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May 18, 2007
Redux: Real Elitism
Giving better client service than the firm next door is like being the most beautiful maiden in a leper colony.
In a couple of years, your clients won't care, and it may even backfire. Don't get me wrong. Those two 28-year-old ex-Supreme Court clerks your firm just hired at $165,000 a year along with your eight other fine new associates are treasures. Cherish and develop them. Still tell your clients and the world, as you have for years, that you only hire the "smartest" people. Keep hiring them and keep telling the clients. But the chance that even one out of those ten hires--even assuming that all ten stay at your firm and make partner--will ever "get" clients and minimally master client service is about zilch. Talent and solid legal work are both critical--but they aren't enough.
In the 1994 book Built To Last, authors Jim Collins and Jerry Porras discuss how enduring world-class companies often have developed "cult-like cultures" in which they view themselves as truly unique, superior and and frankly better-than-you in the production, marketing,
selling and delivery of their products and services. Amongst themselves, and in talking to customers, they don't talk about whether their sales and management people are graduates of Tuck, Harvard or Wharton, huge state schools or small obscure private liberal arts colleges. That stuff faded into the woodwork when it was time to perform. Built To Last notes that some of the same firms don't have an external standard of quality. Instead, they have their own standard, and they compete against that. And they talk about it. Interestingly, though, their "elitism"--viewing themselves as special with their own special standard--didn't evolve with their success. They thought of themselves as special from day one. Check out the nearly 100-year history of IBM, pre-success elitists since 1911.
In firms of any type, size or caliber that sell services, talent and academic achievement is cherished, and it should be. Also valued is a high standard of client service: the art of making a valued client both "be and feel safe." However, services of all manner in the "new" global economy--new product-service mixes, traditional consumer services and professional services--continue to get low marks. The main reason for launching What About Clients? in 2005 (see the first post) is the belief that client service at law and other professional firms is shamefully third-rate and our standard on client service so uninspired and low that it ensures mediocrity and failure. The best people and the best product are not enough. They are merely prerequisites. Better service or service techniques you learned last year at a seminar or from the state disciplinary board aren't enough either. A new campaign to keep clients more informed, return phone calls right away and buy better seats at the stadium won't get you to a client-service culture. And telling yourself and your clients that you give good or better client service than the next firm is like saying you're the most beautiful maiden in a leper colony.
Set your own client service standard and compete against that. Start talking about it. Learn from everyone, but banish other firms' standards of service out of your mind forever. Get a high standard--and then outdo yourself. Get cocky and superior about that. If WAC? could start one small revolution, that is the one we'd choose.
Posted by JD Hull at May 18, 2007 10:25 PM
Comments
JD
This comment should probably go up on the blawg review, but oh well.
As you can tell by the decline in law blogging, comments, etc., this "fad" has all but run its course.
The only blogging I find at all current are the extreme criminal defense bar---whose clients never read what they write
As for "client service" it is a great marketing line, but last I looked no one has repealed the laws of economics.
Client service, like frequent flier miles, is nothing but a cost,and it is certainly not a change in the business model that will drive growth. If you add better coffee or any other aspect of client service, it just costs your more.
That being said, I do want to say that you are the only blog I read regularly, now, because you do have a distinct business model---one which only an old stray dog with no family or community responsibilites could have---and that is that you travel overseas, where there are no Bar Committees looking over your shoulder, as you cold call on businesses that want to do business in the U.S, as opposed to waiting for them to find you in San Diego.
It is not client service, just early networking, but it is what someone offering your services should do
Posted by: Moe Levine at May 24, 2007 05:11 AM
Thanks, Moe....I am really honored. And as always you have good markets and management sense. Re: prospecting and new client marketing, my firm doesn't do cold calls to GCs or anyone--and wouldn't do that if we could. In American and abroad we get appropriate introductions to the clients we target "the right way"--which is needed for credibility as our clients are generally old school. Between everyone in our firm we are licensed in quite a few states and jurisdictions; pro hac vice motions for litigation and increasingly relaxed territorial standards for transactional lawyers carry us the rest of the distance. The real marketing, though, is in keeping the clients you really want that are already in your fold. But anyone can do what we do--old dogs, new ones, leashed ones and ones with or without the usual domestic responsibilities and real life overhead. Woof, woof.
Posted by: Dan Hull at May 27, 2007 01:26 PM