What About Clients?™

We have been out of the yellow pages for ten years, but I completely disagree with what you are saying about small businesses. I love dealing with business owners because they really care and they really know the business. The good ones know they don't know the law so they leave that up to us. My life would be considerably less interesting without our small business clients.

Please tell me you didn't just write this.

If you have defined your client as the more sophisticated business owner, that's your absolute right and privilege.

However, that does not make all others necessarily unsophisticated or 'dregs.' And some lawyers enjoy the challenge of helping their clients reach a certain level of sophistication and they, in turn, become lifelong clients.

Cover for every pot..you just have to decide which pot you want to cover, right?

Dan: I have been reading your blog for about six months and have found it very valuable (and always interesting) as I have tried in the past year to make the transition from a large national firm to a small (20 lawyers), very high quality firm. This has involved working on business development to a much larger extent.

With that background, I do not totally agree with your post, as I do not believe the quality of a client is any more dependent upon size than is the quality of a law firm. Two of my best clients do not have in-house counsel. However, one is a very sophisticated client and the other is becoming much more sophisticated. The question for me is always whether the relationship works: Whether you can assist the client in resolving and avoiding problems and whether the client works well with you. In some instances, it is much easier to help a small client in a meaningful way because it may have a clear need to develop sophistication that a larger client does not have, and one is, so to speak, writing on a clean page.

As far as a relationship with in-house counsel is concerned, it is obviously important for clients who have them. I have been privileged to work with some of the most amazing in-house counsel one could imagine. Especially in my past professional life, I have also worked (or tried to work) with some (the exception, thankfully) who seem to have as their sole function in life second-guessing every recommendation, questioning every bill, or using you to play corporate politics, no matter how well or efficiently the services are provided.

Client relationships are the most important thing any lawyer has. I have had many good ones with businesses with in-house counsel and without. The quality of the relationship for me has not been dependent upon the size of the client or whether they have in-house counsel. Of course, your mileage may vary.

John, Susan and Dan--Yours are all fine comments (I was especially intrigued by John's) but WAC?'s theme since day one has been doing "BigLaw" work out of smaller shops: doing it better with better people and even charging more. We think that most people (like Julie McGuire and me) who leave large firms or of Fortune 500 settings immediately think they must bottom-feed--and we think that's nuts, financially and professionally. Beyond that, we have found that even very successful individuals and small businesses are largely a pain-in-the-ass, and the issues aren't as interesting. So we end up referring out 75-85% of the business which comes to us, and we do that with great care. But that's just us; if I had Dan's specialty in China trade, I might re-think it.

I am reminded of a true story in my old and now-defunct firm, which at one point had 5 offices. On the Monday following an all-firm weekend outing in the HQ city, where people brought dates and wives to the event, a 60-year-old married senior partner at the head office popped into a small conference room and confronted a 40-year-old partner from another office there in the room making a few phone calls by himself. The younger partner was in town for the day before he went back to his city. He was a single, divorced, good-looking, very engaging, likeble and talented guy, who had brought a very beautiful 27-year-old woman lawyer, and girlfriend of several years, as his date to the event. It had caused a stir.

Q: "Why don't you date women your own age?"

A: "Because, sir, I don't have to."

Dan, I realize your recent focus has been on France (at least tongue in cheek), but, seriously, do you realize you have written off 85 percent of the businesses making up economy of Germany as clients, among other things?

As part of a group of big firm ex pats, we also try to focus on quality, but have much greater ability to choose who we want to represent. Our best clients are certainly not necessarily the biggest.

John--That's exactly what we have done, and a number of our clients are German--but large. If you think about it, 10% of many markets is all anyone would need or want. Most legal work in general (about 95%) is not worth it. I'd rather sell women's shoes. But that 5% is worth it and obtainable, for your firm and mine. This is nothing new for us; we've been saying it all along.