Retaining clients can be a challenging task in an increasingly competitive market. But attorneys who can keep their clients coming back not only enjoy a long and fruitful business relationship, but can significantly boost their firm’s bottom line.
Attorneys with a loyal client base often have a very personal, almost familial, relationship with their clients, according to Greg Werkheiser, a founding partner at Cultural Heritage Partners PLLC in Washington, D.C.
“The process of bringing on new clients is incredibly intensive and potentially fraught with potholes because you don’t know those people,” Werkheiser said. “You can read about their challenge on paper, but until you understand what it’s like to work with someone and you can build a relationship of trust, it can be a challenge.”
Fostering those long-term trust relationships means investing in clients in ways that go beyond the strict role of a legal advocate.
Good lawyers may have the essential base-line skills such as staying abreast of developments in the law and new regulations, and communicating the relevant developments to their clients. But how do you become a great lawyer that clients continue to seek out?
Here, Law360 provides five tips for guaranteeing return business.
Collaborate, Don’t Dictate
To develop a positive attorney-client relationship, it’s important not to make presumptions about clients or try to impose your own goals and values onto them, according to Lauren King of Foster Pepper PLLC, who does general commercial litigation and transactional work especially within the area of Native American law.
“Working well together is key,” King said. “This means collaborating with the client on strategies rather than dictating to them as if you know what’s best for them without getting their feedback.”
Collaboration necessarily requires being responsive to the clients’ wishes, and maintaining an open line for communication, King said.
Clients value “earnest listening” and prompt communication lets clients know that you are ready and willing to assist them whenever new issues arise, according to Jennifer Fraser, an intellectual property attorney with Dykema Gossett PLLC.
“That open line of communication as far as new matters that are coming up or new issues that might arise builds the trust with the client, and that’s how you strengthen any relationship,” Fraser said.
But being responsive and collaborating goes beyond being readily available to address clients’ needs. Clients want honesty, especially when lawyers make mistakes, according to Blank Rome LLP’s tax partner Scott DeMartino.
“Clients do appreciate when lawyers take ownership of errors and explain what needs to be done to correct them,” DeMartino said.
Know Their Business
To keep clients coming back, lawyers must be able to position themselves as trusted advisers to their clients’ business. And knowing everything about their business is one of the first steps towards winning that trust.
Getting acquainted with the ins and outs of a client’s business means that lawyers can engage more effectively in “strategic thinking outside the box,” DeMartino said, and they will be able to advise their clients more effectively on how a particular short-term strategy might affect their entire portfolio in the long term.
King concurred, saying that clients’ issues can be resolved more effectively if lawyers are being cognizant of the clients’ overall interests, and the business, political and social implications of any legal decisions for their clients.
“My transactional client said great lawyers learn their clients’ business and help them understand the law as it relates to them and helps them achieve business objectives just like any other member of an executive team,” King said.
Set Realistic Expectations
Clients generally do not like being surprised by new information or unexpected legal bills, so lawyers who are trying to build long-term relationships with their clients must avoid making guarantees that may not be realized, experts say.
King said her clients have welcomed forthright information about laws or past precedents that work against them because that allows her clients to consider alternatives.
Clients also deserve to know about analogous cases and administrative decisions, and if such a case has either not been adjudicated before or if it was last heard in a different era by a different judge, so they can realistically assess all the factors affecting their case and judge the potential outcomes, King said.
Similarly with fees, clients should be advised upfront about billing ranges in similar cases, and they should be told about matters that cannot be predicted accurately, such as the length of a trial or the complexity of discovery disputes, King said.
This kind of honest communication builds trust that makes it “easier to deliver tough news to clients,” Werkheiser said.
“Sometimes, the law does not favor [the clients’] interests and you’ve got to be able to tell them that,” he said. “Where lawyers frequently run into challenges is they’re trying to deliver bad news about a client’s expectations to someone who doesn’t necessarily trust them.”
Of course, new facts and strategies will often emerge during the course of a trial or business transaction, but Fraser said that an open dialogue with the client “has to happen so that there are as few surprises as there can be.”
Don’t Forget the Emotions
It is easy for lawyers to spot the intellectual challenges posed by a client’s problems, but the reality is that clients almost always come with hopes, aspirations, fears and anxieties, as well, and clients keep coming back when they have both their intellectual and emotional needs met, Werkheiser said.
“A lot of my colleagues view the experience of engaging with clients as transactional and relatively emotionless,” Werkheiser said. “The attorneys who think about law as a mere exchange of information and data in my experience don’t have as much of a recurring clientele as those who understand that they are both emotional and intellectual partners with their clients.”
The “counselor part” of being a lawyer is sometimes underestimated, Werkheiser said, and while lawyers are not trained to be therapists, a client’s trust can be sealed when lawyers understand that their clients are also “human beings and not just corporations.”
Lose the Legalese
While explaining options and outcomes for clients, the information must be conveyed in a nontechnical and understandable way so clients can truly appreciate why a lawyer’s advice can be trusted, King said.
“Both my clients on the transaction and litigation side are very busy and they have very little time to digest what are really complex issues,” King said. “So, it’s important to them that I can drill those down briefly with a summary, potential outcomes and my recommendations. … When you’re communicating with nonlawyers, don’t use legalese.”
–Editing by Mark Lebetkin. Read the article at Law360.