Client Focus – It’s all about Communication
What do clients want from their lawyers?
What do clients really want from their lawyers and where do lawyers fail in the services that they provide? What is the major pain point for clients? Lack of skill, lack of knowledge, poor results, the expense of the legal process? The answer is none of the above.
Lawyers are failing in the most basic component of any service provider/client relationship. Communication with clients.
A BTI Consulting Group Survey indicates that neither outcome nor cost of services were the most frequently mentioned causes of dissatisfaction for clients of lawyers. Instead, when asked – “What is the one thing your lawyer does that drives you crazy?” – more than half of the clients gave answers that can be summarily categorised as poor communication:
- 21% Failure to keep client adequately informed.
- 15% Lack of client focus: failure to listen, non-responsiveness, arrogance.
- 10% Making decisions without client authorisation or awareness.
- 7% Failure to give clear, direct advice.
Lawyers are forever concentrating on developing their knowledge and skills to deliver better outcomes; but their clients, expecting both technical competence and results, are being disappointed by the process of getting there due to a basic lack of communication.
The main complaints from clients about the quality of their lawyers’ services relate to inaccessibility, lack of communication, lack of empathy, lack of understanding and lack of respect.
Law firms should be introducing additional training to redress identified performance deficits in the related areas of inter-personal skills and client management techniques. This training should be client-focused, rather than transaction-focused; it should train practitioners to recognise that client needs are not confined to attaining objective outcomes; and it should help lawyers to listen to clients more attentively, diagnose their various levels of needs and demonstrate empathy.
The following quote comes from an article by Hilary Sommerlad, English Perspectives on Quality: The Client-Led Model of Quality – A Third Way? 33 U.B.C. L. REV. 491, 509-10 (2000) …
“I went to this solicitor because of her reputation and expertise, but she just doesn’t listen. She listens for part of what I have to say, and then interrupts, saying something like – OK, I have got the picture, what we will do is – and she has not really got the picture, she has only got half the picture. I think it is partly because she is so busy, and because she is simply not used to giving clients a voice… What’s more, she has actually made me frightened of expressing my views.”
Adequate communication skills can be critical to a practitioner’s success in the legal field. Communication is an art rather than a science and effective communication skills are essential to the practice of law.
The touchstone of client service is effective communication. Lawyers often operate from a haughty position atop of the pedestal of the legal profession. Clients do not like it. The key to successfully managing client expectations is to actively listen and understand your client. Assess all relevant data to convey an objective, realistic picture of potential outcomes and hurdles. Establishing timelines, calendaring tasks to meet anticipated deadlines and looking to the life cycle of other similar cases will help a lawyer provide a client with realistic expectations. Then communicate and update the client regularly. If the client is having to contact the lawyer for an update, then the lawyer has left it too long.
The first step for any lawyer in ensuring effective communication with clients is the recognition that effective lawyer-client communication is not only an essential component of client representation but also the most important thing many clients want from their lawyers.
Post-COVID and into the new decade the Principal Solicitor of NSW Credit Law envisages law firm clientele moving away from the bigger legal practices as clients crave a more personal connection, empathy and understanding from their lawyers. NSW Credit Law prides itself on supplying the empathy and understanding clients crave and guarantees all clients have access to the Principal Solicitors’ mobile number to ensure immediate personal service.
If you have any queries or if we can be of any assistance please contact Paul Thorndike on 0429 008 247.
REF: Clark D. Cunningham, What Do Clients Want from Their Lawyers, J. Disp. Resol.