Law Firm Client Service

Subscribe to Law Firm Client Service via RSS

In order to keep them happy, we’ve all been told at one time or another to “think like a client.”

The idea of thinking like your client can be a bit overwhelming when you add it to your existing workload – while we all endeavor to understand our clients’ challenges, concerns, and pain points no matter what field we’re in, unless we’ve spent time there ourselves, we’re only privy to second-hand knowledge (for the most part).

But whether we’ve been on the client side in our own industries or not, we’ve all been and are clients – as lawyers, you are purchasers of various services, from consultants to building services to office products and more. In our personal lives, we are consumers of goods and services, including everything from groceries and electronics to personal care, travel, etc. At some point, we’ve likely all considered what it is we want from those interactions – things such as understanding of what you’re really asking, common courtesy, on-time delivery, exceeding expectations, etc. 
Continue Reading Lawyers: To Keep Your Clients, You’ve Gotta Think Like Them

A few years ago while traveling, I had the opportunity to read an article about how private labels in grocery stores were gaining traction against national brands. While the article isn’t available online anymore, the story offers some interesting food for thought (no pun intended) for the legal industry and the way that law firms are tackling the challenges presented by the current marketplace.

The article focused on the Publix Brand Challenge, which still takes place today:

Several times a year, the Publix Super Markets chain in the Southeast pits three to five of its store-brand products against their national-brand equivalents…If customers buy one of the featured national-brand products, they’ll get the Publix store-branded version for free. ‘Buy theirs, get ours free,’ the ad trumpets. ‘We think you’ll prefer Publix.’”

Continue Reading Differentiation Builds Unique Relationships with Your Clients

Legal directories have been both valuable, and a source of frustration, for lawyers and in-house counsel alike. Recently, a new directory appeared on the scene, threatening to disrupt what we’ve all been accepting for the last several decades – Top 3 Legal. In today’s guest post from founder Gareth Stephenson, learn more about the platform, and what makes it unique from other traditional directories.

***

Top 3 Legal (www.top3legal.com) launched last month alongside some compelling market research.  Their key finding was that clients instruct new lawyers based on peer-to-peer recommendations 8x more than they use traditional legal directories.  This desire of in-house counsel to collaborate and pool experiences is also reflected in the proliferation of in-house counsel networks.
Continue Reading If you knew how clients choose new lawyers would you engage differently with legal directories?

We’ve talked a lot in recent posts about the idea of “relationship equity” and I’d like to revisit it again today – it particularly struck me as a friend of mine recently accepted a job offer and when she announced the company she was working for, suddenly people were coming out of the woodwork to ask her for favors and help. Many of those people aren’t connections she’s regularly in touch with – in other words, they have no relationship equity with her. It reminded me of another story.

Recently, I received an email from someone I don’t know – like everyone, I get LOTS of these, but this one struck me. He must read my blog, because he mentions it in his note. He even manages to spell my name correctly.

However, the purpose for his email is to tell me about this blog post he wrote, to suggest that I use it as the subject matter of one of my own posts, and that I tweet out his link to my Twitter followers. In fact, he goes so far as to mention that his is a topic worthwhile of discussion by the entire legal blogosphere. Really?

Well, I’m certainly not biting.
Continue Reading You Won’t Get Anywhere Without Relationship Equity

Today, we’re bringing you a special guest post from the folks at Legal Gateway, who are looking at the changing legal industry. In-house lawyers: this one’s for you, but it’s equally essential for our outside counsel readers to dive into this one. This was originally published on Plexus.

***

“As CEOs plan their strategies to take advantage of transformational shifts,” the consultancy PWC suggests in their annual survey of CEOs “they are assessing their current capabilities – and finding that everything is fair game for reinvention.”  Most legal functions continue to cling outdated operating models with no transformation plan. They do so at their peril.
Continue Reading Legal Transformation: The new playbook

Today, we’re bringing you a special guest post from the folks at Legal Gateway, who have identified the top eight mistakes that in-house counsel make when implementing legal technology that prevents it from being successful. In-house lawyers: this one’s for you, and for our outside counsel readers, consider sharing this with your clients and discussing their technology needs, solutions, and strategies with them, and how you may be able to partner with them. This was originally published on Plexus.

***

After many years of under-investment in technology, GCs are finally joining the party.  Sadly, many of them are setting themselves up for a hangover.

Our recent research into Legal Transformation suggests that General Counsels will increase investment in technology by 252% in the next two years.  Yet, limited technology competencies will lead most to frustration and failure.
Continue Reading Why Legal Tech does not work: The top 8 mistakes GCs make

It can seem like the reason that Disney is so successful is truly a dose of magic.

But when you break it down, they have a real formula for excellence – excellence in leadership, creating and sustaining the right culture, and pursuing client satisfaction. All of the pieces of that formula are important, but even after putting them together, what truly makes Disney successful is their ability to bring people back again and again. And to do that, they need connection with their customers, and to empower their customers to tell the stories that make other people want a piece of the Disney experience too.

That isn’t much different to the way business development works for lawyers and law firms.
Continue Reading Connection Brings People Back – Business Development Lessons from Disney

Success that starts with leadership and continues with having the right people makes complete sense – but all of that doesn’t mean much if your clients aren’t satisfied. And that’s the third piece in Disney’s philosophy.

Disney’s strategy is to exceed their guests’ expectations by paying attention to every detail of the delivery.  Paying attention doesn’t cost money, just time – and that’s something that firms can be doing as well.  While I recognize that time does equal money for law firms, what Disney says next makes sense – there can be big wows (like building a new rollercoaster), but paying attention to the small details changes the experience – it’s easier to do 100 things 1% better than to do 1 thing 100% better. When you link all those little wows together, you create a big wow.
Continue Reading Success Requires Client Satisfaction – the Disney Philosophy

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to attend a keynote session focused around Disney’s approach to business excellence. The recap I shared has been among one of my most popular posts, and the advice provided by Jeff Williford from the Disney Institute proves to be timeless. Despite a changing marketplace, the tenets that underlie their success remain the same – and that’s perhaps why Disney has proven to be so successful in a sustainable way.

I’d like to break down the post into a series to revisit the key points that Jeff raised in his speech, and why they’re still relevant today. Although his presentation was about how Disney creates a truly magical experience, there are a lot of parallels for the legal industry – we’re also a service industry after all!  Any of the particularly important points that relate to law firms will be in bold throughout the post.

He told the audience that Disney employs more than 60,000 people from 65 countries, with 10% of those being interns, and warned us that his presentation on Disney’s approach to business excellence would be like drinking water from a firehose. But he did say that Walt Disney reminded everyone in 1955 that “it all started with a mouse.” (Which inspires me to encourage all of us to think about how and why we got started – where are OUR roots? Who is OUR mouse?)
Continue Reading Success Starts with Leadership Excellence – the Disney Philosophy

For better or for worse, we are living in a hyper-connected world. Which means that whether we are always reachable, the person on the other end of the email or phone believes us to be. None of us is ever really “away.” (And we can debate the necessity and impact of that another time).

When it comes to managing your business relationships, a lack of communication can have a huge detrimental effect. Where you might be assuming that “no news is good news,” your client or other business relationship may be left feeling anxious about the status of your last conversation and wondering whether it’s even still on your radar. I’ve had contrasting incidences of this recently, which have illustrated some important lessons for me about managing expectations in all of my business relationships. 
Continue Reading No News is Not Always Good News for Business Relationships