New England Biz Law Update
Law firms are increasingly turning to client interviews as a marketing and client retention tool.
“During the last two years, there’s been a big change,” said Mozhgan Mizban, partner at The Zeughauser Group, a San Francisco-based legal consulting firm. “People are no longer just saying they’re doing them. They’re actually doing them.”
Anecdotally, consultants and lawyers say the practice has become common in larger firms – but less so in smaller ones.
The structures of client interview programs vary widely. Many firms have their own people conduct the interviews, such as the managing partner, a member of the executive committee or a marketing staffer.
Recently some firms have launched new approaches to doing the job. For example, the 500-lawyer firm Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll recently hired a veteran journalist, Debra Nussbaum, to work as a full-time client interviewer in its Philadelphia office.
The 20-lawyer Seattle firm Stanislaw Ashbaugh launched a re-branding campaign last year focused on client service, and named its director of marketing and business development, Annie Lombroia, as its new Chief Results Officer. Frequent client interviews are part of Lombroia’s new job.
The 250-lawyer firm Powell Goldstein, located in Atlanta and three other cities, has created a “Conversations With Clients” program which includes a structured process utilizing interviews and surveys to gather feedback.
“It’s absolutely essential as a good business practice to know what your clients think of you,” said Larry Bodine, a law firm marketing consultant in Glen Ellyn, Ill. “If you don’t seize on the opportunity to improve, you’ve got a static relationship in a world where the bar’s being set higher every day. You may be great one year, but the next year – when your rates have gone up and the client is under financial pressure to control costs – you can’t assume that your prior positive experiences are saving your position with that client.”
But law firms have been slow to adapt, according to lawyer Tom Kane, a legal marketing consultant in Sarasota, Fla.
“I think there’s been an increase, but I don’t think there’s nearly as many firms doing it as there should be,” he said.
Honest feedback
Firms that do have programs in place sing their praises.
“Client interviews are the cornerstone of learning what’s working and not working,” said Chicago attorney Patrick Lamb, founder of The Volorem Law Group. “They provide you an opportunity to fix things that aren’t working right.”
Devotees of client interviews emphasize the necessity of seeking honest assessments from clients, even if it hurts. Kane recalled an incident from the 1990s when he was working as a marketing director for a Midwestern law firm that was well ahead of the curve in doing client interviews.
“The horror story of horror stories was when the executive director and I went in to see the general counsel of a large company that was one of our major clients, and the guy looks at us across his desk and said, ‘I’ve told my people if they ever hire your firm again, they’re fired.’”
Kane said the GC vented for 45 minutes about a lawyer from the firm who had gone around him and tried to overturn a decision he had made. When the GC cooled down, he asked the visitors if they’d like to go have a drink in a nearby bar. Over drinks, the GC said he really did like the lawyer in question and the work he did. They asked for another chance and the client agreed to consider it.
“So we sent the lawyer over to get his wrists, his head and various other parts of himself slapped,” Kane recalled. “The point is: by going over and doing the mea culpas, we actually saved that client.”
To Kane, client interviews provide two primary benefits to a law firm.
“You get to find out whether you’re serving the client the way they want to be served,” he said. “And it’s a great opportunity to pick up fresh new work that’s sitting on their desk.”
Overreaching
While a primary purpose of client interviews is to get more work for the firm, lawyers caution against using them this way too overtly.
“When firms ask for feedback and in the same meeting they ask for work, that’s bad,” Kane said. “That shows what their motive was from the beginning and that’s what you’ve got to avoid.”
Lawyers and consultants agree that the lawyer who works regularly with the client should not be present because clients are less apt to be critical of that lawyer because they don’t want to hurt his or her feelings.
But there are differences of thought on whether the interviewers should be from the firm or an outside consultant.
Bodine believes they should be from the firm because “it could look like you don’t really care that much if you farmed it out.”
But others believe that clients are more apt to be candid with an outside interviewer.
Mizban said most of the criticism is related to service or fees.
Kane had a similar observation, saying most complaints were tied to communication.
“They talk about surprises – by the bill, by how much effort was put into something, by a complication in the case they should have been told about, by a delay.”
