that phone calls will be returned within 24 hours, or sooner if possible. The client should understand that lawyers probably have other cases to work on as well, and may have time commitments that make it impossible to get an immediate response. The client is entitled to a prompt, but not necessarily an instantaneous response. If the client wants the lawyer to drop everything and take the call or respond by fax to a letter, this better be spelled out at the beginning of the relationship, not something that's discovered a year into a complicated piece of litigation. Probably the biggest complaint we hear from clients is that they didn't expect to be billed for phone calls.