Law Firm Differentiation and Delivering A Signature Client Experience
“We insist on excellence”; “We staff matters leanly”; “We understand your business”; “We always put the client first”; etc. These are just a few of the yawning refrains of law firms trying to appear “different” in the marketplace – we all can agree that marketing pablum is not in short supply! The truth is that […]
Big Firms in Small Cities: Go Virtual!
Eversheds Sutherland! Norton Rose/Chadbourne Parke! Arnold & Porter/Kaye Scholer! If it’s such a bad idea to get bigger to create scale and capability, why are so many smart leaders at so many leading firms doing it? As a regional or mid-market full-service firm, it’s easy these days to feel pretty un-validated by all of this […]
Don’t Manage Expectations. Modify Expectations
The conventional wisdom about “managing expectations” is that you should determine what someone’s expectations are, and then surpass them. Theoretically this is supposed to please them. It’s an interesting approach but I believe it is misguided. Why? Because the client’s expectations are often flawed in the first place. If you contemplate the origin of expectations, […]
Build Conversational Momentum to Set the Table for the Pitch
To their credit, lawyers are results-oriented professionals. When we practice our craft, we think in terms of objectives, and the activities necessary along the way to achieve those goals. Clients pay for results and lawyers want to deliver on those expected results. Generally speaking, this is a great bias to have as a professional services […]
Business Development Skills and the Billable Hour
I recently reviewed a small firm’s Associate Guidebook. In describing the firm’s expectations of associates, two-thirds of the text was taken up with how to attain annual billable hours (2000). The remaining one-third addressed billing and timekeeping. Not a word was said about business development or career. This got me pondering this question: What if […]
You Will Have It in the Morning
I am often asked to submit a proposal which will describe how my team and I might approach a problem and what our services might cost. The person requesting the proposal often intends to share it with others inside their firm. The question is, when should the proposal arrive on their desk (metaphorically speaking)? In […]
Business Development: Strategic Client Relationship Management
Remember the old adage “The Client is King”? Put more baldly, the reason your business remains in existence is because you have clients. To lose sight of this carries the risk of losing clients. You know that the world you operate in is highly competitive and aggressive. You also know clients are (mostly) sophisticated buyers […]
Trade Associations, Conferences, and Events: Creating Warmth and “Reach” Out of Thin Air
“Oh, how I hate cocktail receptions . . .” “If my practice group leader berates me about attending more trade association events I think I’m going to scream . . .” “Ever since my first day of kindergarten, there are few things in life I hate more than walking into a large room of people […]
Building Trust: The Inviolable Rule
With all the attention given to the external forces bringing about change and impacting the legal profession, we sometimes forget how much of successful legal services business is still about human relationships and building trust. Trust is the key building block for so many different areas and interactions in law firms: one that impacts just […]
Know Your Buyer, Know Client’s Internal Clients
At the risk of expressing pablum, KNOW YOUR BUYERS! More importantly, KNOW THE INTERNAL CLIENTS OF YOUR BUYERS! I was reminded of these insipid (yet important!) refrains during work with a client. My law firm client had three seemingly unrelated practices that all served the needs of the same particular buyer of legal services inside […]