Use every communication to demonstrate your professional brand

As lawyers we communicate in a wide range of circumstances and with any number of methods. The thing to remember is that every single communication - answering the telephone, leaving a voicemail, or sending an email - conveys your brand. At the risk of stating the obvious, let me remind you of some simple truths.

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Make your holiday card personal

It’s that time of year when your personal assistant inevitably sets that stack of holiday cards on your desk to be signed. If, like most people, you merely sigh and scrawl your signature into each, then you’ve lost a big chance: the chance to make a personal contact with your clients. Take the effort to scribble a brief personal message to the recipient. I promise that it will make both you and the card memorable - and set you apart from the rest!

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A client bill should tell a story

I recently had the opportunity to hire legal services, as opposed to being a legal advisor. This was not my first time as a client, yet each such experience has given me a fresh insight into “client care”. In this case, the services I received were quite satisfactory, and the problem only arose once I received the bill. Despite the lawyers billing me on an hourly basis, the bill gave me no transparency into who had done what and for how long. (The bill merely stated: "for services rendered in connection with X".)

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Legal counsel are driving alternative billing structures

A survey of general counsel and chief legal officers completed by the The American Lawyer and the Association of Corporate Counsel shows that the legal profession is moving away from the concept of the billable hour—and that this change is not temporary, but for good.

No surprise however is that the survey results also show that in-house legal departments, not law firms, are leading this change. (In short, law firms are not offering this choice, but instead clients are demanding it.)

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Listening can be more important than having a solution

As lawyers, it’s absolutely essential that we meet our clients’ needs and desires. This should be obvious, but all too often lawyers forget to think about what the client really wants. Here’s a classic example: the general counsel of a large organization told me yesterday over lunch about a meeting she’d had the day before with her (previously!) favored law firm for a certain project. Apparently they began their pitch by telling her how the project would be run and who would run it, without displaying the smallest understanding of the in-house team, or, more importantly, the in-house politics that would have to be dealt with during the course of the deal. Their proposal was disappointing because they had failed to take this information into account.

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