Solo Practice

Client Teams: The Five Pillars of Client Service

By The Greatest American Lawyer

Larry Bodine over at the Larry Bodine Law Marketing Blog disucsses Which Clients Deserve a Client Team with David Freeman, author of the CMO Playbook audio training program and Jason Maeder, a product manager at Lexis Nexis. 

Client teams are actually a client service initiative. Freeman identified the five pillars of client service:

1.    Clients want lawyers to deeply know their business. Visit their facility, work site and conferences. Use the information you gain to ask clients good questions. Know their business.

2.    Be highly responsive. Most lawyers already consider themselves to be responsive, but they?re not. Clients may want information on paper, email, 24-hour turnaround or 1-hour turnaround. The best response is based on what clients want.

3.    Add value. Value is more than completing the assignment. It?s the little something extra that you blow clients away with. Make yourself indispensable to the client.

4.    Be proactive. Law is a reactive profession, but clients want lawyers to anticipate their needs, and advise them before an issue becomes a major legal problem. Identify 4-5 legal issues the clients will face in the coming year.

5.    Manage the relationship. Ask clients what they?d like you to do and not to do.

Read the full story here.

Full post as published by The Greatest American Lawyer on February 28, 2011 (boomark / email).