Corporate Lawyer’s Top 10 List of Successful Outside Counsel Habits: #5 Being Responsive and Eating the Frog First

5.? You are hands on and responsive.

When you have a complex legal and compliance problem at a corporation, it can feel as though the weight of the world is on your shoulders to solve it for your client.? What is the one thing you can do to help improve your brand as a law firm and lawyer to help with that problem?? You can make us feel like you shoulder that burden with your responsiveness and engagement.

When I talk to other in-house counsel, the single most common concern is the lack of responsiveness of outside counsel.? The second most common concern is lack of engagement or “hands on” working knowledge of our issues.? We replace outside counsel more for responsiveness and engagement issues than any other reason.? Yet, this challenge is still underappreciated within the law firm industry in my view.

I recognize that we are all busy and cannot be at the beck and call of our clients 24 hours and 7 days a week.? But being responsive and engaged is vital and I will give you an approach that might help you as the lawyer and the law firm:

Eat the Frog ?? First – Block Out the First Part of Your Day to Be Responsive

I have been trying this approach lately at work.? I block out the first part of my day and attack the most challenging issue or task facing me.? It is when you have the most energy and brain power.? It is when you are most likely to get over the hump of your greatest challenge instead of kicking it to the next day or week.? If you are able to tackle that problem or task first that you most dreaded, it will fuel you with a boost of energy and productivity for the rest of the day.

If I were to go back into private practice, my Eat the Frog ?? each day would be taking inventory of my outstanding emails, questions, or issues for my clients and getting back to them in one form or another.? It may not always be the final work product, but it will be an update, a check in, a status report, or a partial read out.? This would lead to better client satisfaction with my work, build trust in my brand, improve communication between law firm and client, and elevate my reputation that I am someone that can be trusted in a crisis.

How important is this responsiveness and engagement to you?? Let’s just put this way.? When I speak with other in-house counsel about how outstanding such and such lawyer has been on our matters, often the most common refrain shared between us and often said in unison will be: “They are so responsive.”? Not that they were so creative, brilliant, hardworking, but rather they responded when I needed them.? This is their greatest value as expressed as a moniker of excellence.

And so, I finish where I started.? If you make a client feel consistently that they are not alone on a problem, it could be the most important thing you do to solving that problem together.

-Brennan