Studying institutional discourses between clients and social workers could strengthen reflections on social work practices by asking: What definitions of the situation do the partners talk from? What content do the partners wish to communicate and could there be considerable differences between the two of them? Why are the partners using specific forms of talk and what does that meta-communicate? Are they developing working agreements and tuning into each other or are communication complicated by contributors speaking from diverse footing and frames? This article explores some of these issues.