What Clients Want from Their Lawyers
cMany of the nation's leading law firm marketing pros -- including Laura Meherg (not pictured!) -- gathered in Chicago in May 2011 for their annual RainDance conference, produced by the Legal Sales and Service Organization.
Laura Meherg has a pretty good handle on the relationships between lawyers and their clients. After all, she has conducted hundreds of top-level law firm client feedback interviews over the past few years.
This week, Laura and one of her associates at Wicker Park Group, Nat Slavin, offered their insights into what businesses want when they hire a lawyer or a law firm. When she has asked them, according to Laura, most clients tell her they’re looking for three qualities in their lawyers above all others:
- Can you fix my problem?
- Will you make my life easier?
- Do I like you as a person?
The first two might not come as much of a surprise. But Laura’s third criterion will probably be hard for many lawyers to swallow.
The lawyers who resist Laura’s findings are most likely the ones who insist on having a dour-looking photo of themselves on their firms’ Web sites…if they have a photo (or Web site) at all. Or, they’re the ones who still insist that clients ought to employ them solely (or largely) because of their impeccable credentials or because the right person put in the right word for them. They’re the ones who believe that the mention of what a lawyer does in their spare time on a firm’s Web site is frivolous and undignified.
If you believe Laura, these are the lawyers who will, by and large, be left behind, particularly in an increasingly competitive and over-lawyered world.
Instead, the smart ones will listen to their clients. They will listen to what Laura insists will help them build and sustain more satisfying practices and careers.
They’re the ones who’ll make it rain.
PS: This is another reminder that people buy from people. So, my advice is to be a person.
