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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)
Branding Revisited--and Explained. Golden Comments.
In response to the December 29 post on the apparent failure of most lawyers to brand their firms, Michelle Golden at Golden Practices got to the heart of the matter in a couple of fabulous posts (here and here). And Tom Kane of The Legal Marketing Blog added depth to the dialogue in his January 3 post.
Michelle is saying to me that: (1) we lawyers (and other professionals) are all trying to distinguish ourselves from each other based on words, (2) the standards/words we claim are the same anyway, (3) the standards aren't too high to begin with, (4) we can't even meet those standards, (5) truly differentiating your law firm from "the others" must come from actions--not marketing rubric, and, most importantly, (6) the actions can't be just any action.
Even actually providing "quality service" is not enough. That, Michelle continues, should be a "gimme":
[S]ervice quality isn't going to be impressive enough as a differentiator. Most firms pay lip service to things like "responsive," "on time," or "proactive" in their brochures or on the web. These are basic expectations, folks. No one can argue that they should be the rule, not the exception! Just as competence is expected by a paying customer, so is good service.
In marketing, nearly every firm now claims the above traits (though few consistently deliver) so while doing these might actually make you different, claiming them doesn't at all differentiate you, rather it throws you right into the pack. And citing these as advantages of working with your firms just shows how low the bar is within the profession, doesn't it?
All this "timely, proactive" stuff just sounds like blah-blah-blah to the customer who has found that firms don't usually do a good job despite their claims....
Real distinction, in my mind, is stuff like:
Value pricing in advance (using fixed price agreements and change orders as necessary)
Specialization in an industry or a narrow area of practice whereby you become highly visible in the circles of your customers
Humanizing your people: some do it through unique bios/bio photos and others do it by featuring "a day in the life" of their people.
Service packaging/bundling for instance offering a level of all-inclusive services such as the "concierge model" with no charging for phone calls or other access to you.
And real branding is hard:
There is a price to pay--an investment--in becoming distinct. Most firms won't DO these things because they aren't easy. And they are non-traditional. They are different. Innovative. Not safe.
But customers and recruits eat them up.
Posted by JD Hull at 05:29 PM | Comments (0)
January 04, 2006
Diversion: "Has the NRDC Gone Hollywood?"
While my firm is involved in several practices areas focused on larger businesses--ranging from employment practices to international tax to IP--my law practice over the past 20 years has focused on commercial litigation and regulatory disputes. And for many years a lot of that focused on environmental law and energy law--as many of our clients have a connection with fossil fuels. In writing a bi-monthly column for an environmental magazine of Dallas-based Stevens Publishing called (brace yourself) Water and Wastewater Products Magazine, I developed a new respect for my clients' sworn "enemy"--especially on clean water and NPDES issues--the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The WWP Magazine column's fourth installment, an article entitled "Has the NRDC Gone Hollywood?", is a snapshot of two things: (1) the NRDC on the eve of celebrating its 35th birthday, and (2) Hollywood put to its very best political and public service uses. Since 1970, the NRDC has been a boutique of first-rate "pro-environment" environmental lawyers. But in addition to the group's substantive achievements in the environmental field, I was impressed with how the NRDC uses the cult of celebrity and celebrity money to effectively advance its increasingly mainstream agenda. This gets done in large part through its LA office, which I visited in the Fall at The Robert Redford Building ("the greenest building in America") in Santa Monica.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)
Proofreading--Simple But Hard
I'm very happy that Pat Lamb had a short post on proofreading yesterday. Invoices--which if done correctly are a great way to communicate what you've done for a client AND a marketing tool--are of course one set of documents we all need to get right. Clients can be expected to read them. But generally we don't talk about proofreading enough. It amazes me that badly proofread pleadings and letters still emanate from some of the best American and European law firms. It mars and even desecrates otherwise good and sometimes brilliant work.
Mistakes will happen in law practice in any event--but the idea is to minimize them, and especially those you can control. Proofreading errors are avoidable, even under the gun, if you make ardor in doing it a habit. My recurring nightmare is that the GC of my best client says: "If at $___ an hour you guys can't spell, believe me, we can find a law firm tomorrow morning that can." For that reason, as mentioned in the last "Just Say It" post on writing for lawyers, Rule 5 (of 8) in the good writing section of our firm Practice Guide is:
5. Proofread, proofread, proofread. (NOTE: We have a written policy on proofreading you must actually sign.) Pretend that, for every typo you miss or grammatical error you make, you have to buy Dan Hull as many Heinekens as he could drink in one evening in his late twenties on St. Patrick's Day in the most expensive Capitol Hill watering hole he and his friends could find.
Together with writing simply and clearly, I can't imagine a more important habit for any lawyer to develop. Misspelling, omitted or misplaced words and off-the-charts bad grammar are often important errors which blot out otherwise good work--and ones we can control. It's that simple.
Posted by JD Hull at 08:17 AM | Comments (0)
January 03, 2006
Blawg Review #38 and WSJ
Speaking of blawg reviews, here's something fun. And intelligent. See yesterday's post from Evan Schaeffer's Legal Underground with resolutions for better blog writing.
And the Wall Street Journal has a new law blog written by lawyer Peter Lattman. Based on the first 2 days of posts, Lattman's site promises to deliver the 2 things a blog really needs: (1) thoughtful content; and (2) good writing.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:05 PM | Comments (0)
January 01, 2006
Best 2005 Blawgs--Upward and Onward
Everyone loves blog awards. Or they should. I'm a believer in the utility of envy. Here, for instance, a flash, in my case, of "what-about-my-award?" can push also-rans or neophytes to greater heights. Since I'm new to this, I'll just watch for a while as I figure out who's who--who writes the better blawgs, and who has the legitimacy to give the awards. In the meantime, who can argue with any award to a site as consistently insightful and intelligent as, say, Patrick Lamb's "In Search of Perfect Client Service"? Or with awards to the blogs of Tom Kane or Tom Collins?
Awards for blawgs. It does seem like kind of a free for all--with self-appointed academies here and there. Which is fine for now. But can we at least give the awards a name? And, please, something other than the "Blawgies"...that's all I ask.
Posted by JD Hull at 09:29 PM | Comments (0)