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It continues to amaze me how few law firms engage their non-marketing staff in the firm’s business development efforts. The funny part is that these staff members are involved in marketing your firm in one way or another, if they deal with clients, potential clients or the public at-large. These contacts, whether intended or not, can end up being for the good or bad of the law firm.

So, why not train and focus these staff encounters for the best possible results? It’s not that difficult.

My friend Stacy West Clark has a terrific article on empowering your staff to help increase client business  in The Legal Intelligencer and on Law.com’s Small Firm Business online. In fact, there is so much good stuff there that, for the sake of brevity, I’m going to cover the article in two posts.

Today, I’ll cover her initial advice, and next time how the lawyers, their assistants and even the receptionist can contribute to the firm’s marketing.

Her opening paragraph is one of the more succinct recipes for great client relationship building I have heard:

“The components of great service include understanding the client’s business, being incredibly responsive, communicative and accessible and looking for opportunities to make the client’s life and business world better.”

Stacy then points out that the lawyers do not have to do this alone. The team includes your “secretary, messenger, file clerk, receptionist, human resources manager, office manager, librarian,” et al.

And she states:

“The sooner you empower your staff to deliver outstanding client service, the sooner your revenues will grow. Staff who are involved in and educated about the marketing effort have higher morale and lower turnover and treat clients better.”

Amen!

Next time: Stacy’s ideas for starters on how to get staff members involved.
 

 Some law firms will feel the pinch more than others during the current downturn. But all firms will feel it one way or another. Whether it is less work, losing clients because of mergers/acquisitions, or because of difficulty in collecting fees from financially stressed clients. When it comes to making payroll or paying your lawyers, what do you think clients will do?

Thus, it is very important for firms to do everything they can to minimize the impact of what certainly will not be a smooth road for the foreseeable future and beyond. One way is to work very hard at “bullet proofing” (as Gerry Riskin advises) your existing clients (or in Gerry’s words “crown jewels”) as much as you can. 

 

And as Thom Singer at Some Assembly Required accurately tells us in an article that applies to any company that it is the “relationships with those (with) whom you do business that…(leads) to beating the competitor in good times and in bad times." Those relationships are even more important in a down economy, because business is just that – “down”- and competition definitely gets more intense when times are tough.

 

So, how are your client relationships these days? Does everyone in the firm realize the importance of their interaction with clients, referral sources and prospects? From the receptionist to the firm couriers, to the associates and partners, everyone has a role in developing and enhancing client relationships – and avoiding damaging those relationships.

 

Two ways to improve client relationships are: by visiting your key clients, and seeking client feedback. Both will help reduce the adverse impacts of a recession on your firm.

Have you heard the sales axiom that goes “All things being equal, people buy from people they like?” I certainly believe that because that drives my purchases. The other adage I don’t remember hearing before is “All things not being equal, people still buy from people they like.” That’s true too on a personal level, because I have paid more and traveled further to buy products and services from people I like.

Both maxims were included in the article “Kindness helps Win Legal Business” by Joey Asher that appeared in the Fulton County Daily Record, and also on Law.com’s Small Firm Business.

Asher relates several stories about how being nice lead to more business; and, how Cravath Swaine & Moore increased associate retention as a result of partners saying “thank you” to associates, which he attributes to a story in the The Wall Street Journal.

I agree with him that “[N]iceness really can be a business strategy.” Asher also tells us about the inspirational anecdotes he read in “The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World With Kindness” by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval, who run an advertising agency that attributes its success to being nice. One story involves how being kind led to the birth of the ice cream cone.

The article made me smile, which also happens to be one of the best ways of getting everyone you come in contact with to be nice. And that my law firm friends can lead to happy employees (from the receptionist to the copy room staff, not to mention associates), who will then treat clients with kindness, which leads to more business. Hmm, interesting concept.

Is niceness part of your firm’s business development strategy?

In a word: Yes, if it is more than two names.

In my experience there are a couple of things that seem to run true in the Name Dept:

  • No matter how long the name, people on the street (and other lawyers) only refer to the firm by the first name or at most the first two,
  • Only in the case of firms that have a name like Smith, Jones, Ego, Ego, Ego & Ego, P.A. does even the receptionist answer the telephone with more than Smith Jones.
  • The smaller the firm the longer the name it seems, for example:
  • Ziffren, Brittenham, Branca, Fischer, Gilbert-Lurie, Stiffelman, & Cook, LLP (18 partners/3 associates/1 of counsel)
  • Krupnick Campbell Malone Buser Slama Hancock Liberman and McKee (15 partners/3 associates)

And then you have:

  • Skadden (1900-plus lawyers)(although their web site says “Skadden,” in fairness their legal name is still Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP),
  • Dechert LLP (1000-plus)
  • Venable LLP (520-plus)
  • Etc.

What brought the issue to mind was an article on New York Lawyer.com (free registration required) last Friday that reported that Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw is shortening its name to Mayer Brown. Although the article indicates that this is a new trend, in fact it has been going on for many years.

Moreover, my intention is certainly not to be critical of firms with long names. My only point is that from a legal marketing and business development standpoint, it is more important to have a memorable, short name that clients (and certainly prospects and referrals sources) can say without embarrassing themselves when asked. I actually spoke to a client of a law firm with a long name who told me the name of his lawyer, but COULDN’T for the life of him remember the name of law firm he was with. No joke.

It is a difficult issue I know, particularly when a named partner is still alive and coming to the office regularly. That was the situation in two of my firms when I was in-house (one went from 6 to two names, the other from four to two). For marketing purposes, it just made sense. That isn’t to say it will be an easy transition to a shorter name, but in my opinion it is something your firm should consider seriously, if it hasn’t shortened it already.

I’ve talked about voicemail in the past regarding issues like having your office phone answered by a human (here and here)  and tips on leaving a voicemail message. 

Tom Collins at morepartnerincome.com has another post on voicemail where he raises the issue whether the device is a friend or foe. Since communications are so critically important for good attorney-client relations, Tom offers several good suggestions on how to ensure that the use of the system doesn’t have adverse consequences.

  • If you give out your direct number, don’t hide behind it so callers always end up in voicemail, and begin thinking that you’re avoiding them (good idea to give the opportunity to bail out to a human);
  • Have receptionist offer the opportunity to leave a traditional message or go into voicemail; and
  • As to your outgoing message, make sure to:
  1. State your name clearly (so they know they have reached the right person),
  2. Update message often (if not daily),
  3. Indicate whether you are checking for messages, or when you will be back,
  4. Encourage caller to leave a detailed message (so they won’t fear being cut off prematurely), and
  5. Give indication when calls will be returned – late afternoon, the next day, within 4 hours, etc.

Voicemail can certainly be a friend, if it is used to enhance communications rather than frustrate them.

If you are using an fully automated phone system, from a legal marketing perspective, you’d be better off hiring someone like Lily Tomlin’s “Ernestine” and using her phone system. We should not forget that we are in the personal services business, and attempts to use technology to the fullest, may actually be putting law firms in the impersonal service business instead.

RainToday.com has an article by Laurie Brown of The Difference.net about making it easy for clients to do business with your firm. Check out Laurie’s tale about how a person named Barbara who lost track of what really matters.

"She forgot that her clients were not in the way of her business — they were her business."

It reminded me of a post I did earlier this year entitled “Is Your Receptionist A Human Or Machine?” and how terribly wrong I think that practice is for ANY firm.

Clearly, your clients would prefer Ernestine.

My post of last week entitled “Everything You Do as a Lawyer is Marketing” came about as a result of an article on "customer service" from a lawyer’s perspective by Wendy Werner in this month’s Law Practice Today. Although I went off on a tangent of my own based on her article, I wanted to come back to her main points, since I thought they were right on.

Accordingly, what she had to say about customer (client) service follows using her headings (with my usual editorial comments):

  • Getting in Your Client’s Shoes – most likely, whether the client is an individual or business, there is “great anxiety” on their part, and a lack of awareness about your services and the costs (Thus, understanding and patience would be key virtues to bring into play here),
  • First Contact – Wendy correctly points out that a firm can’t “overestimate” the importance of the receptionist’s impact on a caller’s first impression (I have addressed the issue of paying your receptionist well before),
  • Setting the Course – spending the time upfront to fully explain the firm’s “practices and procedures” (as well as fully understanding the client’s problems and concerns) is time well spent, even if time consuming. As Wendy accurately states, it is likely to improve client retention in the long run,
  • Managing Client Expectations – clients are unlikely to understand the Army’s motto of “hurry up and wait” also applies to the legal industry, so an explanation would be worthwhile (further, it would be advisable to find out what the client’s expectations are regarding how and how often they want a status report, copies of documents, best method of communications, etc.), and
  • Client Frustrations – high on the client’s list is unreturned phone calls, and unfathomable legalese (talking in English with explanation of legal terms is solution to this common problem, but more important, is making sure that communications – whether by letter, e-mail or phone – are returned promptly).

Thanks again, Wendy.

There was an interesting article last Sunday by William Taylor in the Business section of The New York Times entitled “Your Call Should Be Important to Us, but It’s Not.” It addresses the problem encountered by many callers when they telephone some of the largest corporations – sometimes referred to as voicemail hell. Thanks to Larry Bodine for posting on this article recently.
The reason I picked up on this issue is that I actually spoke to the head of a 10- lawyer firm a couple of years ago in my neck of the woods that doesn’t have a live person answer their phone. Not only would you have to go to a directory to get the extension of the person you wanted to reach (if you even knew a lawyer’s name), but when you get the managing partner’s extension, NO ONE answers his extension either. His message states that he will return your call during a couple of time periods during the day. How kind of him. What dumb legal marketing by him. I suggested strongly to him – free of charge – that he have a live person answer his phone. As of today, he still doesn’t.
It gets worse, the voicemail says what their office hours are, when they are closed for lunch, and what to do if you want their mailing address, fax number, a lawyers extension (if you know it) or how to reach the firm’s directory. After all that, it does tell you how to reach the receptionist. Who would want to at that point?
I know I don’t need to say it, but surely no smart lawyer marketer would allow such a practice at their firm.
P.S. Taylor’s article tells us about a Paul English who was go aggravated by the practice that he created a blog with the steps (including some unpublished codes) on how to get around voicemail hell and actually get a human person in a whole bunch of major corporations. It is DEFINITELY worth your time to look at gethuman.com. It just might save you some aggravation one day.

Folks who read my blog know that I am not a ranter by nature �.(well, maybe when it comes to the failure of law schools to prepare law students for the business side of law here, and here).
But, I visited a doctor’s office (not my regular MD) this week to get the results of a stress test (which was perfect, thank you very much). I was on time, sat in reception area cooling my heels for 40-minutes, to then have the privilege of getting 5 minutes of his time. Receptionist was stone-faced, people who came after me went in first, others came and went. When the nurse/assistant called me in and took my blood pressure, which she informed was a bit high, I responded “no wonder, considering how long I have been waiting.”
Silence �
Not a word. No “sorry”. Nothing!
Mentioned to the doctor (after waiting some more) that I “may” have annoyed his assistant by my comment.
Silence�
Not a word. No “sorry.” Nothing!
I gave up. Good report. I’m out of there. Not likely to speak favorable about the experience or that particular practice�.. not that they give a darn. But, why work so hard at bad marketing!! It’s amazing.
So, PLEASE, if you must have a client wait in your reception area for ANY length of time, have someone, anyone (preferably yourself) explain the reason for the delay, when you will be able to see them, and at least render a perfunctory apology. Legal marketing is not rocket science, so why would a lawyer want to hurt him/herself by having clients/prospects getting ready to blast off in their outer office. Just doesn’t make any sense.

Not only should you make your staff part of the marketing team, you should empower them in ways that can increase their effectiveness in assisting clients and improving the image (brand) of your law firm.
Joseph’s Marketing Blog talks about the power of empowerment in a recent post and a couple of points are worthy of consideration in the legal marketing environment.
Clients are no different than Joseph’s “customers”. Clients want immediate answers or at least helpful information when they want it. Depending on the size of your office, allow the staff (receptionist, secretary, paralegal) to act and speak on your behalf within certain parameters. At least your secretary should be so empowered. Yes, I know, that means giving up a certain degree of control. But that is what empowerment is all about.
The best way to empower staff is to make sure they feel appreciated and know that they play a vital role in the ongoing health of the law firm. Then, train your staff to be helpful rather than mere functionaries when clients call. There is nothing worse than passing a caller off to someone else or to voicemail without so much as a word, and it doesn’t improve the firm’s image much when your staff doesn’t inquire as to whether they could help in some way.
An example of empowerment might include allowing a staff person to tell a caller that you will call them back before the end of the day, or otherwise respond to certain requests from clients. This assumes communication between the lawyer and staff as to what those parameters are. So, give some thought to other ways you can empower your staff to help your clients. Remember, the ultimate goal is to make clients happy.