Communication with Clients
Books
While there are no doubt other excellent books about communicating with clients, we list these because their focus is on communicating about risk or about the "bad news" that unexpected risk often constitutes.
Heavin, Heather and Keet, Michaela, and Heavin, How to Help Clients Make Smart Litigation Decisions: Carefully Assessing Clients’ Interests and Risks (ABA Publishing, forthcoming).
Aaron, Marjorie, Client Science: Advice for Lawyers on Counseling Clients through Bad News and other Legal Realities (Oxford University Press, 2012).
Articles and Chapters
Aaron, Risk and Rigor, Chapter 13, Centered Communication with Pictures, Grace, and Rigor, addresses the ways decision tree analysis can be used for communication in lawyer-client discussions and in mediation contexts.
Additional valuable articles and chapters will be provided soon.
Teaching Resources (web based)
The website Clientsiencecourse.com contains a full set of teaching materials on client communication, specifically including a segment on decision tree analysis (which includes an exercise in communicating with clients about that analysis) as well as materials for teaching lawyers and law students how to talk with clients about risk and "bad news", in the face of likely emotional reactions.