Law Firm Value: Plugging the leakage

Stefanie had it all. She was recently promoted to partner. She had a wonderful team of dedicated associates. And, the ranking agencies were describing her as some sort of up-and-coming überlawyer.

But then, things got weird. Stefanie discovered that her pipeline of client work was drying up. Even worse, it seemed like her main (and favorite) client was the culprit. This client was still inviting Stefanie with its RFPs, but she was no longer winning matters. Despite working hard to produce quality pitches, she was just getting silence - over and over again.

If this story sounds a little too familiar, read on for tips about how to diagnose whether you have a value-leakage problem.

I. Little Hiccups and Big Consequences

Every time you do work for a client, there are going to be some hiccups. For example, maybe your associate sent an overly-long memo or emailed some advice that ignored the client’s questions. Or maybe, another colleague had a bad habit of not setting expectations about communication deadlines and was shooting out emails at the last moment, in the middle of the night. Or maybe, you sent out some billing reports that were annoyingly vague in their work descriptions.

Sometimes, clients will just shrug off these hiccups and accept them as the price for dealing with difficult lawyers. But other times, clients will get unexpectedly pissed off and decide that enough is enough – it’s time for a new firm.

Unfortunately, when clients make the decision to move on from your firm, they don’t usually contact you about it and give you a chance to correct the errors. That’s not their job. In reality, it was your job to identify these problems and fix them long ago.

II. The Feedback Solution

When is the last time that you asked a client for substantive feedback on your firm’s work? If you are like most of my students, the thought has never crossed your mind. But, what would happen if you did?

Well, some clients might not respond to your request. Others might provide you with some superficial comments (e.g. “we appreciate your efforts). But, at least a few clients will definitely share with you valuable insights on the quality of your work. And, these insights can help you uncover a goldmine of benefits.

Identifying At-Risk Clients

When you collect feedback from clients, you can oftentimes discover whether they qualify as an “at-risk client”. In plain-speak, you can tell by their tone whether you’ve made them really upset and created a situation where they might be looking around for new counsel.

(BTW, it’s crazy that lawyers don’t try to track at-risk clients. Especially since, it takes an unbelievable amount of non-billable hours and uncomfortable BD work to land a client in the first place.)

Solidifying Client Relationships

If you do discover that your team has created major (or even minor) problems for the client, this is an awesome opportunity to solidify your relationship with the client. In particular, if you can apologize for the inconvenience and identify your planned corrective steps, you can actually win a great deal of loyalty points with the client for demonstrating that you actually care about their needs.

Improving Work Value – for all clients

Most importantly, it’s highly unlikely that your team’s problems are limited to one client. Most likely, all of your clients are experiencing similar problems, which simply multiplies the damage to the value of your team’s work.

So, if you can address the problems raised by clients, you can end up substantially increasing the value of your team. And, you will also be creating a competitive edge over the vast majority of other firms that don’t collect feedback.

III. How to Start

If you are interested in collecting client feedback, I have the following tips for you.

Think Conversations

Ideally, you want to set up a discussion on feedback by organizing a conversation with your client. In other words, don’t be lazy and just ask for some feedback via email.

Timing is Key

Clients are most likely open to providing feedback to you if you approach them after you successfully closed their matter.

Communicate the Benefits

Clients will definitely be more responsive to a feedback request if you communicate how it benefits them. For example, I recommend you use the following type of language:

“We appreciate the opportunity to support you in [X matter]. As we would like to establish ourselves as a reliable long-term business partner for solving your legal problems, it’s important that the quality of our services match your expectations. For this reason, we would very much appreciate your feedback on any service issues in our recent project. Would you be open to a call to share your feedback? If so, please let me know if either of the following times would be convenient for such a discussion: ….”

Start with a Survey?

You might be able to obtain even greater feedback if you send out a preliminary survey to collect discuss points for the feedback conversation. If you want to go this route, I would start with something simple like a Net Promoter Score set of questions. (If you are looking for something more detailed, let me know and I’ll send you a more comprehensive survey that we developed for clients.)

IV. The Conclusion

If you are wondering what happened to Stefanie, I have no idea. (I made her up.)

But, I didn’t make up the fact that clients are frequently upset with issues in the services provided by firms. And, firms are committing a form of business development malpractice by allowing these clients to walk away simply because the firms failed to investigate and address these issues.

V. Learn More

If you are interested in creating a systematic feedback program at your firm, check out the following great article about Client Listening Programs at law firms: https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/what-law-firm-client-development-manager-says-about-client-listening-programs-2023-03-09/

If you are not familiar with Net Promoter Scores for law firms, check out the following article: https://www.clearlyrated.com/solutions/blog/nps-101-for-law-firms/

And, if you want to ensure that your associates are providing clients with valuable advice, sign them up for our next High-Value Writing course: https://www.evelaw.eu/high-value-writing