« January 01, 2006 - January 07, 2006 | Main | January 15, 2006 - January 21, 2006 »
January 14, 2006
Know Your Client, Its Business and Its Culture--Great Post From More Partner Income
Thanks to a nice post by Arnie Herz at Legal Sanity, I focused more quickly on another great post on January 10 by Tom Collins of morepartnerincome called "Why Don't Outside Lawyers Understand Our Business?". I regularly read Tom's blawg, but I'll use his post in an upcoming rule in the "12-step" program I've been writing for us service-challenged lawyers (we're up to Rule Six, and one of the final six will be about really knowing the client you serve).
Because understanding your client deeply and thoroughly can't be emphasized enough. In December Pat Lamb posted and I posted on the actual "real life" Georgia meeting of GCs that serves as a springboard for Tom's post. And consistently Tom Kane at The Legal Marketing Blog has posted a lot of insightful things about the subject. But Tom Collins's recent post says it all for me in his concluding paragraphs:
The dialogue between the panel and the audience of corporate counsels highlights the difference between what clients perceive as “good service” and what attorneys continue to believe is their obligation regarding quality service. It is not about how competent you are. You are supposed to be competent. It is about your “bedside manner”. You are in the service business. You happen to be in the lawyering service business.
If you want to retain and grow your relationship, you have to invest in understanding the Client’s purpose, its goals, its culture, the issues it faces, and even its “words”. If the client calls its employees “associates”, you need to call them associates. If the client calls its trucks “package cars”, they are package cars!
Excellence must be earned through the eyes of your client.
I add only this. It's more natural for any sane shareholder or senior partner to know a lot about his or her firm's business client, what it does, where it does it, who the players are, what its words and phrases are, what it says it expects from lawyers, and what its "culture" is. Call it a touchy-feely concept or not--but a "business's culture" is a living and breathing thing. All businesses have them. But everyone in your firm--paralegals, support folks and especially associates, who in our firm have lots of contact with clients--need to (1) study new clients, (2) "get" them and (3) keep getting them as life for the client develops and inevitably changes. I'm glad Pat Lamb, Arnie Herz, Tom Kane and Tom Collins and others are talking about this.
Posted by JD Hull at 09:59 AM | Comments (0)
January 13, 2006
"Who's Greener--Democrats or Republicans?"
Mainly for fun, I tried to answer the above question in an informal article with a surprising conclusion I wrote for the January-February Water & Wastewater Products Magazine as part of a bi-monthly column I write called "Waterlawged." One of my firm's practice areas is environmental law--especially Clean Water Act compliance and NPDES (National Pollution Discharge Elimination System, if you really want to know) permitting. Even if you or your clients are not directly involved with environmental or natural resources law compliance--and especially if you have an interest in American politics or what goes on in Congress--you might find "Who's Greener--Democrats or Republicans?" interesting. Or at least funny.
WWP Magazine, as dull as it sounds, has great writing and useful (if sometimes technical) content. Put out by Stevens Publishing in Dallas, it is the best clean water industry publication I have seen. And WWP is fast becoming the Vanity Fair or Women's Wear Daily of the environmental trade pub circuit. It seems to be in search of sober latter-day Hunter Thompsons and good writers with environmental credentials; the writing, of course, must be dead-on accurate. And funny is not required.
Posted by JD Hull at 09:16 PM | Comments (0)
Polling The Real Jury--"So Clients, How Are We Doing?"
Jim Hassett at Law Firm Business Development just finished the third of three excellent posts I've been reading--all on what I think of as client polling. Part 3 goes a little further and discusses the client service team concept, good for larger firms. I hope people pay attention to these. They are here, here and here.
Polling the degree of client satisfaction is a hard area. Methodology is everything here. I'm certainly not an expert--I have dragged my heels for a long time on developing a new way to do this which yields honest and useful answers. Most law firms, in my view, (1) don't have the will or the stomach to poll clients about what they really think, and (2) tragically, even when we do, we often do it the wrong way. From past experience, I don't think written responses work--particularly the multiple choice/check-the-box type. It should be face-to-face, as time-consuming as that is. Nor do I think it's a great idea, in many cases, to have someone in the firm conduct interviews. Using third parties known by the client not to be employees of the firm, while more expensive, is likely to get better (i.e., more honest) results.
Jim has done some great work here. It's comprehensive, well written, practical--and it fits any size firm.
Posted by JD Hull at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)
January 12, 2006
IP Theft and "Cultures of Piracy"--Sure those new Nike shoes are the real thing?
Even though it's a little (well, very) off-message for this blawg, I thought writer Sarah Schafer in next week's Newsweek International did a good job reporting and summarizing some aspects of IP theft--a problem not limited to just China, by the way, and one which has gotten worse. Twenty years ago in DC I got involved in IP theft issues for trade associations and single clients alike--the watch industry in particular. My firm and I continue to be involved.
These days, counterfeiters are bolder, bigger and better financed. Bogus American and European products which once circulated in just local Asian markets are now being exported. American businesses increasingly are confronting goods counterfeiting as they do more and more business abroad. And these days you don't have to be Disney, Microsoft or Nike to be adversely affected. One organization which has combated IP theft for years is the DC-based International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition which you or your clients can join.
Posted by JD Hull at 07:39 PM | Comments (0)
January 11, 2006
What Your Firm Website Needs Is...
Larry Bodine in a post last week tells you the answer. In the course of reporting a new study published recently in Law Firm Inc., he says that at a minimum a law firm website should have: (1) industry experience, (2) representative clients, and (3) success stories. My firm's website could certainly benefit from better "speak-for-themselves" descriptions of the industries we serve. I think I'll suggest using that idea.
And on the 3 minimum things, I agree. But on client identities (either in success stories or as representative clients), there's a wrinkle for me. I am not comfortable with listing specific clients--even though more than a few of our engagements involve courts or public record information. And I am very proud that several well-known companies here and abroad regularly engage us--and have for years. But I am not there yet. It may be me, a matter of form and smacking of old ways. But it seems to me that who we represent--while in most cases not technically confidential and maybe in some cases ascertainable from the descriptions in the site--is information not to be trumpeted on the website. I'd rather tell you in person. Love to.
So instead we have not listed clients (as some firms do in Martindale) on any marketing materials, and have described success stories on our website without identifying the client. Instead, we have made it clear in a summary/overview of who we are that we will make general counsel references available in a heartbeat.
Posted by JD Hull at 05:08 PM | Comments (0)
January 10, 2006
Just Drop Off the Key, Lee: "When To Fire A Client".
Here's a great self-explanatory post by Tom Kane of The Legal Marketing Blog. We tell clients who are potential defendants that it's better to have "no lawsuit" against them than to have a "slam-dunk defense". That's obvious. By the same token, it's better to have "no client" than the wrong one. Sometimes not so obvious?
Posted by JD Hull at 04:23 PM | Comments (0)
January 09, 2006
Patrick Lamb on GAL's Big Law Inquiry
In a Saturday post, on the question as I'd put it of "when, if ever, do Big Clients need Big Law", Patrick Lamb at In Search of Perfect Client Service advanced the ball the farthest to date using both sports (for Pat, non-critical Bulls and North Carolina centers) and military motifs. Since I'm a Lakers and Blue Devils fan, I'll stay with the military analogy, which Pat has drawn before and does effectively:
For me, I believe that the best answer is better explained using a military metaphor. Sometimes the number of boots on the ground matter. That's why we have the Army and Marines. Sometimes, and almost always for the really tough problems, you're better off with an elite Navy Seal Team or the Delta Force. Small and elite is where you get the best of the best.
As co-founder of a firm which never wants to be bigger than 25 or 30, I really like Pat's last sentence. Anyone else want to enter the fray on this? See the post of a couple of days ago which incorporates some great questions and writing from The Greatest American Lawyer.
Posted by JD Hull at 09:01 PM | Comments (0)