What About Clients?

September 15, 2007

Rule 11: Treat Each Co-Worker Like He or She Is Your Best Client.

In our 12 Rules of Client Service, this one, Rule 11, is perhaps the hardest one to achieve. The Driven and The Motivated--at least the able and confident ones--want people just like them in their workplace. This is admirable, and can cause problems.

Posted by Holden Oliver at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Tune in: I'm There For You Baby

Today on Baby, women entrepreneurs talk straight about what it takes to climb the corporate ladder. You can hear this week's episode on San Diego's CA$H 1700 AM Saturday from 1-2 PM, Pacific Time, or listen live via simulcast on the CA$H web site.

Posted by Tom Welshonce at 11:23 PM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2007

Rule 10: Be Accurate, Thorough and Timely--But Not Perfect.

Ah, devil perfectionism. Curse of eldest children, professionals, knowledge workers, some spouses, the geek classes and the tech-eiosie ("techwazee"). The horror, the horror. Okay, so we're on a Joseph Conrad jag. Be excellent, not perfect--that's one way to summarize Rule 10 of WAC?'s 12 Rules of Client Service.

Posted by Holden Oliver at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)

September 12, 2007

John Remsen: Looking like a lawyer

Medieval, old school, vain and running dog lackey of good GCs at good companies, WAC? (Dan Hull) met Atlanta-based law firm marketer John Remsen at an IBLC meeting last September in Milwaukee, was impressed, "liked his play" and loved his presentation. From The Remsen Group's website, here's "Enough is Enough: Lawyers Should Look Like Lawyers!"

Posted by Holden Oliver at 11:24 PM | Comments (0)

September 07, 2007

Rule Nine: Be There For Clients -- 24/7

From WAC?'s 12 Rules, here is Rule Nine. If you have thought through this rule, and you still disagree with it, that's fine. However, we are 100% certain that you are in the wrong profession. Here's the silver lining: if you indeed have good clients--i.e., sophisticated users of legal services with interesting problems to solve who pay well and on time--feel free to let us know the names of their GCs. Or, even better, just have them contact us. Our contact information, phone numbers and e-mail addresses are on the website. We'll unburden you. No problem.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:06 PM | Comments (1)

Malaise ender: turn up speakers, point, click, dance around, continue work.

To get you and especially our staid Pennsylvania office through those first tough days after Labor Day:

Ride like the wind, at double speed
I'll take you places that you've never, never seen.

--MPJ, Buenos Aires, 1995

Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)

August 29, 2007

Two great client-centric blogs to visit.

The reason they are so helpful may lie in the fact that lawyers, accountants, and other "suits" are just a small part of their audiences. See Management Craft by Lisa Haneberg and Church of the Customer by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba. These sites focus on the art of the relationship: getting and keeping clients.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:50 AM | Comments (0)

August 23, 2007

Rule Eight: Think Like the Client--Help Control Costs.

Are you really "partnering" with your business client--or is that just part of the requisite marketing rubric on your website? See Rule 8, from WAC?'s 12 Rules of Client Service, on other people's money.

Posted by Holden Oliver at 12:05 AM | Comments (0)

August 16, 2007

Two Must-Read Posts...

One by Allison Shields (Writing Articles to Increase Your Client Base - Do You Need a Shift in Your Mindset?) and one by Bruce MacEwen (Strategy Means Combining Two Disparate Concepts: And Other Thoughts).

Posted by Holden Oliver at 08:33 AM | Comments (0)

August 15, 2007

Jim Hassett: Cross Selling

See Jim Hassett's post on cross selling, a favorite WAC? subject.

Posted by Holden Oliver at 07:57 AM | Comments (1)

August 08, 2007

Tom Kane: Listening

Like any number of lawyers, or people you'll find in a U.S. law school, I don't listen that well, even though it's part of my job. As a first child, I was encouraged to "achieve"--but also to talk-talk-talk, not listen. In my case there are other character flaws in play too numerous or disturbing to list here. But on a bad day, and especially if I am excited about something, my poor listening skills border on both rudeness and world-class dumbness. Well, the always-even keeled Tom Kane reminds us that listening is an art. And Tom even mentions that our mutual friend Jim Hassett, who also writes and coaches on listening, turned him on to the International Listening Association. Blimey! Say what?

Posted by JD Hull at 11:29 PM | Comments (1)

August 07, 2007

Arnie Herz: It's personal.

See this one (along with the linked-to materials) by Arnie Herz at Legal Sanity. I first saw this post last week, got distracted with other things, and then was reminded again today that it's out there and how great it is by the always-vigilant Stark County Law Library Blog.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Rule Seven: Know the Client

Here.

....Take time out to learn the stock price, industry, day-to-day culture, players and overall goals of your client. Visit their offices and plants. Do it free of charge....Devise a system to keep abreast.

Posted by Holden Oliver at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)

August 03, 2007

Surprises: Assume that GCs hate them.

No surprises. If you're an an associate, secretary, assistant, or other employee, it's a good overall rule to keep in mind on the way to work. Partners, from laid-back Perry Como types to volcanic James Woods ones, hate surprises. And the in-house counsel the partner works hard for doesn't like surprises either. Our friend and Chicago trial lawyer Patrick Lamb points out that "no surprises" is a GC's rule; if you've worked with many good GCs--and Pat has--you know what he means. See Pat's post "Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! The Worst Word In The Inhouse Lexicon" at his In Search of Perfect Client Service.

Posted by Holden Oliver at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)

August 01, 2007

Rule Six: Working = Marketing.

From our 12 Rules of Client Service, Rule Six: When you work, you are marketing. It presupposes that you love practicing law, and that you want to do repeat work for good clients you like. It's our favorite. And it's the one that's hardest for lawyers and other service professionals to grasp. An issue: right now, in 2007, do you work for that Fortune 100 or 1000 client you prize with the same passion and at the same level you did in 1997, when you first landed it?

Posted by Holden Oliver at 12:42 AM | Comments (0)

July 31, 2007

Transmittal letters: necessary and appropriate--or lame and insulting?

Dear Ms. Bloor:

Enclosed herewith for your review, kindly please find a true and correct copy of the Writ of Obsequiousness which as you know we on even date filed in [blah blah]...

Unless it serves a purpose, a "transmittal letter" enclosing already self-explanatory documents to judges, court clerks, opposing counsel and clients is a waste of time. It makes the recipient--especially a good business client--think you are going through another time-honored lame lawyer ritual without thinking.

Be different and bold. Reward the reader's intelligence. Use transmittal

letters sparingly and only (1) to document a very important event (meeting a deadline, perhaps) or (2) coupled with an executive summary of lengthy, unexpected or different types of materials so a busy recipient doesn't have to read them.

Note: If an associate or paralegal actually writes "drafted and sent transmittal letter" on time records, it's time for a lively chat.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:29 AM | Comments (0)

July 30, 2007

Happy 5th Birthday, Sarbanes-Oxley, you big brute.

It's been five years now; it was signed into law by President Bush on July 30, 2002. Major, sweeping and unprecedented, the business media said. True, no desirable corporate client can ignore it. And SOX changed public accounting forever. So how we doing? At London-based The Economist, reportedly the favorite magazine of Bill Gates these days, see "Sarbanes-Oxley: Five Years Under the Thumb".

Posted by Holden Oliver at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

July 28, 2007

Redux: The 7 Habits of Highly Useless Corporate Lawyers.

It seems to be WAC?'s most clicked-on post. But the real credit goes to Dan Hull's childhood friend Ernie from Glen Burnie.

Posted by Holden Oliver at 08:59 PM | Comments (0)

July 26, 2007

Rule Five: "Over-Communicate": Bombard, Copy and Confirm

From our 12 Rules of Client Service, here's Rule Five. Not everyone agrees with this one. But it works as a general rule. In fact, if you work hard at consistently informing clients of everything as things happens--and it's harder to do this with proportion and class than it sounds, folks--you can't lose. With thanks to a well-known lawyer's lawyer and client service thinker-doer named Jay Foonberg.

Posted by Holden Oliver at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

July 21, 2007

Matt Homann: Kick out the jams.

See at Matt Homann's the [non] billable hour this one: "Grow Your Practice by Asking Clients to Leave." Hear, hear. Releasing clients which don't fit your firm can be the solution to a multitude of problems.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:26 PM | Comments (0)

July 19, 2007

Rule Four: "Deliver legal services that change the way clients think about lawyers".

It's summer: a season to step back from the canvas and a time, if you will, for simple tool sharpening--and we at WAC? are simple tools, if nothing else. From our world famous counter-intuitive 12 Rules of Client Service, see "Rule Four: Deliver legal services that change the way clients think about lawyers".

Posted by Holden Oliver at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

July 18, 2007

Thoughtful Canada Gets It?

Since starting this blog less than two years ago, WAC? has feared that, for most lawyers worldwide, "client service" and "law practice management" are at best a couple of empty soundbytes we all feed our clients, client prospects and employees. It all sounds good; it's become our routine requisite rubbish for websites and ad campaigns. But ever since I discovered CBA PracticeLink--which seems to feature "Clients" as the main event of lawyering--I've wondered if Canadians see these topics differently.

Well, maybe WAC? was right. Canadian lawyer David J. Bilinsky, who straddles Canada and its mild-mannered southern neighbor, is Practice Management Advisor of the Law Society of British Columbia, Editor-in-Chief of the ABA's Law Practice Magazine and former chair of ABA TECHSHOW. David has a new blog, and it promises to be another quality Canadian (okay, Canadian-American) site: Thoughtful Legal Management. Watch this one.

Posted by JD Hull at 08:59 PM | Comments (0)

July 12, 2007

Redux: Do you need to "like" your client to do a good job?

Answer: In our firm, the answer is absolutely yes. Color us spoiled, and even unlawyer-like--but we refuse to represent clients we do not like and respect. Screw the money. We'd rather sell women's shoes, be full-time lobbyists, or take up careers as street people.

Only a few books I can find on the subject of rendering services to customers in the business sections of Borders or Barnes & Noble ever mention the question. In the context of lawyer services, it's simply this: except for some court appointments and pro bono engagements, what if we only chose to represent clients we liked?

By "like", I mean it loosely: to derive for whatever reason real pleasure and satisfaction while doing legal work for a individual or organization.

My firm shies away from individuals as clients, regardless of his or her resources. We usually represent businesses. So in the case of an organization, we "like" the client because overall we somehow feel comfortable with or maybe even admire the personality, business culture or goals of that client, personally like/admire the client reps and general counsel, or both.

My firm "likes" business clients which are experienced, sophisticated users of legal services. When we perform well, the client appreciates us and signals that appreciation. So then we like the client even more, and want to do an even better job or keep doing the good job we are doing so we can derive more real pleasure from the engagement, and obtain more work.

As simple and as annoyingly Mr. Rogers-esque as this all sounds, we have never, ever had good long-term relationships with any organization client (1) which did not genuinely appreciate what we were doing for it or (2) which had disturbing corporate personalities (i.e., mean-spirited Rambo cultures, groups with employees given to blame-storming, or companies with disorganized, internally-uncommunicative or just plain lazy staffs.)

We rely on repeat business. For us, there's no substantial reason to accept a new engagement unless we think we might want to represent that client in the long term. For years, I often sensed before the first draft of the representation letter was done that the new client didn't fit us. Usually I couldn't articulate it--or maybe I just disliked the client rep. But because of the money or the prestige of the engagement, we took the project, and kept going after the repeat business anyway. A few years ago, we stopped doing that.

Does my attitude clash with some people's notions of real client service, duty to the profession or basic law firm economics? It sure does. And today I don't think I can practice law any other way. In the long term, having no client is better than a bad client--or one that I don't see courting down the road.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:50 PM | Comments (1)

Kane on Press Releases

Tom Kane, at his consistently fine and useful Legal Marketing Blog, is right that "Press Releases Can Be An Effective Tool". And the devil is in the details. Make them short, sweet and different. Our firm has used them for 15 years. For us they are most effective in reminding existing clients who we like and want to keep--always our number one marketing targets--that we are "there". Make you a bet: if you send a good press release to ten good clients, you will get a phone call from one of them, even if it's just to say hello.

Posted by Holden Oliver at 12:37 AM | Comments (0)

July 09, 2007

So what about clients, anyway?

If you're new to this blog, clients and everything about them is our main event: getting and keeping great corporate clients, the ones normally served by a handful of large firms worldwide. International lawyering, non-U.S. business cultures, litigation, IP, politics, natural resources law, books, film and mysteries of Keith Richards also get some play at this site. But clients, for us, is the place of definitions. You can start here--and then go here.

Posted by Holden Oliver at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

July 03, 2007

It's that Muscle Boutique thing again...

While WAC? still thinks that solos face a tough time obtaining and keeping Fortune 500 clients (minimum: you need 3 full-time higher-end well-paid lawyers--each king-hell crazy about client service), we do like Susan Cartier Liebel's post "Solo and Small Firms Should Go In For the Kill", which echos some of our own usual rants re: firms between 5 and 100 lawyers serving clients normally represented by much larger law firms. And we love Susan's pluck. Her post turns on yesterday's Patrick Lamb discussion on GC dissatisfaction. Hat tip to the mysterious Editor of Blawg Review.

Posted by JD Hull at 08:44 PM | Comments (2)

June 29, 2007

Hassett: 34 questions for clients and prospects

Every Wednesday, Jim Hassett at Legal Business Development gives us a thoughtful and practical article on the art of the client. We especially liked this week's post, 34 Questions for Clients and Prospects. Jim's simple but revolutionary idea: get clients to talk about their companies; get lawyers to listen.

Posted by JD Hull at 09:41 PM | Comments (0)

June 27, 2007

Golden Practices

Upbeat, honest and just plain fun, Michelle Golden of Golden Marketing Inc. and Golden Practices may very well be the "anti-Geek". Michelle gets out there and actually talks to people face-to-face. She understands services, and how clients may experience them. And she gets what blogging is--and what it isn't. In the two years she's been blogging, Michelle has gained quite a following, which include cynics and non-gushers like the people who write WAC? See, for an introduction to Michelle, "Diving into the Blogosphere? Where to Begin." and "Why Does Social Media Work?"

Posted by Holden Oliver at 07:40 PM | Comments (1)

June 15, 2007

When you work, you are marketing.

When we are working, we are always marketing--and constantly sending clients barrages of small but powerful ads. Positive ads, negative ads, "true color" ads. From the 12 Rules of Client Service, see Rule Six: When You Work, You Are Marketing.

Posted by Holden Oliver at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

June 14, 2007

Larry Bodine: "Tales From The Front"

At Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog, see "Tales fom the Front: Getting Business from Corporate Clients". The post turns on what in-house lawyers are saying about their outside counsel at a conference Larry is attending in Dallas, Texas. One GC wishes that lawyers who pitch her on the phone would "get their heads out of legal publications and read trade magazines and the Wall Street Journal, so they can learn about my business before they call me." Well, that makes too much sense.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)

June 12, 2007

Gerry Riskin: Investing in Client Service

Literally. And it's just what What About Clients? wanted to hear.

Wall Street may like companies that get client service. See Client Satisfaction may be EXTREMELY Profitable at Gerry Riskin's Amazing Firms, Amazing Practices. Excerpt: "In my opinion, there is an overabundance of information in law firms and a dearth of client-relations training. If you are a Managing Partner, you may want to balance this disparity."

Posted by Holden Oliver at 11:52 PM | Comments (0)

June 06, 2007

So why waste side 2 of your business card?

From Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog, do see What's On The Back Of Your Business Card?

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

May 30, 2007

Large Law Firms

Patrick Lamb and Tom Kane comment on "The Way of the Mastodon", by Sun Microsystems General Counsel Mike Dillon. That article, which appeared on Dillon's own blog last week, has attracted major attention. Update: At Legal Blog Watch, lawyer-journalist Robert Ambrogi was also impressed by Dillon's piece.

Posted by JD Hull at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)

May 29, 2007

Client Service Explained

Well, WAC? could not have said it better. For some time now at Hill & Knowlton's Client Service Insights (CSI), Leo Bottary has de-mystified the whole thing for us in 22 words in the upper right hand corner of his site. Bottary calls it Insight #1:

Client service excellence isn't about doing what no one else can do; it's about doing what anyone can do, but just doesn't.

Put another way, client service is (1) easy to "get" (2) but hard to do--and only because very few of us will discipline ourselves to think it through and do it.

Posted by Holden Oliver at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)

May 23, 2007

We all work in the global services economy.

"We are all in the business of selling solutions--products and goods are just tools and details."

--Overheard in a Los Angeles coffee shop.

Posted by Holden Oliver at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

May 20, 2007

Redux: What about clients you just don't like?

Answer: Don't court or accept them in the first place. If you already have such a client, you get through it, you try to do the best job you can, and you dump that client ASAP.

Sound unprofessional or unlawyer-like? Maybe so. Yet, with the notable exceptions of some criminal defendant appointments by a court and pro bono work, neither your client nor your firm should be even slightly prejudiced by distrust, disdain or an uneasy relationship. See our November 19, 2005 post "Rule 1: Represent only clients you like". And hear this from a 2006 radio show we appeared on.

Posted by JD Hull at 03:03 PM | Comments (2)

May 06, 2007

Kane: Mid-sized firms v. big firms

On one of our favorite subjects, Tom Kane at Legal Marketing Blog has "Mid-sized and Small Firms Can Compete With BigLaw." He also follows up on the disturbing BTI Consulting Group, Inc. study released last year, concluding that a sizable majority of U.S. general counsel at bigger companies were not happy with their law firms.

Posted by Holden Oliver at 02:06 PM | Comments (0)

April 27, 2007

Rule Eight: Think Like the Client--Help Control Costs.

Rule Eight: Think Like The Client--Help Control Costs. (See the first 7 rules 1-6 here and 7 here).

Ask any associate lawyer or paralegal what a "profit" is.

You will get two kinds of answers. Both answers are "correct"--but neither of them helps anyone in your firm think like the client.

The answers will be something like this: (1) "A profit is money remaining after deducting costs from receipts." This is the correct young transactional/tax lawyer answer. Or (2) "it's money left over at the end of the hunt." This is the correct fire-breathing young litigator answer.

The right answer?

A profit is a reward for being efficient. And until a lawyer, paralegal or staffer gets that, she or he will never know how a client--or a law firm partner--thinks.

Rule 8 is really simple. Watch and minimize costs and show the client that you are interested in doing that. Go beyond just avoiding wasteful spending, and think of the client's business as yours. Factor cost (including fees!) into everything you think, say and do. Let the client know that you know that holding down costs is good for both the client and your law firm. You want repeat clients, and a maximum of steady income streams, so let clients know you really care about saving it money because of just that: you want to keep costs down so the client will stay with the firm in the long-term.

Most clients not only get this but appreciate it greatly in time. Three years ago, at the beginning of a fairly intense but short-term lobbying project in DC for a new client (a high-tech company with a fabulous product), I told the client's CEO--by the way, she was brilliant, talented and rich but surprisingly unsophisticated on the use of lawyers--that she had three options on legal paths she could take on the project, and that I wanted her to use the least expensive one on legal fees. She actually said: "Dan, you know we really like you guys. But your goal has got to be to make as many thousands of dollars you can a month from this project. Why a cheap avenue for me that involves fewer lawyer hours? Why should I take this seriously?" My answer: "Because whether you sell this company or not, we want to represent it or whatever company you next develop on a long term basis, and we would rather work for you for years and years than just a few months."

That made sense to her. Everyone in our shop needs (1) to think in terms of holding down client costs--attorney fees and out-of-pocket expenses--at every step and every moment of a client project, (2) to know why, and (3) to be prepared to explain that to the client.

Posted by JD Hull at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)

April 26, 2007

"How Much Money Has The Client Spent So Far?"

What Each Timekeeper On A Project Should Know.

Knowing what the client is paying your firm informs and affects the strategy of a big project--indeed, the business strategy of the entire company if the stakes are high enough--and, importantly, the thoughts, instincts and habits of your people who work on it.

Suppose you have a great business client you want to keep, and you want to expand that work. Initially, you start off doing "day-to-day" work for it: a mixed bag of projects for a Fortune 500 company or a substantial start-up. Steady, fun and interesting stuff--but nothing fancy or high pressure. Planning. Monitoring or applying new environmental regs. A lease. Compliance items. Employment issues. Putting out fires. Spot projects for in-house counsel. Nothing too contentious. The monthly bills are rarely more than, say, $8000 to $15,000.

The client seems to like your firm--and, importantly, you like the client. You want more. But suddenly, the general counsel presents your firm with an intense litigation project or regulatory dispute which will consume a good senior litigator and 2 or 3 associates off-and-on for 18 to 24 months. This results in monthly bills suddenly ballooning to $40,000, $80,000 or more.

In this situation, I think that every lawyer working on that highly active project (1) should know what the client is spending ($) and (2) be given a written report in cumulative totals every time the invoice goes out. It especially should be given to the involved associates for this or any other active litigation or intense transactional work or deals you are billing hourly. We've written that younger lawyers are not truly partnering with a client, and giving great service, unless they watch costs. See "WAC?" Rule 8, Think Like The Client--Help Control Costs". So they need to know about the money the client is spending and see that on paper. Knowing what the client is spending informs and affects the strategy of that project--indeed, the business strategy of the entire company if the stakes are high enough--and, importantly, the thoughts, instincts and habits of your people who work on it.

Note: I know that not everyone would agree with me on this one, and there are exceptions to everything. When I was an associate and later a partner in a larger firm, associates were given written reports only of their hours and those of all other "competing" timekeepers. Actually, I liked that system. We had time-honored professional, proprietary and Machiavellian reasons for keeping non-partners in the dark about money.

Posted by JD Hull at 07:41 PM | Comments (0)

April 18, 2007

Tom Collins: A Formal Client Service Standard for the Law Firm

Again, do read and save this must-see post at Tom Collins's consistently useful More Partner Income. Last year, WAC? published some shorter pieces on a related idea we think is ready for prime time at law firms everywhere: "Make client service standards part of each employee review".

Posted by JD Hull at 11:42 PM | Comments (0)

What About "Ease-of-Use Awards" For Law Firms?

What if the services sector competed for clients on the basis of "ease-of-use"?

Develop and apply ease-of-use concepts to pure services? Our clients' services? Our services?

Sure, and why not?

Consider for a moment just products. Cincinnati-based The Folgers Coffee Company, a P&G company with extensive operations in New Orleans, has been awarded an Ease-of-Use Commmendation by the Arthritis Foundation for its AromaSeal™ Canister. If you're a Folgers® drinker, you notice that Folgers® added an easy-to-peel tin freshness seal (no need for a can-opener), a new "snap-tight" lid and even a grip on its plastic red can.

Great companies many of us represent do spend money and expertise on making their goods, equipment and products usable. Think about your car, your luggage, your TV remote (well, strike that one), your watch and even grips on household tools. Think about Apple, Dell and Microsoft. Each year they think through your experience with their products and try to make it better. Continuous improvement models for "things." Folgers did it for coffee cans. IBM and CISCO have ease-of-use programs for the products they sell.

Develop and apply ease-of-use concepts to pure services? Our clients' services? Our services? Sure, why not? It's probably coming anyway, even while it will be infinitely harder to do for services than for products. WAC? has noted before that even corporate clients that sell goods see themselves as selling solutions and not products. In 2004, services sold alone or as support features to the sale of good and products accounted for over 65% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the US, 50% of the United Kingdom's GDP and 90% of Hong Kong's. Even products sold by IBM and CISCO, now chiefly service companies, are part of a services-products mix in which the services component is the main event.

Law firms, of course, have always sold services. And we are a small but powerful engine in the growth of the services sector. We strategize with and guide big clients every day. While that's all going on--day in and day out--what is it like for the client to work with you and yours? Are clients experiencing a team--or hearing and seeing isolated acts by talented but soul-less techies? Do you make reports and communications short, easy and to the point? Who gets copied openly so clients don't have to guess about who knows what? Is it fun (yeah, we just said "fun") to work with your firm? How are your logistics for client meetings, travel and lodging? Do you make life easier? Or harder? Are you accessible 24/7? In short, aside from the technical aspects of your service (i.e., the client "is safe"), do your clients "feel safe"?

What if law firms--or any other service provider for that matter--"thought through," applied and constantly improved the delivery of our services and how clients really experience them?

And then competed on it...?

Posted by JD Hull at 11:41 PM | Comments (1)

True Lawyer Professionalism

We once briefly engaged for litigation a local counsel who focused more on preserving personal relationships with local lawyers than on going to bat for our mutual client. It was like having a tennis doubles partner on heroin with weights strapped to each leg. The guy never got it. While it's true that one of the advantages of any local counsel in litigation is a knowledge of, and rapport with, the local law cattle, those relationships always come second. Anything less is, at best, unprofessional and, at worst, a conflict of interest. The following posts, from our Federal Courts series, are among the most visited WAC? articles:

Is "Professionalism" Just A Lawyer-Centric Ruse?

The Client's Professionalism Rules For Litigation

See also, Professionalism Revisited: What About the Client?, from the San Diego Daily Transcript, April 29, 2005, by one of America's most client-centric lawyers.

Posted by JD Hull at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

April 11, 2007

WAC? loves Baseball Blawg Review #103

Do see Blawg Review this week and Jon Frieden's #103.

Occasionally patriotic, WAC? loves baseball, our national sport. Like the law profession itself, baseball (1) is great fun to play or watch, (2) is way more complex than meets the eye, and (3) features some of the most difficult, funny, demented and inscrutable rogues on the planet.

A bonus: the first opening day ceremonial pitch (in 1910) by an American president was a hurl by my kind of Chief Executive--a portly Cincinnati-bred lawyer's lawyer and former journalist who graduated from WAC?'s law school in 1880 and who spent some time in the humble suburb of Indian Hill, Ohio, where I attended high school and grew up, sort of, mainly, before heading to points East and to DC.

DC area-based Jonathan Frieden, an IP litigator who writes E-Commerce Law, is the host of Blawg Review #103 which, in honor of baseball's opening day, is the "BaseBlawg Review". Fine job by Jon and his interesting blog, which we just discovered. See in particular Jim Hassett's piece on how to qualify new clients. Trust us: Having No Client--and instead working harder and smarter to get the right client--is always better than the Working for the Wrong Client.

Posted by JD Hull at 04:50 AM | Comments (0)

April 08, 2007

Renewal, rebirth--and tool sharpening.

Spring ushers in important observances by most religions. But nearly everyone--Pagans, athiests, humans who notice their natural world a bit more, and just folks in Pittsburgh and Cleveland eating and watching TV--do a dance or two to celebrate rebirth, renewal, the beginning of a new life cycle, the order of things, Being Here Now, fresh starts and real resolutions for real life. Well, here's one observance for us more pedestrian types who have to work tomorrow: The 12 Rules of Client Service. They are based on real life and real lawyering--in that order.

Posted by JD Hull at 07:51 AM | Comments (1)

April 04, 2007

Redux: Services, Client Service--and "When Cultures Collide".

1. Services, and relationships--with or without products and goods--are becoming the main event globally.

Whether you work for an international business law boutique, the phone company, or IBM, "products" or "goods" are still with us but increasingly have become part of the overall mix of providing solutions to clients and customers. Things traded you can touch and feel are no longer the main event.

See, for example, IBM's website or anything written about IBM in recent years if you don't believe me; they are no longer just a hardware, equipment or products giant--but a "services company", and perhaps the world's largest. IBM sells solutions. Selling and leasing IBM products are just part of those solutions. So IBM's success or failure will depend on managing relationships and how its customers, clients and partners at all levels experience those services.

Moreover, here are twin big-ass problems (i.e., challenges), a looming crisis and, for the stout-hearted, an opportunity of the first order:

2. Old problem: customer/client service and care will continue to get low, low marks.

Customer and client service and care is difficult, and seldom seen anywhere, folks--both within the US or internationally. Few industries and professions (1) are good at it, (2) know it's difficult, or (3) even know what it is and how to flesh out the details. Hard-won customers and clients can, will and do switch providers in a heartbeat if the "service level" is poor or mediocre--which is almost always. As the services sectors grow globally, already-increasing cross-border trade will mean that there's a new and tough wrinkle in your service (or product, good, widget) and how it's delivered from the standpoint of customer/client service and care: complex, critical differences in peoples internationally which can make or break a deal or ongoing relationship.

So what happens when you pour business people of different national, religious and cultural origins all over the world into this cauldron: an entire services-based planet of already fragile commercial relationships--and one that just can't get a bead on customer/client service and care in nearly all industries at all buying levels?

3. New problem: business relationships increasingly will have international and cross-cultural "languages" we all must learn.

For years my firm has acted for US corporations abroad, especially in western Europe, and increasingly in Latin America. And we have also represented non-US companies in the US seeking to set up manufacturing and sales operations here; believe me, the Germans, English, Welsh, Irish, Spanish, Mexicans, Argentinians, Swiss, Dutch and Italians are not only very different from Americans, they are very different from each other. What happens when the Japanese negotiate or trade with Germans? Or the English with Americans, or the French? Canadians or Australians with the Chinese? With the Saudis or the Turks?

International trade, for decades the province of a handful of elites and specialists in each country, is starting to involve more and more people, firms, professions, and rank-and-file employees. You, and yours, need to know the people, dude. For starters, buy and read R.D. Lewis's 1996 standard When Cultures Collide: Managing Successfully Across Cultures and do it before the price goes back up. WAC? has listed it as a must-read client service book on the lower right of this site since starting in 2005.

Posted by JD Hull at 09:59 AM | Comments (1)

April 02, 2007

"Yo, partner dudes, don't be putttin' the hurt on my work-life balance."

American and European lawyer-bloggers have written a lot lately about "work-life balance". In the event any of you bloggers have good corporate clients who are a bit nervous about the W-L thing, please feel free to ask the General Counsel of those clients to call immediately Hull McGuire PC--contacts: Dan Hull (CA), Julie McGuire (PA) or Al Sturtevant (DC)--for a lively chat about the W-L issue. If we like your clients enough, we will happily unburden you of them to lessen the terrible, inconvenient and just plain pesky stresses of the challenges and ardors of corporate law practice. We'll even throw in ceasing to flog our associate lawyers for a week--well, maybe--if you'll do this. Thanks, dudes.

Posted by JD Hull at 09:59 PM | Comments (1)

March 30, 2007

Asking clients for work: "Why are lawyers so shy?"

Over the years this keeps happening:

I take a General Counsel or non-lawyer executive or CFO of a targeted client to lunch or dinner to ask for work. At some point I briefly say what my firm does and how we can help the client on particular legal issues it has. I ask a few questions. I do a short (very informal) pitch which ends with: "We like [the company] and we'd love to work with you. How can I win/earn your business?"

The client rep laughs and says something like, "That's refreshing--because I can't tell you how many times I have dined, gone to sporting events or played golf with lawyers and they never ask me for my business. Sometimes this goes on for years. I know that's why they are there--but they won't ever get to the point."

"So what's up with that?" he or she continues, often openly amused. "Are most lawyers shy or something? Why would I want to hire a law firm not aggressive enough, direct enough or business-oriented enough to just ask for the work?"

True story: One in-house counsel from a Fortune 100 told me that a partner in a major law firm he saw regularly for years couldn't bring himself to inquire. They lawyer was the in-house guy's next door neighbor.

Is the careful, rational, polite, risk-averse "lawyer personality" to blame? I have no idea.....but I do know that business clients--whether or not they buy the image of the fire-breathing lawyer-AlphaHuman they see on television--expect lawyers to have the business instincts and the stones to ask for the work. So ask. Practice first if you must. Get a pitch and a strategy for each meeting. Don't wait until 30 minutes goes by or the table is cleared. Ask.

Posted by JD Hull at 07:58 AM | Comments (0)

March 28, 2007

Asking for the business.

It sounds easy but lawyers have trouble doing it. In fact, the concept of "asking for the business" is revolutionary thinking for some of us. Not part of the lawyer personality. So for some direction, see my friend Jim Hassett's post "When To Close And 'Ask For The Business'" at his Legal Business Development.

Posted by JD Hull at 04:21 PM | Comments (0)

Real, inexpensive and "natural" branding ideas.

To me, real branding for a services firm should be cheap, "natural", and not with goofy initials or logos that only work for IBM or Microsoft: just "real look and feel" trade dress branding, the kind associated with workaday letterhead and envelopes, and forged in the customer's overstimulated brain through repetition. Your name, the print sytle, color--decide, keep it, don't change it. See Michelle Golden's post Fun Branding for a Law Firm.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:40 AM | Comments (0)

March 27, 2007

A client service loo loo.

See from Wellington, New Zealand this shining, clean out-of-sight example of client service ardor and elbow grease in Geoff Sharp's piece "The Extra Mile" at mediator blah...blah.... Take notice, you work-life balancing Gen X and Y weenies--they don't make 'em like Geoff and me any more.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

March 11, 2007

Pat Lamb: The billable hour is doing just fine, thank you.

From my other friend and mentor, The Blawgfather, Patrick Lamb, at In Search of Perfect Client Service, this is good, even if it does mention me and mine:

NEWS FLASH! Reports of the Death of Hourly Rates Greatly Exaggerated!

Posted by JD Hull at 03:22 AM | Comments (0)

March 10, 2007

Tom Kane: Don't compete on price.

See this valuable advice from Tom Kane at his Legal Marketing Blog: "Don't Compete on Price, It's a Loser". My two cents: that goes double if you are a boutique, or cluster of boutiques, competing for high-end clients with large law firms. In that case, you might even want to charge a bit more. And if you leave a large firm, be sure to keep your rates at least as high as they were.

Don't bottom-feed. Compete on service.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:57 AM | Comments (1)

March 01, 2007

Tom Collins: Keeping Clients

Each year, law firms and other professional firms all over the world--not to mention their best clients--spend extraordinary energy, time, manpower and millions of dollars to market and advertise. Just to get new clients and customers. But clients switch law firms quickly and often. So how do you keep them? And why should they stay? See "Client Retention in Law Firms" by Tom Collins at More Partner Income, consistently the best law practice management site, on WAC?'s favorite topic.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:35 AM | Comments (0)

February 26, 2007

Redux: The Sacred, Immovable, No-Excuses Weekly Phone Call.

Seven years ago, our firm started the practice of weekly phone conferences for lengthy but intense projects where things generally happen every week. In a nutshell, the client representative, lawyers at our firm and any other key players in a case or project set aside a weekly "sacred time"--as one GC has dubbed it--for a phone conference: weekly, same day, same time and observed by all.

The meetings are intended to be 30 minutes tops (if possible). You need to pick a relatively quiet off-track time when disturbances are at a minimum. The time that has worked best for us has been between 7:30 AM and 9:30 AM EST on Fridays. (If you live on the West coast, though, you may be getting up around 4 or 4:30 AM--but you get a break if you're in South America or Europe). Finally, they are missed or canceled only for the most compelling reasons. Vacations, trips to Europe, Asia, Soth America, head colds, bad traffic, hangovers and my-dog-ate-my-draft-amended counterclaim won't cut it.

As of this writing, we have three ongoing Friday meetings--each about a year old and two of them likely to continue for another year. This simple institution has worked very well for us--and clients appreciate it because they can rely on it. The longest running weekly meeting we had was three-and-a-half years for a particularly contentious off-again on-again arbitration on an ongoing construction project involving a Germany-based client and U.S. players from 4 to 6 states in our camp alone. Our 7:45 AM meeting kept our people focused, informed, on the same page and even on good terms when they otherwise might not have been. (It was a draining, stressful project.)

The "sacred" weekly meeting is a very good tool for cases with lots of players and/or consultants. Even if there is nothing to report, people touch base and re-bond so they can at least keep heading in the same direction. In short, it's an effective way to regularly catch up and share information on bigger or more complicated projects.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:50 PM | Comments (3)

February 15, 2007

Golden Volver: "Few Firms Get the Point of Differentiation"

For more on law firm differentiation/branding in the post below, see this 2006 post by Michelle Golden at Golden Practices called "Few Firms Get the Point of Differentiation".

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Lamb: The "Disturbing Sameness of Law Firm Marketing"

The "disturbing sameness of law firm marketing and its disturbing ineffectiveness" is just one great money quote. Patrick Lamb, Chicago trial lawyer, and Blogfather of Client Service, has this fine post, "Is Culture Change A Prerequisite To Marketing Success?", at his In Search of Perfect Client Service. Recently, Pat and I were speakers at a law marketing conference, and two things, which are likely related, greatly surprised me: (1) many law firm marketing chiefs--some law firm partners, some CMOs--at the nation's largest law firms privately informed me that they were "second class citizens" (if not creative but troublesome peasants), and not often listened to; and (2) with very few exceptions, the marketing approaches taken by about 100 "top" American law firms were the same (i.e., fungible and generic plans and devices) and nearly impossible to differentiate from one another. All that talent and opportunity, all that sameness.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:27 PM | Comments (1)

February 10, 2007

Tom Kane: Stop Procrastinating - Fire Those Bad Clients

Here.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

February 08, 2007

An evolving new rejoinder to beefs about imperfect client service?

Re: chilling effect on complaints about mediocre, lame and/or bad lawyering or "Well, dang, we weren't that bad--so we'd like $1 million, dirtbags." See at Overlawyered "Chew out your lawyers, get sued for defamation". Apparently, in the NY state case, the qualified privilege--which the Manhattan trial court insisted was "absolute" instead (WAC? questions that, but it's a good result)--won the day. Still, whoa.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:14 PM | Comments (1)

February 04, 2007

"Get lean, get talented and hunt BigClients".

Let's review, shall we?

Get off your knees. Stop bottom-feeding. Be a man, or woman.

But be somebody. Now, and in the future, law firm size may matter--but only if at your core you are smaller, agile, muscular and can do most (90%) of the work traditionally done by large law firms (250-3000+ lawyers). And smaller (up to 150) firms, for most GCs on most projects, will be (a) preferred and (b) cool. Bigger firms, for most GCs on most projects, will be (a) suspect and (b) not cool.

So below, per our "usual rant", as the mysterious anonymous all-powerful Editor of Blawg Review once termed it, are 9 WAC? (nine, count 'em) posts over the past few months on why and how you can have BigClients in boutiques or clusters of boutiques(5-150) setting if you have the talent, a true client service culture and the discipline to keep it:

In Praise of Structure (10/30/06)

Real Elitism: Toward Building A Client-Centric Culture (6/10/06)

The 7 Habits of Highly Useless Corporate Lawyers (6/27/06)

SRO: "Stealing and Keeping BigLaw Clients" (7/28/06)

"Give Me Your Tired, Your Rich Abused Fortune 500
Clients." (8/5/06)

Do BigClients need BigLaw more than 10% of the time? (9/22/06)

Work-life balance is a dumb-ass issue. (10/20/06)

GCs: Do you really want Big, Clumsy & Unresponsive in 50 cities worldwide? (10/21/06)

And: "Clientwork": The 12 Rules Of Client Service (4/3/06)

Posted by JD Hull at 06:59 PM | Comments (0)

February 03, 2007

"Do You Run a Belief Tank?"

Well, do you? From Chuck Newton's Spare Room Tycoon, see this one and think about the Kool-Aid you bottle and sell to yourself, your employees and your clients. Bravo. I'd love to see Chuck expand on this one. The question, put in WAC?'s more pedestrian way, is: are we really thinking through the solutions we offer to our clients? Or just "mailing it in"--like the unhappy and unimaginative mechanics so many of us have become? Can we make it habit to regularly challenge our assumptions, our procedures, our ways of doing business?

Do we ask: "Are we sure that really works?"

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

January 25, 2007

Business-Getter Summit: 14th Annual Marketing Partner Forum

Beginning today, Hildebrandt International hosts the 14th Annual Marketing Partner Forum: Innovative Marketing & Business Development in the 21st Century at the Four Seasons Aviara in San Diego. On the 25th, WAC? (Dan Hull) serves on a panel on the subject of how law firms can use the Internet to keep existing business clients and generate new ones. Blogs, podcasts and webinars will be discussed--and demonstrated--as part of the cyber-marketing mix. WAC?'s friend and inspirer Chicago trial lawyer Patrick Lamb, of In Search of Perfect Client Service, will serve as moderator. Other panelists are Larry Bodine of the LawMarketing Blog, David Bowerman of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis LLP, Vickie Spang of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP and J. Craig Williams of The Williams Law Firm, PC and May It Please The Court.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

January 20, 2007

Math on Management: Connections, Relationships, Money.

In our new services world, making real connections (see Arnie Herz and Lisa Haneberg) with clients or GCs you "like" (see WAC?) lead to relationships, which are assets and money we must manage. WAC? gets it now. Manage your connections. Manage your money.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

January 14, 2007

Church of the Customer

It's Sunday. WAC?, a member of a law firm with all manner of religions and spiritual modes represented, and a lapsed Belfast Protestant and recovering narcissist himself, strongly urges all of you to attend the Church of the Customer Blog by Chicago-based consultant-authors Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba. This will be good for your soul, your clients and your business. Church of the Customer is and has been one the better client-centric sites out there, with a special emphasis on the happy existing client as Asset.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:11 PM | Comments (0)

January 13, 2007

So how does your office hit your clients?

"How your office looks to your customers" is not a pedestrian subject. Your firm's offices, especially the part the client sees and hears in the first 60 seconds after arrival, says a lot about your firm. And we are so used to seeing the commons areas of our firms that we never see them as the client does. We don't see changes, oddities, signals of disorganization and chaos; the client always does, right down to the magazines you lay out, what they're about and how old they are. We need to think about this stuff. See Ann Macaulay's "Making Your Law Office Client-Friendly" at the Canadian Bar Association's Client Services CBA Practice Link.

Update 1/12/07: Don't miss Michelle Golden's recent fabulous post on the same topic. Looks like my fellow Midwesterner Michelle has a telepathic effect on this blog.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

January 09, 2007

Kelly's and the Universal Blog Waiting-Tables Marketing Analogy

Tom Kane of the Legal Marketing Blog recently posted Do Clients Wish You Were Like a Good Waiter?, commenting on a Seth Godin piece "What Waiters Can Teach Marketers". Godin's of course has done some innovative, noteworthy and interesting work--but like most gurus, he is over-quoted and over-sucked up to (by the non-Tom Kanes) whether the last post sent into cyberspace was brilliant or not. Gurus deserve respect, and to be read, usually, but they are not perfect. So what I want to know is what Tom Kane, who many of us also admire, thinks that the waiter experience teaches us about marketing. While Tom is thinking about that, I'll weigh in on waiting tables, and try hard to sound like a dang guru.

In 1980, I briefly waited tables--we preferred the term "waitron" to waiter--at a Capitol Hill bar (the one where in 1986 I had my last drink). Kelly's Irish Times was then in its infancy--a noisy, demented paradise, with demanding, obnoxious drunken customers 7 nights, and mornings, a week. The bar's staff was also to die for, and Just Like Me: Young, Irish and Drunk. And I was a waiter, and a very bad one, technically. But I worked hard, and the customers could see that, as clumsy and dazed as I often was, I was really into doing my job. Still, I never got anyone's order right the first time, was late with my orders, broke/spilled things, and mixed things up. I didn't listen to people well under fire. ("Ah, Danny! Mother of God...We need good Bushmills, not Jamesons, yuh sad simple creature...ah, Jesus...")

I drank and smoked heavily (a big perc, which I abused) while I worked. I mouthed off freely and expertly as I could to customers I clashed with. The Dublin-born owner, a city boy like me, was a friend of mine--but I could have cared less anyway if a patron with a unintelligible off-the-boat brogue said, "yuh know, Danny, oh, Jesus...we haven't seen yuh, lad, for, like, over an hour-and-a-half...take it out of yer meager wages..." or some other uncalled-for, insensitive country, County Cork remark from one of Hughie Kelly's new best friends. I frequently talked back.

But I was tipped, and tipped heavily, night after night. I became the "star" waiter/waitron, even with the other Irish guys and womenfolk who weren't thrilled with my nightly service. Why? How? Because night after night, I talked to, sat down with, drank with, smoked with, joked with and generally engaged and had real conversations with the customers about things they wanted to talk about. Kelly's Irish Times was about fun--not perfect service, food or drink. And having fun with the customer was about all I had to offer as a Kelly's "O'waitron".

Two nights ago I had dinner at a place called The Ivy, a much nicer and more expensive restaurant than Kelly's, and with actual and real food, in Santa Monica, California. Our waitron, an aspiring actress from the Midwest, and not anyone's "type" at our table, was new to LA, and probably just as new to waiting tables. In fact, she was pretty bad. But she was totally immersed in what she was doing, eager to please and totally immersed in us, at her table.

We tipped our LA waitron big time.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:04 PM | Comments (0)

Appreciated: "The Endurance".

A bit late on this post, but still wanting to get in my two cents because I liked Julie Fleming Brown's idea and invitation to participate, I appreciate the lawyer who practices law day in and day out for years with the same joy, enthusiasm and dedication of a young lawyer 5 years out of law school and just begininng to "get it right". It's the religion of unrelenting good habit, and a kind of endurance: one as important as faith, fact, or love.

Posted by JD Hull at 09:06 PM | Comments (0)

January 05, 2007

Must-Read Jay Shepherd Post: Clients Don't Like You...

Most business people rightly think we lawyers are necessary evils, and at best tolerable if we slip back into our coffins before dawn. We lack business sense in most respects. And we don't communicate well with business clients. See from Jay Shepherd's Gruntled Employees "Why businesspeople hate lawyers".

Posted by JD Hull at 07:10 PM | Comments (3)

December 20, 2006

Clients in 3-D

See Michelle Golden's post "Visit Your Clients".

Posted by JD Hull at 11:49 PM | Comments (0)

Associate Reviews: "Dude, if you can't steal our clients, you're fired."

There are lots of suggestions out there on standards, guidelines and take-aways for year-end associate reviews. Two are (a) letting staff evaluate co-workers and partners on specific inter-office skills in writing, and (b) reviews of staff based on specific client service standards which ALL employees must buy into (i.e., pay increase for well done client service; hit the road, for the unwilling, clueless).

Here's another one--and it's been my firm's for over ten years. But first, expand your mind for a brief moment and pretend that you're NOT a lawyer, accountant, MD, broker, consultant, salesperson, retail clerk, Alaskan fly-fishing guide, or other alleged service-provider (it's most people that work in any job these days!), that you are passionate about what you do, that you love your clients and customers, and that you want more of that business and income stream.

Ready?

Every day, the client service by associate and paralegals should be good enough to permit those employees to actually steal any client, and take them to another law firm (use "transport" for the foregoing, if you need the PC professional services term), if they were to leave your shop tomorrow morning.

Period.

Fact: that's what we want at our firm, and that's what we tell associates.

If you are not, in effect, willing to go that far with your own employees in instituting and daily demanding client service, you are neither confident about client loyalty (not to mention employee loyalty) nor really serious about delivering outrageous client service to your clients. A true client service culture has to be that "extreme". So folks, let "them that can" whisk those clients out of your firm with a phone call or two; after all, that's only fair to the clients, if they so decide. If you find this idea preposterous, radical or just too disturbing, please think very hard about what you are really doing at your firm, and your real commitment, to build and lead a true client service culture.

At your shop, is "client service" just drinks-and-dinner b.s. for the clients, and website-and-brochure lip service for the public? Or is it real?

And wouldn't it be wonderful if the service were that good, and the atmosphere at your firm fun, lucrative and engaging enough that those employees just had to stay?

Posted by JD Hull at 09:16 PM | Comments (3)

December 18, 2006

Industry-Based Practice Groups

Tom Kane at Legal Marketing Blog is reading WAC?'s mind these days--and gives a suggestion which my firm will institute at the beginning of next year, starting with our firm's practice for clients in the automotive, steel, manufacturing and energy industries. See "Form Industry-based Practice Groups". Clients want you to know their business, their industry.

Posted by JD Hull at 01:34 PM | Comments (0)

December 09, 2006

Women and start-ups: This Week's "Baby" Show.

"I'm There for you Baby", hosted by WAC? friends Neil Senturia and Barbara Bry, airs from 1-2 p.m., West Coast time on San Diego's CASH 1700 AM, or listen live via simulcast on the CASH website. This week includes a discussion with female entrepreneurs.

Posted by Tom Welshonce at 10:44 PM | Comments (0)

December 07, 2006

Jim Hassett's Not So Excellent Adventure

Bad service, bad buzz. As Harry Beckwith's young son once said, "too often, service sucks". From Jim Hassett at Legal Business Development, here's "Unhappy customers and my problems with ACT". Don't tug on Superman's cape, dude.

Posted by JD Hull at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)

December 06, 2006

"Have You 'Bothered' To Seek Client Feedback?"

Tom Kane continues the discussion that makes lawyers squirm.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)

December 04, 2006

Jim Hassett: Lawyer Marketing in 7 Words

And they are: Meet the right people, advance the relationship. Or kiss the frogs, sort the princes, and keep moving? Well, Jim's is shorter, better. See Jim Hassett's "Everything You Need to Know About Legal Business Development, in Seven Words" at Legal Business Development.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)

December 02, 2006

You Gotta Believe--or just sell shoes, drive cab, whatever.

Why WAC?'s Client Service Model & 12 Rules May Not Work.

Answer: Because people are selfish, and WAC?'s 12 Rules of True Client Service presupposes that people are not selfish--that you and your staff will put clients before yourselves and All Things other than blood, country, God, a job at the White House or dinner with Parker Posey. Conservative humorist and writer P.J. O'Rourke said it best, sort of, in explaining in an article for Rolling Stone Magazine in July of 1995, why he went from National Lampoon to jester for the right:

No child ever wrote Santa, "Bring me, and a bunch of kids I've never met, a pony, and we'll share."

O'Rourke is right, of course. People are selfish. Period.

So there's no point in being nice to anyone, even clients, because it doesn't get you anything today, right?

Well, no, wrong. There's a "blind faith"-based and slightly zen-like remedy for the 12 Rules' blissful ignorance of human nature, and here it is: Rule 13: You Gotta Believe.

Get spiritual, get crazy, but somehow get it. History teaches that only Spiritual or Crazy can truly trump and defeat Selfish. So try one of them--Spiritual or Crazy--in your shop, keeping in mind that may be closely related ("Insanity is half-way to Enlightenment," a mildly crazy Duke religion professor once said.) But seriously, folks...somehow, some way, you and yours must believe that for your business to be what it is supposed to me--and to mean anything at all--the Client is first, right, The Main Asset, It, prime, special, All Things, The One Thing, Center of Cosmos, Alpha, paramount, Godhead, the Big Dog, more-important-than-you, more-important-than-dinner-with-Parker Posey--and the key to your success, wealth and happiness.

The client relationship as a valued asset. You must be willing to sacrifice for it. The idea, and the passion that carries it, can never be the object of derision. It's the one sacred thing. (Nothing else needs to be.) Everyone at your shop must always buy into client service passionately.

It doesn't matter how you get people to buy into client service passion. It just must be real.

You can (a) try hiring or even creating the spiritual Steve Covey-type ("Last night, the Forms of Beauty and Truth appeared to me in a vision, and asked me for alignment of principles with our company's principles, to take place later today, around 2:00 PM in the Lavender Conference Room, and please bring your own toga and sandals...") or (b) take the easier, quicker crazy-about-service route by hiring Wharton, Tuck or Fuqua B-school grads who are already believers ("I'll torture, and then fire, and maybe even kill, anyone who doesn't bend over backwards for every client every moment on my watch...") for whatever reasons, and who are otherwise sane, mainly. It doesn't matter which oddball or zealot you recruit. Just find them. Chances are it can't be taught.

They can be selfish. Even really out there. But they gotta believe in serving clients 24/7.

Anyone who does not buy into true client service must be asked to leave, and leave quickly, without attempts at "rehabilitation". So consider this easy-to-use quick exit interview talk, which you can memorize, and with which we'll conclude:

Dude, Justin[*], you don't believe what we believe about clients, and that's fine. So this is not working out.

Look, we know this firm is not for everyone. You are likely miserable here. We're probably all crazy, Dan Hull, and Julie McGuire, especially--they are real pieces of or work, and especially Hull, what a whackjob, eh? [optional, of course]--but, dude, Justin, real client service is what we really are all about. Julie and Dan are militant about that. They are serious.

Here, client service is not a gimmick or line we tell to clients to get them here. It's something we do ourselves to make them stay here. And it holds everything at Hull McGuire together. It's a religion. Okay, it's a little weird. Extreme. A Passion, Justin. May even be a cult. But there is nothing else. Nothing. Everything flows from it.

Thanks, Justin, and take care.

*All males we fire are named Justin, Brandon or Josh--go figure.

Posted by JD Hull at 02:06 PM | Comments (0)

Kid From Brooklyn opines on candor, client expectations.

This weekend, visit the Big Man, the Kid from Brooklyn (links above)--he's "always, always" happy to see you.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:48 AM | Comments (0)

December 01, 2006

So just what and where, sir, is ClientTown?

Well, for starters, it's a wonderful, wonderful place to be. Clients are the main event. It is never about the lawyers.

It really does exist. On most days, in my experience, the clients' towns are Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles--and also Chicago and Boston. In these venues, you are more likely to do well in a proceeding or transaction if you stick to honesty, aggression and the procedural and ethical rules. Those things are more genuinely respected. It's "more okay" to put the Client First and really move things along. Sure, the above are bigger towns--but in bigger towns, raw energy and adherence to the rules are not as likley to be frowned upon. In ClientTown, you are free to work for clients. In ClientTown, clients are more than "equipment". They are always way more important than lawyers. In ClientTown, you are "nice"--but you put the client's agenda first. "Professionalism" is not a phony shield or sanctuary; it means doing the work the right way. You forget about the other lawyers and think about your client. You are not trying to be popular--unless that helps the client. In ClientTown, you conduct all your communications and actions as if the client is at your side, right there watching and listening.

In ClientTown, it is never about the lawyers.

Posted by JD Hull at 10:38 PM | Comments (0)

ClientTown or LawyerTown? Which do you practice in?

Do you practice law in a (1) "clients' town" or (2) a "lawyers' town"?

The latter, very common, is a local culture where lawyer clubbiness, lawyer schedules and lawyer convenience always trump client needs behind the smokescreen of "professionalism". Here we meet the lawyer as king, diva and sacred cow. In a lawyers' town, lawyers and their delays, lack of discipline, procrastinations, disorganization, lack of business sense and failure to execute and move matters along--failings which would get them axed in a heartbeat at a well-run American company--must always be indulged. And even the sleaziest and most marginal lawyers must be treated by each other and speak to each other in a certain way. Client interests are secondary. Well, if you practice in a lawyers' town, are you going to do anything about it? Can we show some leadership? Can we retire lawyer "professionalism" and "civility" issues once and for all and replace them with something better: a new client-focused set of folkways?

Sorry, but in its current form, lawyer professionalism is a morally pretentious, archaic, hypocritical and silly movement which lawyers' towns tend to invest in heavily to protect and coddle apathetic, mediocre and lazy lawyering. It keeps standards low, and the tone lawyer-centric. Current lawyer professionalism is: "pro-lawyer", prissy, routinely and dishonestly misused by incompetent and uncaring lawyers in defense of their delays and screw ups, a waste of time and money, and anti-client. Just talking about it makes clients think we have our heads up our wazoos.

Face it, folks, most lawyers are not especially virtuous, or even that bright. Or classy. We are not royalty. Or even brave. Many of us are hesitant, non-confrontational and risk-averse to the point of being cowards who hide way too often in the rubric of "let's be prudent". To the surprise and dismay of our own clients--who had thought that lawyers were supposed to be innovators, activists and true heros--too few of us fit those descriptions. We follow. We hem and haw. We wet our finger and put it in the air. We aren't "special". And we are a dime a dozen. Now, in the U.S., anyone with enough money, barely average intelligence, well below-the-norm ethics and character, and the ability to converse without stuttering or drooling excessively, can become a lawyer. So let's not put on goofy airs.

Real professionalism, with the client as the touchstone, might have been a good thing. But ironically lawyer "civility" issues have helped breed in modern U.S. lawyering an even lower regard for the client--even for great corporate clients. Clients risk being relegated to mere equipment. Listen: Unless your General Counsel or client rep is Mr. Rogers, The Church Lady or Liberace with a law degree, most clients don't care in the least if you are "professional" (i.e., courtly, accomodating and nice), or if you spend your spare time socializing with and kissing up to the local law cattle. They do care about planning, execution and results from motivated, honest and aggressive lawyers. See "Professionalism Revisited: What About the Client?", appearing last year in the San Diego Daily Transcript.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:12 AM | Comments (3)

November 30, 2006

Get Lean, Talented and Hunt BigClients.

Now, and in the future, size may matter--but only if you are smaller, agile, muscular and can do most (90%) of the work traditionally done by large law firms (250-3000+ lawyers). Smaller firms, for most GCs on most projects, will be (a) preferred and (b) cool. Bigger firms, for most GCs on most projects, will be (a) suspect and (b) not cool. So below, per our usual rant, are 7 WAC? posts since June on why and how you can have BigClients in a boutique (5-150) setting if you have the people, a true client service culture and the discipline to keep it:

Real Elitism: Toward Building A Client-Centric Culture (6/10/06)

SRO: "Stealing and Keeping BigLaw Clients" (7/28/06)

"Give Me Your Tired, Your Rich Abused Fortune 500
Clients." (8/5/06)

Do BigClients need BigLaw more than 10% of the time? (9/22/06)

Work-life balance is a dumb-ass issue. (10/20/06)

GCs: Do you really want Big, Clumsy & Unresponsive in 50 cities worldwide? (10/21/06)

In Praise of Structure (10/30/06)

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Tell me again: GCs want what?

Corporate counsel keep telling us, pretty consistently, what they want from my firm and yours. It's trust, value and a willingness, to echo my friend Colin Samuels, to "put skin in the game". Good GCs don't like risk-averse weenies; they want to know what you think, and whether you'll be willing to take a hit with them. See this nice post and interview excerpts from Amy Campbell's Web Log, called "What Drives Corporate Counsel in Their Relationship with Outside Counsel?". And a quick note here that my friend Patrick Lamb and Hildebrandt International were kind enough to invite me to be on a truly blue-ribbon panel of bloggers and thinkers for the 14th Annual Marketing Partner Forum on January 25th, 2007. We'll discuss how modern technology can help meet the needs of general counsel, and how to reinforce existing relationships and generate new leads using technology. The panel includes Thomas Baldwin, Larry Bodine, David Bowerman, Dennis Kennedy, Pat Lamb, and J. Craig Williams.

Posted by JD Hull at 03:18 AM | Comments (0)

November 28, 2006

Why the WAC? Client Service Model/12 Rules May Not Work.

The answer is coming soon, reluctantly, but with a remedy. Hint: because humans are selfish creatures. To get ready, see the 12 Rules first.

Posted by JD Hull at 01:26 PM | Comments (0)

"What Corporate Clients Read Into Law Firm Bills"

That's a post by Tom Collins, at More Partner Income. It comments on Rees Morrison's article "Do the Math on Outside Law Firms" in The Legal Times of Washington.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:51 AM | Comments (0)

November 24, 2006

"I'm There for you Baby" Gets International.

"I'm There for you Baby", with serial over-achievers Neil Senturia and Barbara Bry, airs at its regular time tomorrow. Tune in to San Diego's CA$H 1700 AM, 1-2 p.m., West Coast time, or listen "live" via simulcast on the CA$H web site. This week includes: "The best and brightest are coming to the United States to seek their entrepreneurial fortunes--we should welcome them." ITFYB is about dreams, running a business, clients, employees and money.

Posted by JD Hull at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)

November 23, 2006

"Customers are always..."

If you haven't seen Maria Palma's Customers Are Always blog lately, you should. There are consistently good pieces of advice here by someone who knows, cares about and lives and breathes real service. Presented here are customers and clients as both valued people and business assets--without a trace of cynicism or negativity. It's all real.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

November 17, 2006

Redux: The 7 Habits of Highly Useless Corporate Lawyers

Remember Ernie from Glen Burnie and his story about the 1836 Virginia document? Tonight I met with EFGB at the Old Ebbitt Grill on 15th Street. Under blistering cross-examinations by three of our old friends, mainly transactional types, the kind of guys who beat fish to death with their bare hands, Ernie stuck to his story. "The 7 Habits of Highly Useless Corporate Lawyers".

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

November 16, 2006

Patten: Unhappy Lawyering = Unhappy Clients.

From Britain's Justin Patten at Human Law, see "If 40% of lawyers are not happy with their career choice do you expect good client service?"

Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)

November 15, 2006

Measuring Client Satisfaction

See Jim Hassett's two most recent posts at Legal Business Development.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)

November 12, 2006

2 Golden Posts from the St. Louis Mafia.

I like American rivertowns: Cincinnati, Louisville, Evansville, Memphis, St. Louis. I spent a good portion of my life in and out of Midwestern rivertowns, Cincinnati, my favorite, in particular. In fact, my first professional article ever, nearly 30 years ago, was about the renaissance of an ancient, tough and hard-working little town called New Richmond, Ohio, for the Sunday supplement of the Cincinnati Enquirer. Many river cities in the Midwest are known for their stability, hard work and being the headquarters for major blue chip corporations. But St. Louis seems to have taken that a step further. So what is the deal with St. Louis, Missouri? Is a disproportionate share of innovative thinkers and cutting-edge bloggers/blawgers using St. Louis as a base? Sometimes, you wonder. So many genuinely exciting takes on marketing, client retention and firm management seems to flow out of that town. Blog City. Idea City. Anyway, St. Louis, a new Seattle, is lucky. One of their leaders, and a favorite of mine since WAC? began, is Michelle Golden at Golden Practices. She has 2 new fine posts: "Measuring What Matters", a discussion of Ron Baker's new book Measuring What Matters to Customers: Using Key Predictive Indicators, and "Do You Have 5 Minutes to Market Today?"

Posted by JD Hull at 06:44 PM | Comments (0)

November 10, 2006

Quit working on Maggie's farm.

Start by tuning into www.imthereforyoubaby.com and The Entrepreneur's Guide to Galaxy--with our friends Barbara Bry and Neil Senturia--tomorrow, Saturday, at 1-2 pm California time. Listen live in San Diego area at 1700 AM or via simulcast on the CASH 1700 web site.

Posted by JD Hull at 02:00 PM | Comments (0)

November 09, 2006

Will Your Clients Help Market Your Firm?

From one of the smartest law practice management sites, which should be on your short list if you read just a few blogs each week, here's "How Likely Are Your Clients to Recommend Your Law Firm?" by Nashville-based Tom Collins at More Partner Income.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

November 08, 2006

Just Doing the Work is Marketing.

Note What About Clients? Rule Six: When You Work, You Are Marketing. And then read from the ABA's LPM Section's Law Practice TODAY, consultant Wendy Werner's "Customer Service for Lawyers":

Why do some law firms excel at bringing in new business and keeping clients while others struggle? They understand that every contact every time shapes the client’s opinion.

Ah, the Big Secret in 8 words. Exciting. Read more.

Posted by JD Hull at 06:17 PM | Comments (0)

November 07, 2006

12 Rules of Client Service

The goal of the "What About Clients?" 12 Rules is outrageous client service--but the 12 Rules' way of getting there is to align the interests of clients and customers and service providers. They were derived from the "How To Practice Law" section of our firm's Practice Guide, written for associates and paralegals in 2000. The rules, like service itself, are not perfect, and can be improved. Promise: This model works--if you work at it. Follow these rules by building a disciplined culture at your shop where they are enforced and kept alive--and your clients and firm both get stronger and better together. You'll see repeat business. You'll make money. And assuming you have the talent pool, and the right people to do the work, you can steal and keep any good client you covet. No limits.

The Catch: Instituting the 12 Rules (as opposed to just following them) is very, very hard work, whether your firm already has a passion for customer service, or has been happy going from day to day with only the faintest sense of its mediocrity. Real client service is as difficult and as important as your day-to-day work. But the two must be merged:

1. Represent only clients you like.

2. The client is the main event.

3. Make sure everyone in your firm knows the client is the main event.

4. Deliver legal work that changes the way clients think about lawyers.

5. Over-communicate: bombard, copy and confirm.

6. When you work, you are marketing.

7. Know the client.

8. Think like the client--help control costs.

9. Be there for clients--24/7.

10. Be accurate, thorough and timely--but not perfect.

11. Treat each co-worker like he or she is your best client.

12. Have fun.

Copyright 2005 John Daniel Hull IV, Julie Elizabeth McGuire, Hull McGuire PC, All Rights Reserved.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

November 05, 2006

Guess what? You're a salesperson.

Here's "Do You Consider Yourself a Salesperson?" by Tom Kane over at his blog, the consistently fine LegalMarketingBlog.com.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:25 PM | Comments (0)

November 02, 2006

The rise, sort of, of legal weblogs.

Do I think blogging is (a) important or (b) the wave of the future?

Answers: (a) no, and (b) I have no idea. However, blogging, currently, due to its evolving role as a clearinghouse, lab and media outlet for the success or failure of new ideas, is telling us where the best of the legal profession will be in 10 years. It's attracted some well-respected law and business minds, and their firms along with them. In the near term, "blawgs" have become a way to keep abreast of events and developments in business law in particular at almost lightning speed. Whether you have a blog or not, there's a huge payoff in reading them. Not reading legal weblogs a couple of times a week may very well be something we do at our peril.

Frankly, that has surprised me. Blogging by lawyers is no fad. But a really good, consistently good, blawg is hard to find. Most, but not all, of the great ones are by "full-time" bloggers, usually lawyers and often consultants.* To keep a good one going, you need a unifying concept, ideas, energy and discipline, especially if you still practice law. Do realize that, if you do have a blog, in-house counsel for publicly-traded clients do like legal weblogs. And why not? Blogs are damn cute, currently popular and show your tech-ness.

But what GCs really like, however, are Working Lawyers. They really don't want to see a 500-word post on "The Mood of the Beltway" or "Why I Like Plato, My Cat" the day before your 4-week IP/antitrust jury trial starts at the Eastern District in Alexandria. And consider this, too: if a GC or associate GC for ACME International has time to read your "blawg" every day, well, that may not be a good sign re: the GC or this company. Blogging for most of us is not the main event--and it shouldn't be.

* I can think of about eight (8) "greats" offhand, 5 of whom I "know". I would identify them but all 8 of these talented people are hopelessly vain and self-absorbed pains in the ass. It's why I like them.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

October 27, 2006

Hill & Knowlton blog: Client Service Insights

My friend Pat Lamb of In Search of Perfect Client Service made me aware of Hill & Knowlton's blog Client Service Insights. WAC? is going to permanently link to this one. Clever and interesting, CSI just conducted and announced a "winner" of its First Annual Scariest Client Service Stories Contest in honor of Halloween. On the homepage currently: "Insight #1 - Client service excellence isn't about doing the things no one else can do; it's about doing the things anyone can do, but just don't." So simple, it's scary. Read that to yourself a couple of times. Then ask your brilliant young associates--the ones who like you were law review editors and still think it's all about being "smart"--to read it exactly 13 times. Aloud, in unison.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:46 AM | Comments (1)

October 23, 2006

Go-to lawyers.

Here's a great practical post I almost missed but quite a few others noticed. It's by Blawg Review mainstay Colin Samuels at Infamy or Praise and called "Eight (or Nine) Attributes of a Go-To Lawyer". Colin comments on and even adds to a list from an article in the June 2006 issue of Corporate Counsel by Daniel DiLucchio. Two key traits on the list are:

6. Willing to "put skin in the game" — Able to take a calculated risk with a client and communicate that he's standing behind him.

8. Sense of urgency — Shares the client's need to move quickly in a highly competitive environment.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)

October 21, 2006

"And a thousand telephones that will not ring..."

That's from Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisted, which Johnny Winter also did--but without that weird police siren. How are GCs really finding firms these days? If your website doesn't hit them right, will that mean no rings? Do they use Google? Carolyn Elefant's new piece at Legal Blog Watch, "Corporate Counsel Using Web Sites and Search Engines to Find Outside Counsel", is fascinating, instructive and loud.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:17 AM | Comments (2)

October 19, 2006

Patrick Lamb: Law is a service business.

Like many other corporate lawyers and bloggers, when my friend Chicago trial lawyer Patrick Lamb of In Search Of Perfect Client Service weighs in on an issue, I listen carefully. And being mentioned by Patrick in one of his posts is just a wonderful bonus. See his recent post "Ball And Chain? Key To Freedom?" and his take on how current mobile communication technology (cell phones, Treos, etc.) can serve both (1) clients and (2) "work/life balance". Here are excerpts:

Law is a service business. If you don't want confront the demands created by being in a service business, then find something else to do. But having said that, these mobile [communications] devices allow one to be hiking in the mountains but still accessible for a critical call, as happened to me this summer. Neither my wife nor my kids would have preferred that I be stuck in my office.

Those who complain about having their "off hours" interrupted really are conceding that they would not have been accessible in the first place. Those who put clients in second place are going to find out that they don't have to worry about the problem any more.

Do read Pat's post.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

October 18, 2006

Altman Weil 2006 GC Survey is here.

Posted by JD Hull at 01:31 AM | Comments (0)

October 15, 2006

WAC?'s Usual 'Muscle Boutique' Rant Gains Currency?

From Justin Patten's Human Law, here is "The Shift In Power From The Big To The Small Firm", collecting other good posts. In a nutshell, my firm's experience has been that: for 90% of high-end corporate law work, boutique firms and firms under, say, 150 lawyers are preferred by, not just acceptable to, General Counsel at BigClients.

It's time for lawyers with the right credentials in firms of 150 down to 5 to get off your knees, quit bottom-feeding, chuck both your "niche" market thinking and your work-life balance nonsense (the first 8 to 10 years for associates, and lawyering done right after that, should be hard work for even the gifted), steal the good clients, provide outrageous service and get rich. Yours for the taking.

Hat tip to the omniscient Editor of Blawg Review for noticing.

Posted by JD Hull at 06:46 AM | Comments (0)

October 05, 2006

Again: Do BigClients need BigLaw more than 10% of the time?

Re: the WAC? recent post "Do BigClients need BigLaw more than 10% of the time?", two of the bloggers who thoughtfully weighed in on it were Tom Collins at More Partner Income in "Big Law's Grip on Corporate Legal Fees is Weakening", and Dan Filler at Concurring Opinions in "In House Counsel And The Selection Of Law Firms".

Posted by JD Hull at 12:11 PM | Comments (0)

October 04, 2006

The Kid From Brooklyn sounds off on client service, pricing.

He's here. WAC? is still in the desert with the beautiful people so this will just have to do.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (2)

September 30, 2006

The Entrepreneur's Guide to the Galaxy

Neil's in the basement mixin' up the medicine. Tune in to San Diego's CA$H 1700 AM, Sundays, 3-4 p.m., Pacific Time, or listen live via simulcast on the CA$H web site. With Neil Senturia and Barbara Bry.

Tomorrow is Show #14. Learn why nonprofit entrepreneurship is not an oxymoron. Listen to the podcasts any time.

Posted by JD Hull at 01:39 AM | Comments (0)

September 29, 2006

"Proactive?" Huh? Say what?

Real customer service is hard. But first you have to get that. And hardly anyone does. In a great short post, Michelle Golden of Golden Practices, one of my favorite client-centric blogs, says it all about the relentless tendency to embrace mediocrity in customer service standards. It's called "How Do You Define Proactive?".

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Patrick McKenna's E-Book First 100 Days

My boutique firm goes to wherever our clients need solutions--litigation, interesting deals coupled unique international tax problems, lobbying and lots of consigliere exercises--and so we travel and work. Western Europe, US and Latin America. We won't stay put. But for my odd, peripatetic life, I might have finished Patrick McKenna's e-book First 100 Days: Transitioning A New Managing Partner weeks ago. Patrick is a Principal with Edge International, a well-known global consultancy which makes higher-end law firms even more effective. Lots of savvy consultants and bloggers have given rave reviews to Patrick's book. Now I've read it--I get it. First 100 Days is short, colorful and easy to use and read. It's long on substance and gives you the real keys to law firm management success in only 23 idea-drenched pages. Usable ideas and experiences of several current law firm managing partners at fine firms are featured in 100 Days. It's unique, and jumps outs at you. Read it.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

September 26, 2006

"Small Is the New Big" (and you can still get rich...go on, it's okay)

Read Seth Godin's new book Small Is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas. It's what WAC? has been trying to tell you. Godin just says it better.

Posted by JD Hull at 02:48 PM | Comments (1)

September 25, 2006

How did your firm get better today?

See this one from Matt Homann's the [non]billable hour.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2006

Clients, the New World, and Getting Off Your Damn Knees.

Let's review. This blog, "What About Clients?", is about just three (3) simple ideas:

1. Real Service. Corporate clients all over the world are underserved and not happy. You can change that. But client service, like practicing law correctly, is very hard. You need to work at it.

2. International. In short, American lawyers need to meet lawyers and clients from other countries.

3. The New Muscle Boutiques. Or "Give Me Your Tired, Your Rich Abused Fortune 500 Clients". Boutique firms with top legal talent in the Americas, Europe and Asia are still bottom feeding. Unless your firm is doing a quality-of-life experiment, or trying to make law practice easy and not stimulating, you should be actively pitching to and stealing BigLaw clients. Get off your knees, get a grip. It's okay, we live in a free markets world. Just keep your rates high and your services superb.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (3)

Listen to WAC?'s own Dan Hull

In case you missed hearing WAC?'s Dan Hull talk about firing bad clients as a guest on the September 10 edition of "I'm There For You Baby", you can now listen to the podcast on the Baby website.

Posted by Holden Oliver at 09:59 PM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2006

Real Marketing: Just "Getting One for the Gipper"?

Carolyn Elefant has written a wonderful post--insightful, blunt and humorous--at Law.com's Legal Blog Watch called "The $45 Million-a-Year Lawyer Who Doesn't Even Market". It opines on some remarks of DLA Piper lawyer Amy Schulman, who had made these canned "post-game victory" comments about marketing and lawyering in an interview with Law Practice Today in September 2004:

I never think of myself as “marketing." I don’t have a secret that I’m not sharing. My rainmaking success comes from two things: my conviction that I can be really helpful to clients and my ability to offer them a valuable service.

Carolyn's retort:

Please! While, clearly, Schulman generates lots of billings from heading megacases that involve hundreds of man hours, you can't bring in the kinds of large clients that produce that type of revenue without marketing. I sure hope Schulman is more convincing when she litigates for clients than when it comes to discussing marketing.

I am sure Schulman is an excellent lawyer--but Carolyn's got a point.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Do BigClients need BigLaw more than 10% of the time?

Over the weekend I was lucky enough to be present at a very well-attended and, as always, insightful talk by my friend Paul Clifford. Paul is the former managing partner of a major Boston law firm, and is now a principal at Law Practice Consultants. In a Saturday presentation on marketing before the International Business Law Consortium, Paul mentioned that corporate legal work generally breaks down into 3 categories: 10% is "bet-the-company" work (where price is no object, and which mega-firms tend to control), 10% is "commodity" (i.e., cookie-cutter) work and 80% is "important" work.

That vast 80% category of "important" corporate legal work Paul talked about includes virtually all (95%) of the work my small boutique firm performs in transactional and corporate tax, litigation, environmental, lobbying, international, IP, etc. But that same 80% also includes the same work done by firms which are both bigger than and even smaller than mine--from 3000 lawyers down to, say, just 5 or 6 lawyers in a first-rate muscle boutique. So the point for me is that a total of 90% (80% "important" + 10% "commodity") of available corporate legal work is NOT the 10% bet-the-company work, and can be performed by a variety of different sized firms, assuming they have the talent. Though his comments using that breakdown were in large part about pricing legal services, Paul got me thinking. Bear with me:

The 250 largest American law firms range from 3200 to about 150 lawyers--a huge spread, with the "bottom" 125 of those firms starting at about 300 lawyers and best described as medium-sized. Here, however, we'll liberally refer to all 250 of them as "BigLaw" firms in the U.S. BigLaw gets pounded in legal weblogs for a variety of reasons. The attacks are rooted in everything from pure sour grapes and size-envy to thoughtful markets analysis and anecdotal reporting about who the GCs of BigClients are really hiring to get things done.

I like BigLaw. I am convinced that there's nothing like a BigLaw giant (to me, the 15 or so U.S. firms with more than 1000 lawyers) when the client needs a vast, dynamic library of people and high-level skills under one banner in several cities and countries. If BigLaw is in demand and making money--and clearly it still is--it could care less what people in the nascent blawgosphere think. BigLaw isn't reading blogs/blawgs. I don't even like the term BigLaw. It makes those who use it sound pathetic and small. Let's call all 250 of them "Mega-firms".

But one of the more sober takes of many Mega-firm detractors are that boutiques and "clusters of boutiques"--corporate law firms from 5 lawyers to 150 lawyers--can do the same work for BigClients that Mega-firms now do. And do perhaps even better and faster, and at the same rates. Corporate legal talent no longer resides soley in large law firms--and it certainly doesn't reside, in my experience, and my firm's and other firms' experience, in most of the firms on the NLJ 250 list. For bet-the-company (BTC) projects, which require lots of first-rate lawyers quickly, such as hostile takeovers, some M&A work and some litigation, some of the Mega-firms are still what BigClients need and will continue to need. But, like Boston-based Paul Clifford, most high-end consultants and other commentators think that the BTC work is perhaps 10% of legal corporate work out there, if that.

So what about the other 90% of available corporate legal work? Is there any reason why firms ranging in size from 5 to 150 lawyers with the right talent and specialities can't do that work for BigClients?

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

September 09, 2006

Bad client festival: Make sure to tune in on Sunday at 3:00 PM Pacific time...

...to San Diego's CA$H 1700 AM where you'll hear WAC?'s own Dan Hull discussing how to deal with clients that aren't worth keeping on this week's edition of "I'm There For You Baby".

As always, the show will be simulcast on CA$H's website and will also be available on the Baby website.

Posted by Tom Welshonce at 11:45 PM | Comments (0)

Even more on BTI Consulting study--and some new things on unhappy GCs.

Here's the ABA article "In-house Counsel Axing Law Firms". But for the best overall sketch and collection of materials of the the "dissatisfied general counsel" issue I've seen yet, complete with other stats from non-BTI sources, see "Another Failing Grade" by Mark Beese at Leadership for Lawyers. Some of this was new to me. Thanks, Mark.

Posted by JD Hull at 01:01 AM | Comments (1)

September 08, 2006

Jim Hassett's Raving Fans.

Don't miss Jim Hassett's ongoing 5-part series on the toughest single thing any firm tackles: "How To Turn Legal Clients Into Raving Fans". Jim publishes once a week, Wednesdays, and his posts at Legal Business Development are always thoughtful, valuble and fun to read.

Posted by JD Hull at 04:46 PM | Comments (0)

September 05, 2006

Business Referrals: Should You Keep Score?

Tom Kane at Legal Marketing Blog, inspired by Bruce Allen, addresses this question in "Do You Get Referrals From Those To Whom You Refer Business?" As Bruce Allen had noted in his own post, “no need to keep watering dirt if grass just refuses to grow.”

Posted by JD Hull at 04:29 AM | Comments (1)

September 01, 2006

Learning Optimism: Toward Building A New Lawyer.

From Arnie Herz's Legal Sanity, here is "Is Life in the Law Half Full or Half Empty?". Fine job with a subject no one likes to think or talk about: must lawyers remain such a glum, burned-out and uninspired lot? Because at the moment, that's where many, many of us are. Some say we even need to be that way to function well. What about clients? What kind of legal products do our clients get from our unhappy colleagues? And how do walking-wounded lawyers affect those of us who actually like what we are doing? How about mixing focus, competence, joy and fun?

Posted by JD Hull at 07:20 PM | Comments (1)

August 30, 2006

"How many lawyers does it take to screw in a light bulb?"

At least two, and I'll explain that.

In the meantime, let's note that "overlawyering", "lawyering by committee" and "bill-padding" are terms used to describe infuriating things lawyers do: (1) well-meaning lawyers indulging their perfectionist natures, (2) "on-the-job training" for your brilliant $120,000 first-year associate who unfortunately doesn't know anything yet (and won't for a while), (3) deliberately "milking the bill" (4) "piling-on" with other timekeepers on the bill and (5) "feeding the monster". These are instructive expressions. Become familiar with them. After all, your clients and your GCs coined them thinking of you.

However, a client project that goes on for more than a week should have at least two lawyers assigned to it. I think clients generally believe that two lawyers is better than one from the standpoint of adding value but always feel more secure about a project if they think that two lawyers are "minding the store" and that at least one of them can be counted on both to cover things and keep things moving if one of the lawyers is temporarily less accessible. Moreover, to make all of this clear--to clients, co-workers and opposing counsel--letters, documents and pleadings should regularly "show" both lawyers. You need to send the message that the client is covered by a minimum of two people to everyone.

So far, I have not seen a client balk at having at least two lawyers involved on a significant or lengthy project. True, you cannot always bill 100% of the team effort in this type of arrangement--but the good will generated by having more than one lawyer available and "on the job" is some of the most valuble marketing for repeat business you can do. Clients need to feel safe. That's just as important as the work itself being substantively first-rate.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:04 PM | Comments (0)

August 29, 2006

More on Bad Clients--Who's "Bad", Anyway?

Recently, I was a guest on a radio program for entrepreneurs in a segment on how to spot and fire "bad" clients. This is a favorite subject, probably because it took 5 years for me to fully appreciate what bad clients were doing to my new firm. Rob Millard, Nathan Burke, and "WAC?" have written about bad clients: how to spot them, what they cost you and what to do about them. In this blog's "12 rules" for better client service, bad clients fall under Rule 1: Represent Only Clients You Like and an earlier related post. Generally, you are at your best when you represent clients who share your firm's values.

A "bad" client is not bad because it is small and/or unprofitable, questions bills, pays late or stiffs you. A bad client is one that (1) is not and probably will never be a "sophisticated user of legal services", (2) has a dysfunctional culture and/or (3) dampens the morale of your hard-working staff. Still, bad ex-clients at our shop have typically been small, and often not sophisticated. Ideally, a desirable client at my firm is relatively large, and comes equipped with a savvy and experienced GC. However, a recent post by Tom Collins at More Partner Income, one of the best blogs out there on enlightened management of any firm, added a lot to my thinking on firing smaller and/or less profitable clients. Tom, commenting on other good recent pieces by Ed Poll and Ed Wesemann, writes that "Law Firms Should Not Fire Those Clients, Yet". Do read Tom's post.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:30 PM | Comments (1)

August 23, 2006

Marketing, Boomers, Generations X and Y--and Work.

"WAC?" has studied workplace generation-gap issues (see "Can't Stay Late, Man...I Got a Thing"), and it still doesn't have a clue. But like Carolyn Elefant at Legal Blog Watch, I noticed Larry Bodine's recent post "Generation Gap Hurts Law Firm Marketing". I was glued to it, and read it twice. Larry's short piece and the comments in it from consultant and author Cam Marston are well worth the time to read, even if you're not a lawyer and never worry about marketing, but have wondered if there is something fundamentally different about your co-workers currently under 40. Note also the good comment in defense of Gen Xs and Ys by Rod Heggy to Larry's post.

Posted by JD Hull at 01:04 PM | Comments (0)

August 21, 2006

"I know it's only marketing--but I like it." Yes, but please get some help.

If I could win ya, if I could sing ya
A love song so divine,
Would it be enough for your cheating heart,
If I broke down and cried? If I cri-i-ied?

I said I know it's only rock 'n roll but I like it.... (M. Jagger/K. Richards)

Marketing isn't for everyone. You probably need a dark, kinky crowd-pleasing streak--a touch of Little Richard in you--to enjoy it, much less be any good at it. That's why marketing efforts in many American law firms are often dominated by trial lawyers, the closest thing we have to "outlaw" and "showman" in our staid and risk-averse profession. Trial people don't necessarily have better marketing and selling instincts. When the dust we kick up clears, we are just as overly-cautious and spineless as everyone else in the profession. We are not always possessed of winning ways. We just "like it", and we have big egos. We like to talk.

Lawyers are notoriously bad marketers, closers, managers, planners and strategists compared to trained business professionals. We just think differently, and we suffer from "rigid thought syndrome". Even those of us who can melt juries are not really that people-oriented. We were "good students". We were careful. We tended to be introverts and loners. And now we are prisoners of legal thinking. Ironically, the very traits and training that made us good at our profession have made us bad at other things.

But we can learn. And no one gets a pass. (1) Those who like to market and sell need training. (2) Those who don't like to market and sell need training, too.

On both the right and left side of this blog are listed several management and marketing consultants. You can tell this by the names of their blogs and websites. Some are lawyers, some aren't, but all of them can help your firm develop a disciplined marketing strategy or "WAC?", which is careful and risk-averse, would not have ever listed them on this blog. You should contact these people. You'll need them sooner or later. You need more than great instincts. We know it's only marketing and selling, but don't wing it, counsellor.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:39 PM | Comments (0)

August 19, 2006

"You Can Take It [Biglaw Practice] With You."

Bravo. From well-respected D.C. lawyer and blogger Carolyn Elefant at My Shingle, it's right here.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

August 17, 2006

Make client service standards part of each employee review.

We've discussed this idea before. If (a) you have chosen to build a truly client-centric firm, and (b) some of your partners and employees don't buy into constant improvement and innovation in customer service, tell them goodbye. Do that right away. Your co-workers either love--or don't love--the idea of great customer service. You can't teach people to get excited about it. Don't try.

But if they do "get it", keep those people, and challenge them to keep thinking and improving by incorporating specific customer service standards and goals into each employee performance review. Those standards may vary from position to position and from employee to employee. Whatever they are, make them as important as technical skills. Measure yourself and your employees by them.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:23 PM | Comments (0)

August 16, 2006

A New GC Blog That High-End Boutiques Will Want To Read.

First Geoffrey Gussis at InhouseBlog, and then Robert Ambrogi at Legal Blog Watch, report "Fortune 500 First: GC Launches Blog". Our new blogger will be Mike Dillon, GC at Sun Microsystems.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

Mindsets, Paradigms and Other Prisons.

Rob Millard at The Adventure of Strategy is one of the few voices in the blogosphere who can use the word "mindset" and WAC? will still take him seriously. And, seriously, see his fine short post "The Enemy is Mindset"--or what I'd call the difficult art of seeing everything all the time as if you are seeing it for the first time. Or something like that. Rob's piece is inspired in part by a good post from Innovation Zen. WAC? will now repair to its study with a view of the mountains to burn floral incense and read The Upanishads.

Posted by JD Hull at 10:48 PM | Comments (0)

August 15, 2006

File This Under "Makes Way Too Much Sense".

Read "The Best Way to Market Yourself Is To Be Who You Are" by Allison Shields at her always-thoughtful Legal Ease Blog.

Posted by JD Hull at 04:16 PM | Comments (0)

Ouch, indeed.

See today's post by Chicago trial lawyer Pat Lamb called "The Wide Gulf Between Lawyer Perceptions And Those Of Their Clients". Note in particular Pat's quote of the comment of McDonald's Managing Counsel Robert Johnson: "Firms claim to understand our business model, but many do not walk the walk. They're more interested in impressing us with their esoteric philosophies than in reaching a resolution."

Posted by JD Hull at 03:07 PM | Comments (0)

August 10, 2006

The Entrepreneur's Guide to the Galaxy

Be sure to tune in to San Diego's CA$H 1700 AM Saturday from 1:00-2:00 p.m. Pacific time to hear this week's edition of "I'm There For You Baby" with Neil Senturia (note picture of Neil on his damn yacht) and Barbara Bry. This week's edition will include a discussion with Serge Dedina, a life long surfer who uses entrepreneurial principles in preserving the coast in California and Mexico, along with more rules from the popular "Baby's Book of Becoming a Billionaire" and the "I wish I'd thought of that idea" Idea. You can also hear the live simulcast on the CA$H website and listen to past shows on the I'm There For You Baby website.

Posted by Tom Welshonce at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)

August 09, 2006

Hitting His Client-Centric Stride: The Greatest American Lawyer.

Absolutely everyone--hey, listen up, that means you--should check in with The Greatest American Lawyer from time to time. Always thoughtful, and with something to say, he's quite eloquent when he's a tad pissed off. Like "WAC?", he loves clients and customers and is not ashamed to put them first. His August 3 post is here.

Posted by JD Hull at 02:39 PM | Comments (0)

August 05, 2006

"Give Me Your Tired, Your Rich Abused Fortune 500 Clients."

Life is short, it's Saturday, and an English blogger in an e-mail got me thinking. Let's review.

This blog, "What About Clients?", is about just three (3) simple ideas:

1. Real Service. Corporate clients all over the world are underserved and not happy. You can change that. But client service, like practicing law correctly, is very hard. You need to work at it.

2. The New Muscle Boutiques. Boutique firms with top legal talent in America, Europe and Asia are still bottom feeding. Unless your firm is doing a quality-of-life experiment, or trying to make law practice easy and not stimulating, you should be actively pitching to and stealing BigLaw clients. Get off your knees, get a grip. It's okay, we live in a free markets world. Just keep your rates high and your services superb.

3. International. American lawyers need to meet lawyers and clients from other countries.

The other regular "WAC?" topics are Sensitive Litigation Moments (federal courts), IP/Tech, Natural Resources, Politics, Real Heros, Writing Well and Keith Richards Watch. These are about client service and/or specific practice areas in which my firm Hull McGuire PC does all over the U.S., Western Europe and Latin America with 12 lawyers, a minimum of outsourcings and the help of lawyers from a fine long-standing international group (www.iblc.com).

And I am not 100% sure why we started "Keith Richards Watch"--but it was in large part a tribute to and comic relief for American baby boomers who may be burned out from practicing law. Besides, only Keith could get me to change my rule on not representing individuals.

Cheers.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

August 04, 2006

"Oh, New York City, you talk a lot...let's have a look at 'ya!"

A Little Face Time Maybe?

In another month, and for 4 days or so, I'll be in and around New York City, a city I love, especially in decent weather. As usual, I'll see people I have known for years. But I'll also be meeting in the flesh people for the first time I've talked with for months, or even years, only on the phone.

And this will happen: if I have never seen his or her picture, I may think that he or she is, say, a tall, dark-haired 30ish human--a definite image I conjure up during phone talks. If after meeting that person it turns out I've been really talking all this time to a short blonde 50ish person, it doesn't change any mental images long-term. I will still revert back the tall, dark-haired 30ish image after I get back home and talk to her or him again on the phone. With e-mails, it's worse; even if I have formed a picture, only a partial personality comes across in those many back and forths before I meet my pen pal.

Until I meet him or her face-to-face, nothing is enough. Meanwhile, the world still changes rapidly as we speak and type. What's next to make us efficient yet isolated and numb? Do we talk to each other enough with our live human voices? Do we see each other enough with our eyes, "in real time"? What has all this fabulous technology done to render obsolete important human energies, chemistries and nuances to work together and solve problems? So maybe "vibes" is not so silly an idea.

Work, like life, is a social experience. What are we losing these days?

Posted by JD Hull at 08:12 AM | Comments (0)

August 01, 2006

Happy Birthday to "What About Clients?"

Today is the first anniversary of "What About Clients?" Thanks to Chicago lawyer Patrick Lamb, D.C. wunderkind consultant Chris Abraham and D.C. telecom lawyer Mark Del Bianco for getting us--Tom Welshonce of Hull McGuire in Pittsburgh, and me--started, and to the people (all 4 or 5 of them) who still read this blog. Our first post was one year ago today. It's still our favorite, it's what this blog's about, and it's here.

Posted by JD Hull at 05:30 PM | Comments (2)

So, you think your customer service is pretty good already, do you?

Sure about that? Whatever your level of confidence is, don't miss a post by corporate lawyer Patrick Lamb at his blog In Search of Perfect Client Service called "Overcoming The Lake Wobegon Effect", with an assist from Harry Beckwith, author of the 1997 customer service bible Selling the Invisible. "And all the children are above-average..."

Posted by JD Hull at 01:38 AM | Comments (0)

July 30, 2006

Blawg Review #68: Blachman is Everywhere--More Power to Him.

Jeremy Blachman is out early with Blawg Review #68. His new, much-discussed and apparently funny-as-hell book Anonymous Lawyer makes me happy, and I haven't even read it yet. Here's an overachiever who's about to get rich and famous satirizing a class of overachievers--lawyers--who in real life are 10 times worse than the jokes about them. A happy thought. The ultimate. We stand in awe and envy. From what we've heard about the book, AL will do more to spotlight anti-client attitudes, lawyer-centric behavior and bad client service than WAC? will ever do. Thanks, Sir Jeremy. Fondly, J. Daniel Hull.

Posted by JD Hull at 08:52 PM | Comments (0)

July 28, 2006

SRO: "Stealing and Keeping BigLaw Clients".

That's a predatory title for a "how-to" marketing seminar. But while discussing that very course title with an influential blogger/thinker I spoke with on the phone this week (refreshing, because I wrongly never make time to do that), he said to me in effect: well, Dan, why not?

Certainly, two relatively recent developments in law practice--first, boutique firms formed by elite lawyers voluntarily leaving large firms and, second, reasonably-priced technological advances which made smaller firms more nimble and powerful--have changed legal markets. The large law firm (300+), an institution I am quite fond of in its saner incarnations, will always have its role. However, high-end clients are no longer forced to hire large firms to obtain top drawer lawyers, results and service. The contrary notion is a myth--a proven ruse.

GCs are now smarter and bolder. Smaller firms can and do land and serve top clients. At top rates, too. It's about service, not price. No point not getting rich just because you start a new, smaller and more client-centric firm. Keep your high rate; savor your lower overhead, if you can achieve one. You deserve it.

So a serious course on getting (okay, stealing) and keeping high-end clients (Fortune 500 companies and large Asian and European companies) might actually fly. But...I'm wrong a lot. Would that catch on? Are we ready? Any presenters out there? Hundreds might attend--but who would teach? Who can I get to speak? Who has experienced it, has credibility, is not afraid of the subject, can articulate it?

A new model is already here. Let's talk about it, and make it work. It's about time--and, hey folks, the time is right.

Posted by JD Hull at 03:01 PM | Comments (1)

July 27, 2006

Tune In.

Is the name of a really swishy bar in my old DC neighborhood but it's also what we at WAC? would like everyone to do this Saturday for an hour. Meet Howard and Robin with MBAs. Listen to mega-successful entrepreneurs The Baby (Neil Senturia) and The Babysitter (Barbara Bry) on San Diego's CA$H 1700 AM on Saturdays from 1-2 p.m Pacific time or on the CA$H web site. Or go to I'm There for You Baby and hear podcasts of the first 4 shows. Customer service ideas is a staple. Regular segments include: Billionaire Update, Trump Watch ("when is enough enough?"), the ongoing saga of the U.S. patent system, Crooks of the Week, and "I wish I had thought of that idea" Idea.

Posted by JD Hull at 06:04 PM | Comments (0)

July 18, 2006

A Short But Happy Carnival of Client Service.

There is no shortage of posts these days about the truly cross-cultural challenges of better client service. We start with better client service thinking. Allison Shields at Legal Ease Blog had "Why Lawyers Are Bad at Client Service" and "Are You Really Losing Clients?", inspired by the Michelle Golden post "Lost Clients? 'Reasons' are Symptoms, Not Cause" ....and lawyer-consultant-Chief Thinking Officer Matt Homan at the [non] billable hour is not only full of ideas and good writing but as usual reaches for ideas from other sources in "May I Help You With Anything Else?", "Top Things They Never Taught Me" and "When Creativity Takes a Holiday".

Posted by JD Hull at 10:23 AM | Comments (0)

July 15, 2006

Once Again: Jim Calloway On Client Expectations.

From Jim Calloway's well-regarded Law Practice Tips Blog, here is the June 20 post "What Creates Client Satisfaction? Meeting Expectations". Two excerpts:

Readers of this blog are seeking law practice tips. Well, here's a huge one. Schedule a meeting with your staff and discuss how you help your new clients have realistic expectations. With the guidance of the forms noted above, draft handouts that will be given out to every new client in your two largest areas of practice. Implement the policy and set a review date for six months from now.

Equally important [to predictions about client projects made by lawyers to their clients] are client expectations about how the attorney-client relationship will be managed. Modern technology allows us to be available to clients around the clock.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:57 PM | Comments (0)

July 07, 2006

Tom Kane's Top Ten Client Getters and Keepers.

American client-centric blogs seem to be on a big roll. At his The Legal Marketing Blog, Tom Kane reprises his Top Ten Marketing Tips, with a link to each tip if you go to his post. These tips make way too much sense. Tom gets that doing a great job for clients and marketing work together--that, in fact, they are really part of the same thing. He starts with the existing client, the asset you already have, and builds on it. Note how (1) getting, (2) keeping and (3) servicing good clients are part of same seamless exercise:

10 – Be Active In Organizations
9 – Networking With Super-Connectors
8 – Take A Reporter To Lunch
7 – Write Articles of Interest
6 – Talk It Up With More Speaks
5 – Communicate Often
4 – Offer To Make Proposal
3 – Seek Client Feedback Often
2 – Entertain Your Client
1 – Visit Your Clients

Posted by JD Hull at 05:54 PM | Comments (1)

July 06, 2006

Allison Shields: Real Client Service - Can You Teach It?

Here's a fine post on a favorite subject from one the best client-centric blogs out there. Lawyer-consultant Allison Shields at LegalEase wonders "Can Excellent Client Service Be Taught?" And the answer is yes. Notice especially the idea of developing in all staff and employees a "hospitality mentality"--Allison took this idea from a recent Inc. Magazine article--and where that mentality really starts.

Posted by JD Hull at 05:40 PM | Comments (0)

July 02, 2006

Can Real Client $ervice Make You a Billionaire?

Sure it can. If you live in or can somehow access the San Diego market on Sirius, tune into "I'm There For You, Baby" on CASH 1700 AM on Saturdays from 1-2 p.m., PST, with Neil "the Baby" Senturia and Barbara Bry. I've posted about my successful, serial overachieving friends Neil and Barbara before, here and here. The hour-long "Baby" radio show is about personal, professional and business excellence. The first show was yesterday, and Neil led it off with an hilarious but instructive segment on client service--how hard it is and why it's important--about how his now ex-fitness club lost several thousand Senturia-Bry dollars a year by making Neil and his family jump through stupid hoops to secure an extra membership card valued at $25.00.

Three great interviews by Neil (imagine if Howard Stern were an Ivy-educated B school prof) followed, including one with Alan Webber, the former Harvard Business Review editor who co-founded Fast Company Magazine. "Baby" will also have these regular segments: the Billionaire Update, Trump Watch ("When is enough enough?"), "the ongoing saga of the U.S. patent system", Crooks of the Week, and "I wish I had thought of that idea". CASH 1700 AM, owned by XEPE, features business talk. Most of its programming is carried by Connecticut-based radio network Business Talk Radio Network, but on weeknights from 7 p.m.-5 a.m, it airs CNN Headline News radio.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)

June 27, 2006

The 7 Habits of Highly Useless Corporate Lawyers.

"Ernie from Glen Burnie", not his real name, is an unreliable but wise childhood friend of mine who likes the works of Hunter Thompson. EFGB is now a partner at a Washington, DC law firm. For years he has claimed that the following--by an unknown and long-dead lawyer, and dated 1836--was discovered during the 1980s in the ruins of an old Episcopal church in a northern Virginia town near DC. I would believe EFGB--except that I doubt that the word "weenie" was much in style in the antebellum American south:

1. Be risk-averse at all times. Clients have come to expect this from their lawyers. It's tradition. Honor it.

2. Tell the client only what it can't do. Business clients are run by business people who take risks. They need to be managed, guided, stopped. Don't encourage them.

3. Whatever you do, don't take a stand, and don't make a recommendation. (You don't want to be wrong, do you?)

4. Treat the client as a potential adversary at all times. Keep a distance.

5. Cover yourself. Write a lot to the client. Craft lots of confirming letters which use clauses like "it is our understanding", "our analysis is limited to..." and "we do not express an opinion as to whether..."

6. Churn up extra fees with extra letters and memoranda and tasks. Milk the engagement. (If you are going to be a weenie anyway, you might as well be a sneaky weenie.)

7. As out-house counsel, you are American royalty. Never forget that.

Posted by JD Hull at 10:14 PM | Comments (4)

June 26, 2006

Calloway on Client Expectations

Terrific post by Jim Calloway at his respected Law Practice Tips Blog on perhaps the most difficult of all client/customer tasks: creating and meeting expectations. Jim's post is also mentioned in this week's Blawg Review, No.63, written this week by Sheryl Schelin at The Airport Lawyer.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:14 PM | Comments (0)

Client Blogs on a Roll: Herz, Golden and Kane.

Clients. If you are interested in getting and keeping good ones, and deepening your relationships with them in ways that aren't shrill marketing b.s., and that simultaneously help both the client and your firm, do check out the many, many recent fine posts of each of the following: Arnie Herz at Legal Sanity, Michelle Golden at Golden Practices and Tom Kane at The Legal Marketing Blog. Read and keep scrolling down. All three of these folks are on fire.

Posted by JD Hull at 10:08 AM | Comments (1)

June 22, 2006

Client-Centric Ads? Is It Time?

In advertising, never attack your own industry. I read that long ago. But in 1998--when people started to realize that a combination of emerging technologies, strategy and plain American hustle would permit more lawyers to participate and compete in the "new global economy"--well, we had some extra cash for advertising. We ran an ad (text below) in three U.S. east coast business newspapers for an 8-week period. Maybe it was dumb luck, but this very basic and somewhat crude ad produced: (1) some wildly enthusiastic phone calls from people we did not know (in the first week, one GC, apparently sober, congratulated us from an airport payphone during a layover), (2) some catty but entertaining and telling comments from lawyers in Pennsylvania and D.C. we did know, and (3) the firming up for us at least one still continuing relationship with a like-minded company fed up with the lethargy and indifference of its traditional large law firm:

"IS THIS A GREAT TIME TO CHANGE LAW FIRMS, OR WHAT?

Doing business has changed. But many law firms haven't.

They still charge for "services" and overhead no corporate client should have to absorb. Like associate lawyer training. Duplicative conferences. And senior lawyers who will never understand or care about your business.

The product is disappointing. Service and follow-up are only words. And the bill makes you nuts.

Stop being the equipment in games lawyers play. At Hull McGuire, we focus on clients, and solving their problems. We build lifetime relationships with businesses of all sizes.

IT'S TIME, ISN'T IT?

HULL MCGUIRE PC
Attorneys

Washington DC, Pittsburgh, San Diego

Corporate Planning, Transactions, Tax, Intellectual Property, Telecommunications, Litigation, Employment Practices, Environmental, Legislative, International."

Posted by JD Hull at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)

June 10, 2006

Real Elitism: Toward Building A Client-Centric Culture.

In a couple of years, your clients won't care, and it may even backfire. Don't get me wrong. Those two 28-year-old ex-Supreme Court clerks your firm just hired at $165,000 a year along with your eight other fine new associates are treasures. Cherish and develop them. Still tell your clients and the world, as you have for years, that you only hire and the "smartest" people. Keep hiring them and keep telling the clients. But the chance that even one out of those ten hires--even assuming that all ten stay at your firm and make partner--will ever "get" clients and minimally master client service is about zilch. Talent and solid legal work are both critical--but they aren't enough.

In the 1994 book Built To Last, authors Jim Collins and Jerry Porras discuss how enduring world-class companies often have developed "cult-like cultures" in which they view themselves as truly unique, superior and and frankly better-than-you in the production, marketing, selling and delivery of their products and services. Amongst themselves, and in talking to customers, they don't talk about whether their sales and management people are graduates of Tuck, Harvard or Wharton, huge state schools or small obscure private liberal arts colleges. That stuff faded into the woodwork when it was time to perform. Built To Last notes that some of the same firms don't have an external standard of quality. Instead, they have their own standard, and they compete against that. And they talk about it. Interestingly, though, their "elitism"--viewing themselves as special with their own special standard--didn't evolve with their success. They thought of themselves as special since day one. Check out the nearly 100-year history of IBM, pre-success elitists since 1911.

In firms of any type, size or caliber that sell services, talent and academic achievement is cherished, and it should be. Also valued is a high standard of client service: the art of making a valued client both "be and feel safe". However, services of all manner in the "new" global economy--new product-service mixes, traditional consumer services and professional services--continue to get low marks. The main reason for launching What About Clients? last year (see the first post) is the belief that client service at law and other professional firms is shamefully third-rate and our standard on client service so uninspired and low that it ensures mediocrity and failure. The best people and the best product are not enough. They are merely prerequisites. Better service or service techniques you learned last year at a seminar or from the state disciplinary board aren't enough either. A new campaign to keep clients more informed, return phone calls right away and buy better seats at the stadium won't get you to a client-service culture. And telling yourself and your clients that you give good or better client service than the next firm is like saying you're the most beautiful maiden in a leper colony.

Set your own client service standard and compete against that. Start talking about it. Learn from everyone, but banish other firms' standards of service out of your mind forever. Get a high standard--and then outdo yourself. Get cocky and superior about that. If WAC? could start one small revolution, that is the one we'd choose.

Posted by JD Hull at 10:14 AM | Comments (1)

June 09, 2006

Think about value first--and pricing alternatives second.

What about a "Chief Value Officer"? So we're back to the subject of King Billable Hour and whether lawyers can devise efficient value-based alternatives to that institution. Ron Baker at Verasage Institute thinks we can. Ron has an interesting new post which starts out:

The empirical evidence is overwhelming: Customers do want alternative pricing methods. There is an enormous backlash against the billable hour, since it misaligns the interest between the firm and the customer and rewards inefficiency. Customers want certainty in price, and more value than the price they are paying.

Underline the word "misaligns". Now read the rest of Ron's post.

Posted by JD Hull at 10:50 PM | Comments (0)

June 01, 2006

The Wonder of Repeat Business - Part 2

Tom Kane at The Legal Marketing Blog has yet another great article on marketing to existing clients--one of my favorite WAC? subjects--and it's right here. This follows previous posts by both Tom and Jim Hassett we discussed last month on the same subject. Stats, anecdotes and plain common sense will tell you that it's a lot easier to expand your business from the client base you already have than to go after new game. In particular, if you have good corporate clients, try this: work for them every day like it's that first project they gave you 10 or 15 years ago. Forget forever what other lawyers do or don't do and compete against your own standard. Keep those clients safe, happy and coming back to you with both repeat work and new types of work.

Posted by JD Hull at 02:55 PM | Comments (0)

May 29, 2006

Law Firm Cash As The Great Deceiver.

"If we're rich, we must be smart." Well, maybe not. Here's a cash position pattern that prevents many of us from thinking clearly. Tom Collins at MorePartnerIncome pins it down, and articulates it. He reminds us to trust hard facts, analysis and planning over the thrill of today's cash flow and respectable reserves in Cash Is An Unreliable Barometer of Law Firm Health. Tom and Debbie Foster of InTouch Legal call this syndrome the "accidentally successful" law firm.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:55 AM | Comments (0)

Law Firm Cash As The Great Deceiver.

"If we're rich, we must be smart." Well, maybe not. Here's a cash position pattern that prevents many of us from thinking clearly. Tom Collins at MorePartnerIncome pins it down, and articulates it. He reminds us to trust hard facts, analysis and planning over the thrill of today's cash flow and respectable reserves in Cash Is An Unreliable Barometer of Law Firm Health. Tom and Debbie Foster of InTouch Legal call this syndrome the "accidentally successful" law firm.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:55 AM | Comments (0)

May 24, 2006

More General Counsel Venting Plus...

Here's yet another post-BTI Consulting Group study follow-up article--this time in Law.com's In-House Counsel. And this piece, by Petra Pasternak of The Recorder, has pointers from some candid but helpful GCs for those of us who are General Counsel-challenged, including: "5. Embrace Risk", "8. Keep Me Focused" and "10. Make Me Look Good".

Posted by JD Hull at 04:07 PM | Comments (0)

May 22, 2006

Excellence: In the Details

What if we lawyers put into our efforts to retain clients 10% of the attention to detail most of us put into our substantive work? If we did that--i.e., focus increasingly on the details of service delivery in addition to the "legal work" itself--we would seldom need to market, except through servicing existing clients we want to keep. On that subject, Tom Collins at More Partner Income has the post Excellent Law Firms Sweat the Small Stuff:

I’m on the same page with John L. Michalik, former ALA Executive Director, when he says [in the April/May 2006 issue of ALANews], “How can we be trusted with big things and big responsibilities if we’re not trustworthy as to those things that are small?”

“To achieve excellence and success...you often have to care more than others think is wise, expect more of yourself than others think is possible, and do more than others think is enough. A starting point for that is realizing that everything does count, and the size of the problem, task or the error to be corrected is not determinative of its importance.“

Caring about the small things sets the standard, and how the small things get treated determines how the organization will deal with the really big things. Everything counts!

Posted by JD Hull at 10:04 PM | Comments (0)

May 19, 2006

The Wonder of Repeat Business

Tom Kane at The Legal Marketing Blog and Jim Hassett at Law Firm Business Development each have nice recent posts on one of my favorite subjects: existing clients as the best source of new business. And Jim's post includes some really interesting statistics. See Tom's post here and Jim's here.

Posted by JD Hull at 07:23 PM | Comments (0)

May 18, 2006

Real Relationships With Clients and Customers: "What's The Problem?"

"Clients" should conjure up the idea of long-term relationships. This blog has tried to emphasize achieving success and professional satisfaction by forming client relationships and making them last. In short, you "market" by doing good work for clients you like with an eye toward making them customers for life. Sure, we all want new clients and new work, but repeat clients is the goal of many business lawyers and other professionals who want to attract and retain a high-end client base. But for most of us keeping clients is very hard. We always talk about "service". We even think we are doing it. Client service is way harder than it looks. It takes an unlikely mix of passion, joy and discipline.

No one gets all this better than Arnie Herz at Legal Sanity. The guy's truly on to something and has a consistent message--one you'll need to discover for yourself. A few days ago on a plane I suddenly started writing a post about Arnie and his theme of lawyers as "trusted advisors" in enduring relationships that grow and get better. Arnie is truly the lawyer of the future--Western logic smart yet intuitive and creative. My Arnie post is not finished yet but today I just noticed one he wrote I love called "Sending Mixed Messages About Client Service" based on a disappointing but commonplace shopping experience most of us have had. As the post shows, one of our problems with clients and customers--in small mom and pop stores and mega-stores open until midnight, professional firms or Fortune 500 companies--is our tendency to treat "client connections as ephemeral transactions rather than lasting relationships". Anyway, read the post. More on Arnie and Legal Sanity later.

Posted by JD Hull at 07:08 PM | Comments (0)

May 14, 2006

What About Clients? Honored To Be In "The Strongest Links".

"What About Clients?" is honored to be one of "The Strongest Links" noted in Tom Mighell's column in the May edition of Law Practice Today of the American Bar Association. Tom is a well-known technology leader, lawyer at Cowles & Thompson in Dallas, and blogger himself. He discusses eleven other sites by lawyers, non-lawyers and some real marketing and client-retention gurus. These include blogs by my three new friends Patrick Lamb, Michelle Golden and Tom Kane. In particular, Patrick, who publishes the respected and popular In Search of Perfect Client Service, has been a selfless and patient mentor since day one. Thanks, Pat. So if you want to explore some great blogs which focus on clients, and how clients and firms in any business get on the same page, see Tom's Law Practice Today column.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)

May 11, 2006

Law "Subs": Have Law Boutiques Come of Age?

"So we'll trade you your immigration people for our patent guys--they were getting on everyone's nerves anyway."

Larry Bodine and Carolyn Elefant, leaders in new thoughts and in news of new developments, have attracted attention by highlighting the New Jersey ethics decision allowing law firms to purchase other law firms as wholly-owned subs. The New Jersey Supreme Court's Advisory Committee on Professional Ethics and Committee on Attorney Advertising have issued Joint Opinion 704/37. So my firm can buy your firm as an investment--and sell you later if you don't work out. The advisory opinion was apparently prompted by a request concerning a law firm which sought ownership of another law firm in a speciality area--or a boutique. Lots of issues raised here, as Larry and Carolyn each note. And then there's this article by Mary Gallagher of The New Jersey Law Journal with an arresting quote from James Jones of Hildebrant International's DC office. Jones said that for large sophisticated clients, "[t]he idea of clients hiring one large firm to do everything is a thing of the past". We wait to see if other states will take positions. While we don't know who made the New Jersey request and why, this development will lead some to speculate that non-BigLaw boutiques over the past 15 years or so have shown themselves worthy of purchase in the marketplace. Premature, I know. But if that's right, will boutiques and solos even want that?

Posted by JD Hull at 04:12 PM | Comments (0)

May 08, 2006

Rob Millard on "Bad" Clients.

Some time ago we wrote about bad clients. Our brief post was about choosing the right clients and our conclusion was that no client at all is better than the wrong one, especially during a downturn in business. Note also Rule 1 - Represent Only Clients You "Like". However, Edge International consultant Rob Millard, over at his The Adventure of Strategy blog, has just published on the subject of a different kind of "bad": the effect of detractors and non-promoters of your business on your business. A Principal with Edge in South Africa, Rob has written an insightful, well-researched and must-reading piece on the drain of these problem clients entitled What Do "Bad" Clients Cost Your Firm?

Posted by JD Hull at 05:21 PM | Comments (1)

May 04, 2006

My Firm Would Like That Compliment, Too.

"We don't have their phone number, we have their DNA". Two weeks ago, Patrick Lamb, the Chicago-based trial lawyer and blogger at In Search of Perfect Client Service had a post reporting that Cox Enterprises's General Counsel Andrew Merdek had said this about his outside law firm, Dow, Lohnes & Albertson, in an interview with the National Law Journal. I noticed the quote when Patrick relayed it--and I can't get it out of my head. The ultimate. Talk about clients being and feeling safe.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:02 AM | Comments (0)

Performance Reviews Based On Client Service Criteria?

And why not? At least once a year each employee at our firm is evaluated in a process in which written evaluations are delivered, followed by a meeting with comments, questions and gripes. It's 2-way process, too. "They" (associates and support staff) get to evaluate "us" (partners and senior lawyers), and then talk about it. It works well. We've followed this procedure for 5 years. However, starting this year, our evaluations will also be tied to the "12 Client Service Rules" which we set out in this blog as an off-shoot of our firm practice guide and completed in early April. We talk about real service every single day, almost as if it were a substantive area of law practice. It's a running conversation. But if are serious about building and keeping a "client service culture" at Hull McGuire, we need to underscore them in every performance review.

Posted by JD Hull at 07:29 AM | Comments (0)

May 02, 2006

"Can't stay late tonight...I got a thing."

Please see at Peter Lattman's WSJ Law Blog yesterday's short article "Today's Associates: Slackers or Just Smarter?". For a few years I've been wondering about this myself, but maybe the answer is the latter: how can you argue that not being a workaholic is bad? Do note the number, nature and heat of the comments to this post--16 of them so far.

Posted by JD Hull at 01:10 PM | Comments (0)

April 27, 2006

Here's a Post I Wish Were Mine...On Offering Solutions.

Outstanding, and it's something I've been trying to say is wrong with us lawyers--but someone said it better. From Christopher Marston at Exemplar Law, it's right here and right on the money on negativity in the legal profession. Happily, one takeaway from the post has been a mantra at my own firm for years: be lawyers but always tell clients what they can do. Always. Be different. Break the risk-averse lawyer pattern. Amaze clients. Make them think of lawyers in a whole new way. Offer solutions and alternatives where the law or the facts won't support other approaches. Tell clients what they can do--as well as what they can't.

Posted by JD Hull at 08:04 PM | Comments (1)

April 24, 2006

Wild and Crazy Client Service Ideas.

Here's a client service-oriented "marketing stunt" idea from Al Lautenslager, a Chicago-based consultant and the Guerilla Marketing coach at Entrepreneur.com. It's over the top but wonderfully appropriate for the law and other professions with deeply ingrained, time-honored traditions of uninspired client service. The premise is that even good clients--repeatedly slighted but not knowing anything better--would become disoriented and alarmed enough to take to the streets if they were to switch firms and see something radically different:

1. Stage a protest for "good customer service". Imagine what would happen if you had picketers outside your place of business with picket signs that read something like, "We're protesting good customer service at this location!" or "This place is full of nice people interested in customers!" First, you'll get noticed. Second, you may get coverage by the local media. Stage a repeat visit of the protesters and next time publicize their intent of returning. You never know what might happen, who might take notice and what it'll do for your business.

Granted, it would be difficult to persuade in-house lawyers or GCs at DuPont, General Electric or Deutsche Bank to stage the event, but you get the idea. The link for Lautenslager's article--there are nine other "stunts"--is here.

Posted by JD Hull at 02:31 PM | Comments (0)

April 18, 2006

The Sacred, Immovable, No-Excuses Weekly Phone Call.

About seven years ago, our firm started the practice of weekly phone conferences for lengthy but intense projects where things generally happen every week. In a nutshell, the client representative, lawyers at our firm and any other key players in a case or project set aside a weekly "sacred time"--as one GC has dubbed it--for a phone conference: weekly, same day, same time and observed by all. The meetings are intended to be 30 minutes tops (if possible). You need to pick a relatively quiet off-track time when disturbances are at a minimum. The time that has worked best for us has been between 7:30 AM and 8:30 AM EST on Fridays. (If you live on the West coast, though, you'll be getting up around 4 or 4:30 AM--but you get a break if you're in South America or Europe). Finally, they are missed or canceled only for the most compelling reasons. Vacations, head colds, bad traffic, hangovers and my-dog-ate-my-draft-amended counterclaim won't qualify.

This simple institution has worked very well for us--and clients appreciate it because they can rely on it. The longest running weekly meeting we had was three-and-a-half years for a particularly contentious off-again on-again arbitration on an ongoing construction project involving players from 4 to 6 states in our camp alone. Our 7:45 AM meeting kept people focused, informed and on the same page. The "sacred" weekly meeting is a very good tool for cases with lots of players and/or consultants. Even if there is nothing to report, people touch base and re-bond so they can at least keep heading in the same direction. So it's an effective way to catch up and share information on bigger or more complicated projects.

Posted by JD Hull at 02:37 PM | Comments (0)

April 11, 2006

Kane: Visit Your Client At Work.

It makes perfect sense--and hardly anyone talks about it. But are we doing it? Visiting your client (GCs, CFOs, execs, plant managers) at work is a good way to get a 3-D sense of what your client does, and to learn more about its look, feel and "culture". It's also a great idea for showing you value the client, and that you want more of its business. Tom Kane at The Legal Marketing Blog says it all in his post "Client Site Visits Result In Work". My humble two cents: site/office visits are particularly important at the beginning of a new relationship or new project. As Tom mentions, don't bill it--but you still need to do it. See this fine post by Tom Kane.

Posted by JD Hull at 09:31 AM | Comments (0)

April 08, 2006

The Joy of Work, Burned-Out Lawyers & the 1st "What About Clients?" Post

The past week was Pretrial Skirmish, Negotiation and General Posturing Week. Which I love. Lively chats with mainly worthy adversaries. You constantly learn new things about the law, the world, yourself. You get your client involved. Funny and even hilarious things happen, too. But one conversation was disturbing. It was with a lawyer with 20+ years of experience who cuts corners whenever he can, won't research anything, won't read anything, won't prepare for anything, and unabashedly disdains the law, lawyering, his client and, at this point, me. Having dealt with him before, I doubt he was just having a bad day. It's written all over him: he "wants out" of the profession, but doesn't know how to get out, won't get out. This reminded me of my first post dated August 1, 2005, and in part why I started this. The line was: "Do many of us wind up selling clients short because we are disillusioned or burned out?" How much of bad client service and the shoddy image many people have of lawyers is a function of lawyers disliking what they do? How many clients are getting hurt by it?

Posted by JD Hull at 06:31 PM | Comments (3)

April 03, 2006

The 12 Rules Of Client Service.

Beginning November 19, 2005, I set out to write a rule-by-rule "12-step" program for lawyers, professionals and executives. The rules were derived from the "How To Practice Law" section of our firm's Practice Guide, written for associates and paralegals in 2000. Well, they are finally completed. The goal of the "What About Clients?" 12 rules is to align the interests of clients/customers and service providers to the fullest extent possible. The rules are not perfect, and can be improved. But this model works--if you work at it. If you follow these rules by building a disciplined culture at your shop where they are enforced and kept alive, your clients and firm both benefit as you go along. You'll see repeat business. You'll make money. Think of the rules as clientwork:

1. Represent only clients you like.

2. The client is the main event.

3. Make sure everyone in your firm knows the client is the main event.

4. Deliver legal work that changes the way clients think about lawyers.

5. Over-communicate: bombard, copy and confirm.

6. When you work, you are marketing.

7. Know the client.

8. Think like the client--help control costs.

9. Be there for clients--24/7.

10. Be accurate, thorough and timely--but not perfect.

11. Treat each co-worker like he or she is your best client.

12. Have fun.

J. Daniel Hull

Posted by JD Hull at 10:44 AM | Comments (2)

March 29, 2006

Rule 12: Have Fun.

Rule 12 (of 12): Have Fun.

See Rules 1-6 here and at these links 7,8, 9, 10 and 11.

If you are not having fun, you are doing something wrong. Period.

Any questions?

While you are thinking, a confession: I loved college, and the liberal arts I studied there, because I am in love with ideas. Law school, however, was a different story. It came at me so fast I couldn't see any grand design, purpose or poetry. Except for the companionship of some truly unique and innovative classmates and profs, a girl from Shaker Heights named Amy, the drinking beer part, my administrative law and trade regs courses, some good part-time jobs, and somehow making Law Review, I hated law school with Olympian passions. It was stale and uncreative. I even quit--twice, for a week each time. I told anyone who would tolerate me for the entire 2 years and eight months and 3 days that I was an "artist" of some sort, imprisoned and daily being abused by talented but sadistic academics who were paid, and paid well, to abuse me. I envied my college friends at J-school at Columbia, in the Peace Corps, traveling in Europe or in Alaska or Florence writing unpublished novels. I felt stagnant. And of course by the time I graduated at the age of 25, I was unhappy, out of shape, addicted to coffee, cigarettes, Hunter Thompson, Henry Miller and all the usual excesses of my generation--in short, a world-class ass.

So I moved to my birthplace Washington, D.C., where I would fit in. Sort of. I was so sure I would hate practicing law as much as law school that I deferred practicing law for nearly 3 years--in the form of being a hard-working, entertaining but equally difficult and troubled Legislative Assistant on Capitol Hill. There I was once served with a small claims complaint for "back-rent" by an angry DC live-in ex-girlfriend in front of my amused U.S. Representative boss, another amused congressman and the not-so-amused but intrigued senior staff of the House Ways and Means Committee at the 96th Congress. But everything changes with time and a different lens for viewing. Had it not been for a friend from college who was happily clerking at the Supreme Court--who inadvertently shamed me one day in a conversation at the Tune Inn he has likely forgotten--I might never gone into private practice. So I left Capitol Hill and took a job in 1981 practicing law as one of DC's hundreds of "associates" in the branch office of a Midwestern law firm on 15th Street, N.W.

Everything--and I mean everything--changed for me. It was the same way new life sprung up inside me when the Duke undergraduate admissions people changed my life in 1971. Each day was different. I treated all the difficulties--and it was hard on me and mine--of being an associate as a challenge, and a even a privilege, and ever since then I have felt like it's an honor to do what lawyers do. In 1992, I started my own firm. I like the people I work with, the excitement of talented adversaries, a new project or case and the satisfaction of solving high-level problems for high-end clients, who I really like. And they even pay me for it. If you don't feel that way right away, give yourself time. If that fails, try another firm or another part of the profession. For many people, a different mentor, a new firm or a move to government or in-house counsel--even for a short while--can help you get your "sea legs" and make all the difference.

It's supposed to be fun. American law is extremely varied, elastic and constantly presenting new practice areas--especially in the larger cities. It has something for everyone. I am convinced of this. Please keep the faith and keep looking until you find it. Put another way, don't quit before the miracle occurs. It's there, and it's all inside you, in front of you. Simple--but still hard. It's a privilege and joy to do what lawyers do when they do it right.

And it really is fun.

So...any questions?

Posted by JD Hull at 07:30 PM | Comments (0)

March 28, 2006

Listen Up...

Listening arts. I've mentioned before that I still need work but am improving in this area. It's a constant focus. And my co-workers seem to like me more whenever I write about it. Two of my favorite bloggers, and each a lawyer I would hire in a heartbeat to serve my firm's clients if needed--Chicago's Patrick Lamb and New York City's Arnie Herz--have been writing a lot about listening lately, here and here. Just follow all the links. Patrick and Arnie have collected some great sources in these posts--and they know what they're talking about. You'll never hear me "instruct" on this subject. I just listen.

Posted by JD Hull at 10:13 PM | Comments (2)

March 16, 2006

More On One that Matters: Should We Sell During Client Polling/Interviews?

Great post from Michelle Golden commenting on Jim Hassett's equally thoughtful one on whether or not "to sell" during interviews with clients about how they like your services. This continues the off-and-on 2 month long multi-blog forum on the topic with Lamb-Hassett-Golden-Kane-Hull. Forget about the right answer; the most important thing about the discussion is that it is Even Being Had. The overall questions posed by Michelle, Jim, Patrick Lamb, Tom Kane and me are: (1) Should professional serivce providers do client interviews? (2) If "yes", just how do we conduct them and use them? Who should conduct them, who should attend, what is their scope, do we sell during them (and what would "selling" be in this context, anyway?) and how do we most effectively follow-up the client/customer interviews? A good post to get your bearings on this discussion is one by Michelle Golden here.

Posted by JD Hull at 07:25 AM | Comments (0)

March 10, 2006

Rule 11: Treat Each Co-Worker Like He or She Is Your Best Client.

Rule 11 of 12: Treat Each Co-Worker Like He or She Your Best Client. (See Rules 1-6 here and at the links Rules 7, 8, 9, and 10.)

People are every business's most important asset.

So here are three things about Rule 11--my personal new non-litigation "Rule 11":

First, in our workplaces, we need great people and we need to treat them with respect--not just buttering up. We need to give them prompt feedback--the good and the bad. Above all, we need them to grow and be happy.

Second, I have a short fuse. I am focused on what I am doing, and I am not always perfectly nice. To bad guys. To good guys. To people I admire, respect, like and love. And since 1981, I have had approximately 25 secretaries. Half of the 20 who didn't work out thought I was crazy, and the other half, well...I learned the hard way. Big Sally, one of my first assistants in the ASAE building on 15th and Eye Streets, once threw a Washington, DC yellow pages book at me that crashed into the wall a foot from my head, destroying several plants, another lawyer's dictaphone and cracking the frame on my "Hunter Thompson for Sheriff" wall poster which I hung on the wall outside my office (the partners were too straight to know what it really was). Both of us were to blame--but repairing the relationship took months. It should have never happened. Big Sally was not my first choice as an assistant, a partner hired her and assigned her to me, and I was a 32-year-old lawyer under enormous pressures to advance a large client's agenda and prove myself and my firm in the DC court systems--but she had her own distractions in life. And I needed her. Whatever I said to her in those 3 angry seconds about my dissatisfaction with her work or work ethic cost me a lot. And more recently, I had a huge "disconnect" problem with just about every "Generation X" hire--a thoughtful and talented part of the US workforce with strong and quite sane ideas about the place of work in their lives--who walked through our doors. But I am getting there. I have made progess. I am making progress.

Third, "Rule 11" is a client rule, too. Clients love to form partnerships with law, accounting, consulting firms and service providers of all manner with genuinely functional workplaces. They love work communities where the professionals are demanding but love what they do and solve problems together as a team of happy, focused people who stretch--but respect--one another. It's fun for them to watch, and fun to watch them watch you. Clients want to be part of that. Watching the "well-oiled" team is an image which sticks in the client mind. We have a GC with a transactional and mergers/acqusition background who regularly pops in on us from his office in another city during our trials for his company--both in the courtroom and conference room. He isn't just checking up on the progress of trial--he thinks it's damn fun to be around us. His eyes light up during strategy sessions. And you even sense he wants to pop up from his seat and take on a few witnesses himself...If a client can experience your people working together in that kind of focused but loose harmony, it's contaigious. They will want more. It's that last string in the major chord of a truly joyous place to work and grow.

Posted by JD Hull at 02:56 PM | Comments (1)

March 06, 2006

Jim Calloway: "The Client-Centered Law Practice"

In two parts by Jim Calloway - Part 1 and Part 2 - and originally appearing in the Oklahoma Bar Journal. These were just included in Jim's new Starting a Law Practice Web Directory by the Oklahoma Bar Association Management Assistance Program. The title alone shows Jim Calloway gets it.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)

March 03, 2006

Rule 10: Be Accurate, Thorough and Timely--But Not Perfect.

Rule 10: Be Accurate, Thorough And Timely--But Not Perfect.

(See Rules 1-6 here and at the links Rules 7, 8 and 9.)

Practicing law is getting it right, saying it right and winning--all with a gun to your head. Being "accurate, thorough and timely" are qualities most of us had in the 6th grade, right? Back when everyone told us we were geniuses and destined for great things? Well, school's out--now it's about real rights, real duties, real money and personal freedom. That's a weight, and it should be.

Suddenly facts are everything--and the actual law less important than you ever imagined. In time you learn to research, think and put things together better and faster. You develop instincts. You learn there is really no boilerplate and no "cookie-cutter" work. You learn there are no "right answers"--but several approaches and solutions to any problem. You are being asked to pick one. But at first, and maybe for a few years, being accurate, thorough and on time is not easy to do.

"I Have Clients?!" One day, you start to visualize your clients as real companies and real people with real problems. These are your clients--not your parents or professors--and they are all different. You "feel their pain", and it's now yours, too.

Mistakes. If you work with the right mentors and senior people, they will allow you to make mistakes. You need freedom to make mistakes. You'll be reminded, however, not to let those mistakes out of the office. It's a balancing act, a hard one.

"Really bad days". You are expected to be a professional and put clients first on your worst damn day. A parent is sick, you are coming down with something yourself, your boyfriend is cheating on you, both of your boyfriends are cheating on you (and maybe with each other), your teenage kids "hate" you, and this morning you had to abandon that 12-year-old Honda you had in law school on the 14th Street Bridge. And minutes before your big afternoon meeting or court appearance, a GC or co-worker calls you with the worst possible development, something unexpected and beyond your control, in a project for your favorite client. You sag visibly, like an animal taking a bullet. And in five minutes, you have to be at your very best.

Bucking Up, Using Fear. And while you can't work in a state of constant worry, fear and paralysis, talking yourself into heroics, getting a little paranoid and even embracing a little fear won't hurt you, and may even help. You are being paid both (1) to be accurate, thorough, timely and (2) to just plain "not screw up".

“Thorough” means "anticipating", too. What makes you really good in a few years is being able to "see the future" and spot a ripple effect in a flash. To take a small example, if your client is in an active dispute with the government or on the brink of a full-blown litigation with a competitor, the client's and many of your own letters and e-mails aren't just letters and e-mails. Whoa, they are potential exhibits, too. They can be used for you or against you. So they need to be written advisedly and clearly so that they advance your position and so that a judge, jury or someone 5 years from now can look at it cold and figure out what's going on. No "talking to yourself" here; think "future unintended consequences" when you think and write.

"But Not Perfect." Not talking about mistakes here. I refer to the paralysis of high standards. I know something about the second part of Rule 10--because I tended to violate it when I was younger. And I still want to. Perfectionism is the Great Destroyer of Great Young Associates. Don't go there. Don't be so stiff and scared you can't even turn anything in because you want it "perfect" and you keep asking other lawyers and courts for extensions. It's not school, and it's no longer about you. Think instead about Rule 8: Think Like The Client--and Help Control Costs. Balance efficiency with "being perfect", and err on the side of holding down costs. If a client or senior lawyer in your firm wants your work to be "perfect", and for you to charge for it, believe me, they will let you know.

Finally, and I almost forgot: always use the Blue Book/Maroon Book for your citations. No one gets a pass on that one.

Posted by JD Hull at 01:28 AM | Comments (0)

March 01, 2006

Tom Collins: "So What's a Good Time to Call?"

I learned something from this one. It's from Tom Collins at MorePartnerIncome. My "best time", until now, was Friday afternoons--a great time to call existing clients in rainmaking mode...but I guess it's not the only time to call. So my excuses to wait until then are now gone. Thanks, Tom.

Posted by JD Hull at 10:14 PM | Comments (0)

February 27, 2006

Rule 9: Be There For Clients--24/7.

Rule 9: Be There For Clients--24/7.

(See the first 8 rules: 1-6 here, 7 here and 8 here.)

Get used to it. We attorneys, accountants and legions of other professionals with corporate clients--at big firms, boutiques or solos--are no longer royalty. In the future, "returning telephone calls promptly", "keeping your client informed" (like those two items should ever have been a big deal!), blackberries and having effective voice message and paging systems will not be nearly enough--if it ever were enough. Color all that barely adequate. Get a new standard--a new wave-length with your clients and customers. I posted about this recently in "Being There: Availability".

Family will always come first. Rest, time and re-bonding with family and friends is important to nurturing body, mind, soul and spirit. Vacations are important, too. We need all that recharging, and we need lots of it. But we now live in a world (1) that never sleeps, (2) in which delivering services based on problem-solving, know-how and judgment is as important as mass-producing, marketing and distributing widgets, and (3) where competition for good clients--amongst accountants, actuaries, consultants, stockbrokers, lawyers, you name it--is getting stiffer. In the next decade, and even for high-end clients, more and more "cookie cutter" and fungible services will be outsourced and done by very smart and far more cost-effective workers and professionals in Bangalore, Taipei or Mexico City. Just wait. What's left over will be specialty items and things clients need professionals and specialists to do at their highest levels of thinking and problem-solving.

Compete on service. Compete using your best skills delivered with superior service. If you really want "clients for life", and the rewards promised in all those happy themes you see on the shelves of the business sections of Borders and Barnes & Noble, consider being there 24/7--and telling your clients that you already are. No--it won't kill you, diminish your health, ruin your marriage or drive your employees away. Just let your clients know that you are totally accessible--no client worth keeping will abuse the privilege--and then show them. As a practical matter, you can assign two people (as my firm does) to be abreast of each client matter, no matter how small, and never charge for the overlap (it works). You can actively jockey to become the "emergency go-to" provider when a client needs to get something addressed immediately simply by doing the day-to-day work you already have for that client with uncommon enthusiasm and ahead of schedule. How you show them and how you do it is up to you. In order for most of us to be competitive, we have to get into the habit of "being there"--that means both quality time and any time. Good clients deserve this.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:24 AM | Comments (0)

February 24, 2006

Jim Hassett: Safeguarding Your Best Clients and Customers.

Jim Hassett at Law Firm Business Development, one of my favorite blogs, has a terrific two-part discussion on "Bulletproofing your crown jewel clients" which is here and here. It's based on a talk Gerry Riskin gave last month at the Marketing Partner Conference in Florida. It's really about risk reduction--and another Hassett analysis we should all read.

Posted by JD Hull at 08:42 AM | Comments (0)

February 11, 2006

Rule Eight: Think Like the Client--Help Control Costs.

Rule Eight: Think Like The Client--Help Control Costs. (See the first 7 rules 1-6 here and 7 here).

Ask an associate lawyer or paralegal what a "profit" is. You will get two kinds of answers. Both answers are "correct" but neither of them helps anyone in your firm think like the client. The answers will be something like this. (1) "A profit is money remaining after deducting costs from receipts." This is the correct young transactional/tax lawyer answer. Or (2) "it's money left over at the end of the hunt." This is the correct fire-breathing young litigator answer.

The right answer?

A profit is a reward for being efficient. And until a lawyer, paralegal or staffer gets that, she or he will never know how a client--or a law firm partner--thinks.

Rule 8 is really simple. Watch and minimize costs and show the client that you are interested in doing that. Go beyond just avoiding wasteful spending, and think of the client's business as yours. Factor cost (including fees!) into everything you think, say and do. Let the client know that you know that holding down costs is good for both the client and your law firm. You want repeat clients, and a maximum of steady income streams, so let clients know you really care about saving it money because of just that: you want to keep costs down so the client will stay with the firm in the long-term.

Most clients not only get this but appreciate it greatly in time. Two years ago, at the beginning of a fairly intense but short-term lobbying project in DC for a new client (a high-tech company with a fabulous product), I told the client's CEO--by the way, she was brilliant, talented and rich but surprisingly unsophisticated on the use of lawyers--that she had three options on legal paths she could take on the project, and that I wanted her to use the least expensive one on legal fees. She actually said: "Dan, you know we really like you guys. But your goal has got to be to make as many thousands of dollars you can a month from this project. Why a cheap avenue for me that involves fewer lawyer hours? Why should I take this seriously?" My answer: "Because whether you sell this company or not, we want to represent it or whatever company you next develop on a long term basis, and we would rather work for you for years and years than just a few months."

That made sense to her. Everyone in our shop needs (1) to think in terms of holding down client costs--attorney fees and out-of-pocket expenses--at every step and every moment of a client project, (2) to know why, and (3) to be prepared to explain that to the client.

Posted by JD Hull at 04:15 PM | Comments (0)

February 03, 2006

Law Firm Logos: "Goofy", Essential or Something in Between?--Part 5

Another nice post on firm logos by Patrick Lamb at In Search of Perfect Client Service. Due to recent posts on this, and seeing some good logos around me and in some of the posts, I am still deciding. But Pat's right that I'm not yet sold on logos if you don't already have one. I still think that most of us already have a distinctive and valuble "look" based our letterhead and cards. I realize this issue pales along side themes like metadata, global expansion and "How Jen Is Coping" with the Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie thing. But it's still part of attracting and keeping good clients.

Posted by JD Hull at 10:56 AM | Comments (0)

January 24, 2006

Rule Seven: Know the Client.

Rule Seven: Know the Client.

The "12 Rules of Client Service" I have been posting one-by-one starting on November 19 appear in a booklet Julie McGuire and I prepared internally 5 years ago for associates and non-lawyer staff. We just call it Hull McGuire Practice Guide* (*or how to become a productive associate or paralegal). In the Guide, we call the same rules "Blackletter Rules for Practicing Law". The idea is that each of the twelve overall practice rules harks back to the idea that the client comes first. Clients, clients, clients. For us, that is practicing law. Except for some rewording, the 2 sets of rules are substantially the same. The first six rules are reproduced here.

Several lawyer-bloggers I respect have posted--and in some very eloquent and interesting ways--on the idea of Rule 7, really knowing the client and its culture. I think they say it all. See Tom Kane, Patrick Lamb, Tom Collins and Arnie Herz. Some of the discussion lately was triggered by the nerve jangling report of complaints of some GCs at a Fulton County, Georgia CLE conference in early December 2005. I've chimed in on that, too--here and here.

The client, it seems, actually wants you to know him, her or it. Take time out to learn the stock price, industry, day-to-day culture, players and overall goals of your client. Visit their offices and plants. Do it free of charge. I think associates in particular need to develop the habit of finding out about and keeping up with clients and their trials and tribulations in and out of the areas you are working in. Learn about your client--and keep learning about it. Devise a system to keep abreast.

Posted by JD Hull at 10:10 PM | Comments (0)

January 06, 2006

"What About Clients?" Rules--So Far.

Here are the first 6 rules, and "commentary", posted between November 19 and January 5. Just 6 more to go. When all twelve are done, they will represent what I know about servicing clients. I am grateful for the insightful commments, posts or e-mails I've received in reaction to these since November 19. Often they made me re-think things--and it's bracing to know others carefully think about customer service. Hey, a lot of people providing services just don't:

1. Represent only clients you like.

2. The client is the main event.

3. Make sure everyone in your firm knows the client is the main event.

4. Deliver legal work that changes the way clients think about lawyers.

5. Over-communicate: bombard, copy and confirm.

6. When you work, you are marketing.

Posted by JD Hull at 01:10 PM | Comments (0)

January 05, 2006

Rule Six: When You Work, You Are Marketing.

Rule Six: When You Work, You Are Marketing.

Rule Six is more a truth to be kept in mind than a "rule." This is where the needs of clients and their lawyers come together. It's about value to both. But you can't forget this one. Keeping or not keeping in mind the germ of Rule Six--that "when you work, you are marketing"--is the difference between having a financially healthy practice and having to close your doors.

Repeating Clients. We as lawyers are always marketing when we work. Clients and customers need and want their lawyers, CPAs, doctors, auto mechanics, store clerks and bank tellers to do good if not first-rate work. Professionals and other vendors of all manner rely on pleasing the customer in order to get more work. If you rely on or shoot for repeat business, good work--which includes the quality of communication and follow-up while you are doing it--drives whether you get more of that type of work or, even better, make inroads toward doing other types of work. (For example, my firm often starts work for a client in the corporate tax or environmental area--but we are always looking to expand our activity for that client to, say, employment practices, commercial litigation and/or international work.)

One-Night Stands. If, on the other hand, your practice is more along the line of "one-night stands"--i.e., divorce or criminal work where you generally serve the client once for a discrete time period--use your good work and service to obtain word-of-mouth referrals. See Malcolm Gladwell's 2000 best-seller The Tipping Point for inspiration on scores of good ideas on creating word-of-mouth dynamics. If you are not sure whether a satisfied client will refer work, just ask her or him to do that.

So we are always marketing--and in doing that constantly sending to clients barrages of small but powerful ads. The ads range from "don't hire us again" to "we want to keep your business--and get more of it". Pretty simple. But it's apparently not all that intuitive to many of us in the legal profession. I am amazed at how long it takes us to learn it. For my money, "Rule Six" is the best single thing you could ever tell a lawyer starting out. And, hey, it's good for both clients and their firms.

Posted by JD Hull at 06:11 PM | Comments (1)

December 27, 2005

Rule Five: "Over-Communicate": Bombard, Copy and Confirm

Rule Five: "Over-Communicate": Bombard, Copy and Confirm

I am indebted to Jay Foonberg for the inspiration for Rule 5--both "bombarding" and the idea of keeping clients continuously informed. Nearly all of my better thoughts about practice management are influenced by Jay Foonberg.

The notion of "bombarding" clients with paper and information does have obvious exceptions. For instance, you work with a GC who trusts you and wants you to leave her alone. She doesn't want you to copy her on every transmittal letter or e-mail. Fair enough. Just be 100% sure you know what she wants and doesn't want. But aside from that, this is a "can't miss" rule--and I am amazed that many good lawyers express surprise that my firm informs the client of everything at each step of the way, and copies our clients on everything.

Posted by JD Hull at 04:36 PM | Comments (5)

December 12, 2005

Rule Four: Deliver Legal Work That Change the Way Clients Think About Lawyers

Rule Four: Deliver Legal Work That Changes the Way Clients Think About Lawyers.

This rule, like Rule One, is not so intuitive. But it's the most challenging. The "under-promise but over-deliver" and "exceed customer expectations" notion of keeping good clients is a great idea. But I just don't think it works that well for lawyers. I think that clients, rightly or wrongly, and whether or not they are even aware of it, in fact have low expectations of lawyers in the first place. For two reasons:

A. Traditional Pervasive Distrust of Lawyers (General--Deserved & Undeserved)

There is a pervasive (let's face it, ancient) cynicism and suspicion about lawyers which even our most loyal and valued clients carry around with them. Some of it is unavoidable and not our fault. It's based on everything from literature, TV, movies and lawyer jokes to a genuine misunderstanding of what lawyers must do to perform well. It's deeply rooted in world culture.

B. Real Experiences-Based Distrust of Lawyers (Specific--Deserved)

But most of the distrust is our fault because either (1) our substantive professional services are merely "adequate" and/or delivered without passion or real caring--clients can sense that--or (2) we view clients almost as adversaries (they joke about us; we joke about them), which gets communicated to clients in every step of our work for them. See The First Post.

Let's not kid ourselves. Why "try to exceed expectations" when the overall lawyer standard is perceived as low to mediocre? If your clients are all Fortune 500 stand-outs, and the GCs' seems to love you and your firm, is that because your service delivery is so good--or because other lawyers they use are so "bad" on service? Why have a low standard, or one that merely makes you look incrementally more responsive and on top of things than the boutique on the next floor up? Why not overhaul and re-create the whole game?

If you read the better writers on services, like Harry Beckwith in Selling The Invisible, you pick up on this simple idea: Rather than "under-promise/over-deliver", which is essentially job specific, why not change the way people think of lawyers generally and what they can expect from them generally? Get good clients--those clients you like and want--to keep coming back to you by communicating in all aspects of your work that you care deeply about your lawyering for them, you want to serve their interests on an ongoing basis and that it's a privilege to be their lawyer. Show them you fit no lawyer mold.

Oh, yeah. One catch--and the hardest part: it's got to be true.

Posted by JD Hull at 09:06 AM | Comments (0)

December 05, 2005

Rule Three: Ensure Everyone Knows That The Client Is The Main Event

Rule Three: Ensure That Everyone In Your Firm Knows That The Client Is the Main Event.

Conveying what you are doing for clients above and beyond what other firms may offer, and how you will accomplish that, needs to be transmittted clearly to everyone in your firm: from the big picture--what does the law firm do, who are the clients, what do the clients do?--down to the smallest detail--in what city is the general counsel's office, who works with the GC on that project, does she like e-mails or phone calls for short-answer projects? One way to start this process with a new employee is by having her or him read a short, amusingly-written confidential "Practice Guide" (with almost no procedures or "rules") on the firm's overall goals, your firm's service vision, client descriptions and genuinely useful ways to work--before the first day of work. Everyone must know it's about clients.

Posted by JD Hull at 10:39 PM | Comments (0)

November 28, 2005

Rule Two: The Client Is The Main Event. "The Big Obvious."

Rule Two: The Client is the Main Event.

This one, I think, is more intuitive. Rule One--the November 19 post Represent Only Clients You Like--struck 3 people I received e-mails from as impractical if not counter-intuitive. That's okay, but for now let's keep that as Rule One. Rule Two, that the client is everything, and the main event, makes almost too much sense. We all know that clients pay our fees, give us interesting work, and that we have professional, financial and fiduciary duties to clients. We tell clients they are "everything" to us. But is it true? Is the notion that the client is the main deal chiefly something we eagerly tell our clients (and ourselves) while we pitch for work?

My sense is that lawyers, except on a strictly marketing and PR level, from time to time, and even with the best clients, forget that and won't create what quality improvement guru W. Edwards Deming years ago called a "constancy of purpose" about true service. So Rule Two becomes the obvious "yeah-of-course-our-firm-knows/does that!" rule that may get more lip service than actual delivery in all the details of our work for clients. My question for now is this: If client (or customer) "primacy" were really the organizing principle for everything we do, isn't that in our interest, too? Doesn't that mean that the work is better, law firm staff and attorneys are pulling in the same direction, morale is good, we spend less time and money on marketing, we keep good clients and we attract new ones?

And if we really get it, are really we doing it?

Posted by JD Hull at 09:09 AM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2005

Rule One: Represent Only Clients You Like

Rule One: Represent Only Clients You Like.

As a threshold matter, you cannot deliver true service to a client unless you and your firm "like" your client--and I mean like the client a lot. In the case of companies, "client" here means GCs, clients reps and individual client cultures--or the company's personality. Practicing law the right way and with enthusiasm is hard enough. And as a lawyer, you owe some of the highest personal, professional and business duties imaginable to your clients. If you don't like him, her or it, you should chuck him, her or it--as soon as you ethically and practically can. You will not do good work very long for a client or customer you do not like. If you want to read more, see the August 26 post "What If You Only Represented Clients You Actually Liked?"

Posted by JD Hull at 07:23 AM | Comments (0)

October 30, 2005

Asking Targeted Clients For Work... Or Why Are Lawyers So Shy, Anyway?

Over the years this keeps happening. I take a general counsel or non-lawyer executive or CFO of a targeted client to lunch or dinner to ask for work. At some point I briefly say what my firm does and how we can help the client on particular legal issues it has. I ask a few questions. I do a short (very informal) pitch which ends with: "We like [the company] and we'd love to work with you. How can I win/earn your business?"

The client rep laughs and says something like, "That's refreshing--because I can't tell you how many times I have dined, gone to sporting events or played golf with lawyers and they never ask me for my business. Sometimes this goes on for years. I know that's why they are there--but they won't ever get to the point."

"So what's up with that?" he or she continues. "Are lawyers shy or something? Why would I want to hire a law firm not aggressive enough, direct enough or business-oriented enough to just ask for the work?"

Posted by JD Hull at 11:33 AM | Comments (1)

October 10, 2005

Why Perfect Legal Work Alone Just Doesn't Matter....Or The Bill Gates-to-Steve Jobs Comeback Line of the 20th Century

My favorite comeback line ever comes not from W.C. Fields, Winston Churchill or Cicero but from Bill Gates -- in a fictionalized conversation between Steve Jobs and Gates in the 1999 TNT movie "The Pirates of Silicon Valley." If you didn't see it, there's a fair review of the movie in Salon, and you can always rent it.

It is 1984, and Jobs has just launched Macintosh. In a meeting with Gates, Jobs has realized that Microsoft's Windows software "borrowed" some of Jobs' Apple concepts and ideas. Jobs is screaming at Gates, who starts to walk away.

"We have better stuff!" screeches Jobs. Gates stops, spins around and faces Jobs. "You don't get it," he responds. "That doesn't matter."

Does this scene--whether or not it really happened--ring true when it comes to overall client service? My experience is an overwhelming “yes.” Quality products and quality services aren't enough.

We have a spectacularly hokey saying at my firm. Clients need to "be safe, feel safe". If clients don't "feel safe," they won't fully embrace and appreciate you or your firm. Without the comfort of feeling safe, it won't impress them at all that the last memo you sent them by you and your prized ex-Supreme Court clerk was dead-on, groundbreaking, brilliant. They won't care.

And they shouldn't care. Obviously, the quality of our actual legal products -- recommendations, advice, opinion letters, litigation results, settlement terms, etc. -- needs to be first-rate. And it's wonderful if you can be the best at anything. But you won't keep even the most sophisticated, respectful "we'll-leave-you-alone-and-let-you-do-your-magic" business client which uses outside legal talent every day very long unless the client (or its GC -- it doesn't matter) both appreciates your work and is "comfortable" with it and you. Comfort.

For starters on how to make clients both be and feel safe, see Harry Beckwith's Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing.

Posted by JD Hull at 01:04 PM | Comments (0)

September 07, 2005

So, read any good books this summer?

Colleagues back east say I've been in California too long because the business books I talk up seem always to be about "client relationships" and "corporate culture" issues. They lean more to biographies of business leaders or books on management and business strategies. I like those kinds of books, too, but it's true: in my short time here, I've grown to respect the let's-try-this openness of California. The state fairly revels in its role as the nation's main laboratory and clearinghouse for new ideas. They range from the sublime to the hopelessly lame.

However, one issue -- delivering services to a client -- has been a constant coast-to-coast favorite item of discussion under a variety of names for the past 15 years. Usually you see it under the rubric of quality control for companies which mix products with specific services, or under the maxim that all businesses are really service businesses. Even we lawyers will talk about quality service -- although not enough, which is the reason I launched this blog.

The following five books changed the way (big time) I thought about delivering legal services to clients:

Harry Beckwith, Selling The Invisible (Warner Business Books 1997)
Top-drawer legal work alone won't cut it. Even your best client is irrational in much of its behavior. Leave rigid logic at the door.

Jeremy Rifkin, The End of Work (Tarcher/Putnam 1996)
Your client and its world will continue to change.

Richard D. Lewis, When Cultures Collide: Managing Successfully Across Cultures (Nicholas Brealey Pub./London 1999)
Your client or its adversary could be from Germany, Brazil, China or Turkey.

Jay Foonberg, How to Get and Keep Good Clients (Nat’l Academy of Law Ethics & Management, Inc. 1986)
Your client will keep coming back if you use your common sense. Foonberg has that in spades.

Karl Llewellyn, Bramble Bush (Oceana Pub. 1960)
You still have to be a lawyer -- and it's hard.

Let me know if you have books you'd like to add to this list. I would love to know what you are reading and what books you think are good.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)

August 26, 2005

What if you only represented clients you actually "liked"?

Only a few books I can find on the subject of rendering services to customers in the business sections of Borders or Barnes & Noble ever mention it. In the context of lawyer services, it's simply this: except for some court appointments and pro bono engagements, what if we only chose to represent clients we liked?

By "like", I mean it loosely: to derive for whatever reason real pleasure and satisfaction while doing legal work for a individual or organization.

My firm shies away from individuals as clients, regardless of his or her resources. We usually represent businesses. So in the case of an organization, we "like" the client because overall we somehow feel comfortable with or maybe even admire the personality, business culture or goals of that client, personally like/admire the client reps and general counsel, or both.

My firm "likes" business clients which are experienced, sophisticated users of legal services. When we perform well, the client appreciates us and signals that appreciation. So then we like the client even more, and want to do an even better job or keep doing the good job we are doing so we can derive more real pleasure from the engagement, and obtain more work.

As simple and as annoyingly Mr. Rogers-esque as this all sounds, we have never, ever had good long-term relationships with any organization client (1) which did not genuinely appreciate what we were doing for it or (2) which had disturbing corporate personalities (i.e., mean-spirited Rambo cultures, groups with employees given to blame-storming, or companies with disorganized, internally-uncommunicative or just plain lazy staffs.)

We rely on repeat business. For us, there's no substantial reason to accept a new engagement unless we think we might want to represent that client in the long term. For years, I often sensed before the first draft of the representation letter was done that the new client didn't fit us. Usually I couldn't articulate it--or maybe I just disliked the client rep. But because of the money or the prestige of the engagement, we took the project, and kept going after the repeat business anyway. A few years ago, we stopped doing that.

Does my attitude clash with some people's notions of real client service, duty to the profession or basic law firm economics? It sure does. And today I don't think I can practice law any other way. In the long term, having no client is better than a bad client--or one that I don't see courting down the road.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)

August 01, 2005

Are lawyers just kidding themselves about delivering true service to clients?

Reviews on lawyers always have ranged from architects of great nations and the world's commercial markets to necessary evils who add little value to any project. We are said to be manipulators with at best convenient notions of truth. And horror stories about our botched or inattentive services are legion.

True service to clients: are we delivering this and, if we aren't, can we talk about why?

1. Do we lawyers have a “we versus them” or adversarial mentality about clients when our main focus should be doing the job we promised to do and protecting clients from third parties or bad events -- the real “them” -- which would harm our clients?

2. Has lawyer camaraderie evolved into such clubiness that we have lost sight of the client’s primacy?

3. Do we regularly lie to and slight our clients? (Professionally, is that really any different than cheating on our spouses?)

4. Are there built-in barriers which prevent true service to the client? Are contingency fee arrangements with clients a built-in conflict of interest which can never be justified -- even in the name of “access to the court system?” When we work for the insureds of insurance companies, are we fair to the real clients -- the insureds? Will we ever put the interests of the insureds first?

5. Are lawyer jokes funny to us because they sound like the truth?

6. Has the overpopulation of markets with lawyers forced us into a free-for-all?

7. Do many of us wind up selling clients short because we are disillusioned or burned out?

8. In short, did we forget the main event -- the clients themselves?

What do you really think?

Posted by JD Hull at 12:00 PM | Comments (2)