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Legal Commentary

In Search of Perfect Client Service

Why Lawyers Seem To Stumble. Blawg from attorney Patrick Lamb

Post Frequency: 1.8/day

Last Entry: March 17, 2011 at 16:14:07

Service is a choice. What choices do you make?

Posted on February 23, 2010
Courtesy of a tweet by Gini Dietrich, CEO of Arment Dietrich, I was directed to Speed, In The Right Direction, a post about lessons to be learned from Apollo Ohno, America's most decorated winter Olympian. Ohno had a hugely successful Olympic experience in Turin, and then hit the celebrity circuit...

A return to the good old days? Dream on.

Posted on February 22, 2010
From the January 2010 McKinsey Quarterly: Even though cost containment remains a high priority, many respondents worry about the sustainability of the cost reductions and are only somewhat confident that their companies are adequately prepared for even bigger cost challenges, which they expect in the coming year...

Fee Sharing is a necessary part of joint venture work

Posted on February 22, 2010
I've written before about the great value clients can receive when firms work together for the client's benefit. But I have not written about this from a fee-sharing standpoint, and I have certainly not written about this as well as my friends Dave Bohrer and Michael Kallus at Confluence Law Partners...

Once More, With Meaning: Ours is a Service Business

Posted on February 20, 2010
Courtesy of the inestimable Scott Greenfield, I was referred to a post by self-proclaimed leadership expert, Andrew Hughes. It appears that Andrew's leadership expertise comes from being "part of the senior leadership team of a national [Australian] law firm...

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Lessons from Blast Emails

Posted on February 19, 2010
Every two weeks, I receive an email from a legal staffing vendor. Each time I receive it, I deleted it. Each time I went through that short process, I was annoyed. Today, I finally unsubscribed. It is highly unlikely I will ever choose to do business with this company, and the annoying blast emails, which send me information I don't want at a time I don't want it, will be one of the principal reasons why...

A court hearing with 5 attorneys

Posted on February 19, 2010
My partner just returned from court. All by his lonesome. This was a multi-party extravaganza, but one of the parties was represented by 5 attorneys. Count them--one for each finger. One for each day of the work week. How many spoke? Just one...

Does buying "The Brand" ensure quality?

Posted on February 13, 2010
As a small firm, we are frequently told that people will buy "The Brand" (read, big firm) for harder matters because The Brand protects the buyer in case something goes wrong. We generally respond to this by pointing to our own big firm pedigrees, talking about actual trial experience, which most big firm lawyers lack and our willingness to bet on our skills, which most big firms are unwilling to do...

Do AFAs create the same bad incentives as hourly billing?

Posted on February 13, 2010
My recent post Discounts: It's like putting off necessary surgery drew this thoughtful comment, which I believe merits a response. First, the comment: Although you suggest that hourly billing law firms which discount will merely increase the number of billed hours to prop up their bottom lines, there is no evidence to suggest AFA firms will not act in other ways to promote their bottom lines as well...

Intelligence. Experience. Wisdom.

Posted on February 13, 2010
Regular readers know that I am an NPR guy. I was listening to Scott Simon this morning on the way home from the gym. Scott had been off the air for a bit while undergoing surgery, and he made some comments at the end of today's show: It wasn't until after Dr...

Perspective.

Posted on February 13, 2010
Amid the cacophony of our daily lives, from politics to fee structures, I was given pause yesterday when told that Valentine's Day is the 20th Anniversary of this iconic photograph, taken by a camera on the Voyager 1 spacecraft. Earth from 4 billion miles away...

Discounts: It's like putting off necessary surgery

Posted on February 12, 2010
I started looking at some tweets this morning and saw an interesting one by "@jayshep" --Twitter-speak for Jay Shepherd, where he cites to an article (sub. req.) on discounting hourly rates. The article quotes Jay as saying "It's incredibly easy to get discounts...

What will help you make your business people happy?

Posted on February 11, 2010
When dealing with in-house counsel, there are some questions you always need to ask. This is one of them. Your in-house clients have clients too. Frequently, they run the business. They can influence your contact's career path, compensation and life...

The Transition to Alternative Fees: A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing Is Still A Wolf

Posted on February 09, 2010
Alternative Fees cannot simply be a different route to the same end. If AFAs merely become a surrogate for what would have been charged under the hourly model, nothing has changed and we have learned nothing. The wolf in sheep's clothing is still a wolf...

Team Building

Posted on February 09, 2010
One of the things I hated when I worked in an Amlaw 100 firm was the relentless pressure to "sell" the virtues of other practice areas, as if every partner and every practice area was of elite quality. When the partner or practice area was of elite quality and the client had a need in that area, the conversation about meeting the need was worth having...

Illinois Privilege Law: A Trap For The Unwary

Posted on February 08, 2010
The Chicago Daily Law Bulletin just published a short article by my colleague, Reeghan Raffals, on Illinois courts' narrow definition of the "control group" entitled to privilege and Illinois' rather restrictive choice of law rules used to analyze privilege issues...

Welcome Confluence Law Partners to Blawgo-sphere

Posted on February 05, 2010
My partner Nicole Auerbach and I had a chance to meet yesterday with Dave Bohrer and Michael Kallus of Confluence Law Partners. We love these guys because of their approach to pricing legal work in their area--IP litigation. CLP does flat fee IP litigation...

Customer Service In Action: A Great Story

Posted on February 01, 2010
Kayak.com is a way cool company. If you travel and want to choose amongst the best options, rather than having the choice made for you, it is the best place to go. But that's not why I am writing this post. My partner Nicole Auerbach shared this great article about one of Kayak's founder's, Paul English...

Responsiveness is damned important

Posted on January 30, 2010
I have a new matter on which I inherited local counsel. I send emails asking simple questions, like "did you do a choice of law analysis before saying State A's law applies." Days later, I'm still waiting for a response. I am waiting for, literally, a one word response...

Change And The Art Of The Possible

Posted on January 30, 2010
I can change things I have control over. I cannot force others to change things that others control. I cannot force clients to forsake their rule that lawyers must submit timesheets. I cannot force every court I practice before to abandon their practice of relying on heavily on timesheets when reviewing fee issues...

Timesheets. Are They Core To Your Business Model?

Posted on January 27, 2010
Yesterday on Twitter, a query was made as to whether there were any truly new law firm business models. A highly regarded legal consultant identified Valorem, Bartlit Beck, Traverse Legal and Shepherd Law Group as examples. There ensued a debate whether any of these firms other than Shepherd Law Group were different...

Storytelling ... and Client Service

Posted on January 26, 2010
It is amazing how one well-written sentence can communicate volumes and engage the reader to think beyond the sentence. My friend Dan Hull writes my favorite blog, What About Clients?. He had a post the other day with the simple title, Storytelling...

Valorem's Mark Sayre: sharing insights on securing insurance coverage is great client service

Posted on January 26, 2010
My partner Mark Sayre spent a lot of years trying cases on behalf of insurance companies. Turns out, all that work for insurance companies not only helped him become a great trial lawyer, but it also gave him loads of insights into the netherworld of insurance coverage...

Data Point: Experience and Size save money

Posted on January 22, 2010
I don't know why I didn't see this article before, but I just read Inside Counsel's September 2009 article on game-changing law departments. CN, a multinational transportation company, shifted work from large firms to smaller firms. How has that worked out? Well, it seems...

What Were The Firm's Incentives Under This Fee Agreement?

Posted on January 22, 2010
Not every alternative fee creates the same incentives. Check this one out, as reported in the AmLaw Daily: Drinker took on a patent case for a company called AgriZap and signed an agreement under which the firm would be paid its full fees over an 18-month period if AgriZap lost at trial...

Great Article On The Ethics Of Ediscovery: Implications for AFAs?

Posted on January 18, 2010
Consider this simple fact: because of the way duplicate electronic documents are handled (or, more appropriately, mishandled), clients overpaid or grossly overpaid for their documents review nearly half of all productions. This comes from a survey that is discussed at length in a terrific article, Ethics and Ediscovery Review, published in the ACC Docket...

Writing plainly is good client service

Posted on January 16, 2010
I am a huge fan of Ken Adams' blog, Adams Drafting. His post, The Perils of Definedtermitis, wonderfully illustrates both clear writing and the cost to clients when lawyers write like, well, lawyers. Here's the setup: I was reviewing a clause in a software sale agreement with a major third-party distributor...

Document Review: People or Machines?

Posted on January 15, 2010
One of the great battles law firms have fought with their clients is over e-discovery. Law firms have wanted to have their people do the document review because they then capture the profit associated with that review. Smaller law firms that do not have the manpower to conduct internal reviews have urged use of outside resources, and clients generally push for the approach that is the cheapest while still being effective...

Alternative Fees: "This, too, shall pass." Really?

Posted on January 13, 2010
Let's start with a huge caveat. The guy doing the talking in this interview, Stephen French, is the Managing Director of Legalbill. According to the firm's website: Legalbill is committed to providing corporations worldwide with unsurpassed solutions for legal cost analysis and management...

Altman Weil Survey: Law Firms Are Raising Rates in 2010

Posted on January 12, 2010
Altman Weil has just issues its flash survey on 2010 billing rates. Apparently, many law firms have decided to shoot themselves raise rates in 2010. The survey reports that 'US law firms project an average overall increase in rates of 3...

A Call for Benchmarks

Posted on January 12, 2010
We live in a world that is increasingly data driven. And that includes the world of law. Some may want to debate whether that is good or bad, but that it is so is beyond debate, at least in my view. With that in mind, I ask this question: when making a decision to buy services, that is engage a new lawyer, what data or benchmarks do customers want to examine? As litigators, we focus on: Win-Loss record Cycle Time Ratio of partner time to associate time Ratio of costs to total fee Cost per type of matter Stage of resolution (in other words, do our matters settle early, just before trial, etc...

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