Practice Management

"If you can't steal our clients, you're fired."

By Dan Hull

If you find this performance review idea preposterous, please ask yourself why.

We first mentioned the title's idea in a 2006 post. It attracted attention--but many people thought we were kidding.

We weren't.

There are lots of suggestions out there on standards, guidelines and take-aways for associate reviews. Two are (a) letting staff evaluate co-workers and partners on specific inter-office skills in writing, and (b) reviews of staff based on specific client service standards which ALL employees must buy into (i.e., pay increase for well done client service; hit the road, for the unwilling, clueless). But we still like this one--which is no more discretionary and arbitrary than (a) and (b) above:

Every day, the client service by associates and paralegals should be good enough to permit those employees to actually steal any client, and take them to another law firm (use "transport" for "steal" if you need the PC professional services term), if they were to leave your shop tomorrow morning. Period.

Full post as published by What About Clients? on December 02, 2008 (boomark / email).