Two Simple Steps to Better Client Service from your Law Firm

Begin with a formal expectations discussion with your law firms. Then document the discussion and share the results.

Years ago, before Sarbanes-Oxley limited the work that accounting firms could provide to audit clients, my firm proposed on a $25 million, all-encompassing contract for one of the largest European telecommunications companies in existence. It came down to us versus another Big Six accounting firm.

We lost.

It was typical in the accounting profession to conduct a formal post-mortem with the client. The client indicated that our formal and informal qualifications matched up almost exactly with our competitor — except that we presented no formal client service methodology to the client, and our competitor did so. And that made the difference.

In actuality, we did have a formal client methodology, but the lead partner didn’t think it was important or interesting enough to include in the pitch.

I’ll say this for the Big Six (today, it’s down to the Big Four). When they made a mistake, they were galvanized into action and addressed it immediately. During the next two years, every single client with more than a six figure fee participated in the formal client methodology. There were no exceptions, unless a client specifically rejected it. Few did.

The client experience began by engaging the client in a formal expectations discussion, in which the client communicated their client service preferences to the firm. The client’s preferences were documented; sometimes formally in the form of a memo or contract, sometimes informally in the form of an e-mail. But the entire team, whether on the client’s side or on the firm’s side, read and understood the client’s preferences.

I’ll describe the rest of the client experience in a future post.