Lawyers know many of our clients are unhappy with us but do nothing to remedy it

I suspect if somebody told Jeff Bezos that 40% of his Amazon customers were dis-satisfied with their experience he’d be horrified and order an inquiry. That’s the rating Lexis Nexis found for the legal profession as a whole from couple of years ago and still we do nothing. While this headline statistic is disturbing what’s even more troubling is that the legal profession is almost totally oblivious to it. Part of the problem lies in the fact that the majority of firms adhere to an erroneous belief they are in the ‘professional services’ economy. Wrong.

Lawyers these days operate almost entirely operate in the ‘customer service’ economy. If users have a sub-optimal experience they simply don’t come back, it’s not like there is a shortage of lawyers in the world. To make matters worse there is a wealth of research that shows if customers have a good experience they tell on average only tell three people. If the experience is negative they tell ten. Add in the potential for distrust due to the potential for price gouging via the billable hours model and is it any wonder why we struggle to make our customers happy.

What to do?

The answer is multi-faceted. Firstly, ditch the billable hours model for fixed price. It rewards inefficiency and breeds distrust. Time and outputs are not the same. If I can draft two contracts on a fixed-price basis at say $400 each in the time it takes somebody else to draft one charging $400 an hour, who’s better off? I’d say me and my client as we were both able to budget for the transaction. Not to mention I’ve serviced an additional client, thereby doubling my income – in effect I’m at $800 per-hour.

Clients hate the idea of billable hours – it pays to remember most also work for salaries. Almost all lawyers hate it too. Brain surgeons don’t charge in six-minute blocks, what makes us so special?

Secondly, actually engage with your client. Are you actually listening to what they want, or have you figured out your solution to their problem before the consult?

Thirdly, invest in targeted marketing that values peer to peer transactions in order to drive repeat business and client satisfaction. This is the underpinning philosophy at Legally Yours, which has seen strong repeat business for our clients and significant levels of customer satisfaction. If this sounds like the kind of #newlaw that you’d like to be a part of drop me a message today.