Laravel 4: Eloquent soft deletes and relationships - laravel-4

Question

I have 2 tables, clients and projects and a project is associated with a client. Both the clients and projects implement soft deletes to maintain the relationships for archival reasons i.e. even if I delete a client the project will still have the client information attached.
My problem is that when I delete the client, the reference becomes inaccessible from the project and throws an exception. What I would like to do is soft delete the client but retain the client data from the project relationship.
My blade code is as follows:
#if ($projects->count())
<table class="table table-striped table-bordered">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Name</th>
<th>Client</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
#foreach ($projects as $project)
<tr>
<td>{{{ $project->name }}}</td>
<td>{{{ $project->client->name }}}</td>
<td>{{ link_to_route('projects.edit', 'Edit', array($project->id), array('class' => 'btn btn-info')) }}</td>
<td>
{{ Form::open(array('method' => 'DELETE', 'route' => array('projects.destroy', $project->id))) }}
{{ Form::submit('Delete', array('class' => 'btn btn-danger')) }}
{{ Form::close() }}
</td>
</tr>
#endforeach
</tbody>
</table> #else There are no projects #endif
Here are the migrations:
Schema::create('clients', function(Blueprint $table) {
// Table engine
$table->engine = 'InnoDB';
// Increments
$table->increments('id');
// Relationships
// Fields
$table->string('name');
// Timestamps
$table->timestamps();
// Soft deletes
$table->softDeletes();
});
Schema::create('projects', function(Blueprint $table) {
// Table engine
$table->engine = 'InnoDB';
// Increments
$table->increments('id');
// Relationships
$table->integer ('client_id');
// Fields
$table->string('name');
// Timestamps
$table->timestamps();
// Soft deletes
$table->softDeletes();
// Indexes
$table->index('client_id');
});
Many thanks.

Answer 1

This was solved by using the withTrashed() method when defining the relation in the model.
Original code:
public function client() {
return $this->belongsTo('Client');
}
Solution:
public function client() {
return $this->belongsTo('Client')->withTrashed();
}
Many thanks to Glad to Help.

Answer 2

In my case I can't modify the function client as Wally proposed, cause it's being used within other models and controllers that I don't want it to get Clients ->withTrashed().
In this case, here is two solutions I propose:
Specify ->withTrashed() when eager loading client:
$projects = Project::with(['client' => function($query){ $query->withTrashed(); }])->get();
Or create a new client functions ->withTrashed()
public function client() {
return $this->belongsTo('Client');
}
// The new function
public function client_with_trash() {
return $this->belongsTo('Client')->withTrashed();
}
When eager loading now:
$projects = Project::with(['client_with_trash'])->get();