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October 26, 2009
Try this at home: Change How Clients Think About Lawyers.
The work of a bricklayer goes to the blue.
The knack of a mason outlasts a moon.
The hands of a plasterer hold a room together.
The land of a farmer wishes him back again.--Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), author, editor, poet, Pulitzer winner.
But first: hearse horses, anyone? Do you love what you do? Step back from the canvas and try some simple tool sharpening. Bone up on your fundamentals, maybe. Your techniques. Do you need some new ideas? How does your firm do its work these days? Do you get things right? What do you teach associates?
Now step back further. What of this Lawyering Thing? Clients? What is it you really do for them? You serve, right? You mix your products and services with an overall experience that makes you unique, right? Or are you and yours indistinguishable from the rest of the generic law cattle out there? Is your firm really different?
Step back again. Are you problem-solvers? Or just part of a "club" that needs clients as equipment to pursue a daily game? Does practicing law and serving turn you on? Or is it just a past choice you, or your partners, made--one that hardened around you long ago--and now regret?
Too many people practice law who should not. Practicing law is hard.
Client service is just as hard. But many people with law degrees--there are way too many of us in the U.S.--don't get that. Or they don't love it. If either applies to you, or to your colleagues, it's not too late to "get it", to get it back, to love it (again or for the first time) or just to try something different and new.
The law is not for everyone. And to do it right day-in and -out is a hard order. A privilege, too.
If you wish to stay in the profession, try to make it what it can and should be. Visit our world-famous, annoying, counter-intuitive but dead-on accurate 12 Rules of Client Service. See "Rule Four: Deliver legal services that change the way clients think about lawyers".
Carl August Sandburg: "The lawyers, Bob, know too much..."
Posted by JD Hull at October 26, 2009 11:59 PM
Comments
"If you wish to stay in the profession, try to make it what it can and should be"
You're asserting some pretty hefty authority here; and it's almost definitely undeserved. I don't think you or anybody else has the right to unilaterally define what the legal profession can or should be. It is what it is, complex and ambiguous as it may be. Lawyers aren't just service people. They're also engaged citizens, political representatives, capitalists, and zealots. They're private sector bureaucrats, nattering nabobs of negativity, and detail-driven advisers. We serve our own interests, as well as those of our principles.
You might be particularly good at serving as an agent. That's nice. But lawyers can call on a number of skills to succeed professionally, and you come off as arrogant and tone-deaf to use this platform to assert your own answers instead of raising important questions.
Just my two cents,
Brown Bourne
Posted by: Brown Bourne at October 29, 2009 03:31 PM
Brown--
I agree with every word you wrote--including that WAC? can be arrogant and tone deaf; much of my day is spent being part-jerk part-charmer part-evangelist. But please do remember that this blog is for lawyers who serve higher-end corporate clients, and their GCs--generally publicly traded and minimum a $1 billion in revenues--in "non-commodity" projects. The more difficult issues. That work is VERY hard--and way too many we know who do it are mailing it in.
Our message: if you do that kind of work, and you merely go though the motions, step aside and find another thing to do with your JD. And find another "club". Rotary, PTA, Kiwanas, community volunteer, local zoning board, church bowling league, politics, whatever. Impress the world another way.
Posted by: Hull at October 30, 2009 11:04 AM