How to Make Your Services Irresistible to Clients By Ruth Fenton May 2012 In an ever developing world, your law firm needs to constantly adapt to meet the changing needs of your clients. Law firms and individuals who stand still will be left behind. In this article we will give you an insight into what your clients really want from you and how you can achieve it in 5 easy steps without using the marketing budget. We asked a number of people what they really wanted from their lawyers and answers which came up were pretty uniform: 
Friendly service 
To be heard and understood 
Realistic honest advice 
Fair billing 
To be contactable at any moment 
To be kept informed 
Letters written so they could understand them Clients can afford to shop around for legal services. In these difficult times, companies are increasingly looking at where they can get best value for their money. With global presences and the latest technology, clients can instruct lawyers who are miles away or even out of the country. Businesses are asking for more and more details in pitches to ensure they are making the right choice for them, and it doesn’t always come down to price. Tailored customer services are now even more critical in the legal marketplace. For the general public, word of mouth is very important as they don’t know about for example Legal 500 or Chambers. When it comes down to it, pretty much every law firm says it’s the leading law firm in something, but that doesn’t make it the best choice for the client. So how do you make your service stand out from all the rest…. What makes your firm unique? How can you prevent your clients from leaving and gain new referrals? www.lawpracticetoday.org
©American Bar Association 2012
One strategy is as follows: Needs Tailored service Evaluate
Communicate Deliver results Needs – It’s all about asking the right questions, getting to know the client and listening, not only to what is being said but what the client is not saying. What does your client really need? It maybe something different from what they say they want. It’s important that the lawyer reflects back to the client what they have just been told, to check they truly understand the client’s needs. It’s my experience that often clients are misunderstood and the real issues in the case are not discovered until later, after a substantial amount of work has already been done. In addition asking clients about their business aspirations and exciting new projects can build stronger rapport and open up opportunities for future work. Linked to understanding your clients needs is understanding your team members needs. When putting together a team to work on a particular case it’s important to have the right technical skills but equally a happy motivated team who will be productive, efficient and ready to serve the client. If team members are over worked and stressed, they will not put 100% into their work. Often junior team members and secretaries feel unappreciated, especially in the middle of the night when they are working, and would rather be at home or down the pub with friends. Every team member is critical to fulfilling the client’s needs. A chance comment to a secretary from the client might mean the difference between a new instruction or not. This is where effective communication comes in. Communication – Right now lawyers who are going to get ahead are the ones who put their clients’ needs before their own. They are going to have to learn how to build rapport quickly, understand their clients’ needs, work as a team with their peers and produce outstanding client services. Learning how the client likes to be communicated with will create a stronger relationship. For example do they like face to face meetings in their office or at the law firm, or do they prefer meeting at a neutral location? Maybe they prefer telephone calls or emails at a certain time of day. If English is not your client’s first language they may prefer working with a lawyer who is fluent in that language rather www.lawpracticetoday.org
©American Bar Association 2012
than using an interpreter. Most Lawyers never ask their clients what their preferred method of communication is and when is the best time for them to be contacted. Communication is not all about the words used. In fact words only make up 7% of communication. Tone of voice and body language has a much greater impact on getting a message across. Lawyers need to understand cultural differences and business practices from around the world. For example how you pass your business card to a prospective Japanese client is different from how you would in other parts of the world. Body language in many cultures is more important than words, here action does speak louder than words. Of course words are important and saying the wrong thing in some cultures can be very damaging for example saying “no” in China rather than presenting an alternative could lead to a break down in communications and loss of respect. Tailored service – It’s about what you can do for your individual client, what impact have you created for them and did you treat them with care and respect? How did the experience make them feel? It’s all very well being at the top of the rankings, but unless you are offering your clients what they really need, you will not get instructed. Firms may find themselves in a false sense of security. Being the best is not all about who had the largest case with the highest publicity, it’s about providing the best cost efficient personal service. When clients first contact the firm, ask them what their expectations are and how the firm can best serve their needs and by doing this, there are no excuses for providing a sub standard service and the client will feel they are getting value for money. As noted above clients want to be kept informed and receive advice they can understand, so they can make key decisions. Good communication within the team and the firm can lead to a much better experience for the client. Firms often use marketing data collection software to log client interactions, but this is only as good as the information inputted. Everyone in the team needs to be aware of the latest developments so they can tailor what they do to better serve the client. Having a reputation for a first rate tailored service will bring in new instructions as clients want to feel important and like they are the firm’s number one priority, rather than being kept dangling and never really knowing what the lawyers are up to until they get a big bill. Deliver results – Clients want results; they are not bothered about fancy technology, complex legal arguments and what lawyer scored points over another; they just want a fast result with minimum expense. At the end of the day they are buying an emotion or feeling such as the feeling that I’ve been treated well by this firm, they have been honest, kept me informed and did all they could. The firm may not have won its case, but the client had a good experience and believed the law firm did everything it could. In contrast, the law firm could win the case, but if the client feels the law firm’s service is shocking it over charged me, never told me what was going on, didn’t return my calls, and the partner was rude to the associates in front of me, the client is unlikely to refer new business. Law firms should be aiming to over deliver and far exceed the client’s expectations. Law Firms have the advantage that the profession has a bad reputation for customer services so it is pretty easy to create a tailored service, which meets the client’s needs and delivers results. www.lawpracticetoday.org
©American Bar Association 2012
Evaluate – to be a successful lawyer who truly understands their client, there needs to be evaluation at every step, the clients need to feel part of the process. There needs to be evaluation of the client’s needs, the services they are being offered, the results the lawyer obtains on their behalf and how communication can be improved. Lawyers may send out evaluation forms to the client and ask for feedback, but it needs to go much deeper than that. In general, clients appreciate being asked whether they have received a good service. Face to face feedback is much more powerful than asking the client to fill out a form, they will probably never send back, unless it’s a formal complaint about the firm. Everything the client says is important, as they are the ones paying the bills. Often when a case is closed, the lawyer can’t wait to get the files out their office, dust off the shelve and go to the next case, but do they really think about how they could improve their service as they go along. Do they think about what they have learnt from each step of the case and how they can integrate the learning to create a better experience for the client, themselves and their colleagues? It may be time consuming but it can make the difference between, keeping that client and getting referrals and losing the client and getting none. These 5 easy steps can be completed by any member of the law firm, it doesn’t have to be the partners. By using these steps you can communicate more effectively with your clients, understand their needs, and ultimately win more business for your firm without even dipping into the marketing budget. For more details about marketing strategies and coaching tips mentioned in this article please email [email protected]. Ruth Fenton is a Legal Business Strategist and Coach with “Inspired Star” a global legal business coaching company. Ruth can be contacted at [email protected] www.lawpracticetoday.org
©American Bar Association 2012