Building and Developing Sustainable Client Relationships

Author: Simon Taylor - Lexpert (March 2007 at p. 111)

We all want to do it. We have all read about the need to develop deep and sustainable relationships with our best clients, and we all know that building trusting professional relationships with clients leads to many benefits: less fee resistance, future work, referrals to new clients, and effective and harmonious working relationships with the clients.

Unfortunately, in many firms the partners tend to their relationship with their clients on a file-by-file basis. When there is work to be done, the client is uppermost on the lawyer’s mind. When nothing is happening, the client tends to be forgotten. This cannot be construed as developing a sustainable relationship with the client.

Too many professional-to-client interactions concentrate only on the current matter. The lawyer wins the instructions because the client recognizes his/her expertise, and is used to the way they work. There is little, however, beyond that. Neither party really believes they have a “relationship” with the other beyond the confines of the specific file. As a result, the depth of mutual respect which categorizes a sustainable relationship is at the least minimal and in many cases wholly absent. So when the next file comes along, there is little guarantee that the firm will continue to be instructed. For the client, there may be advantages in trying out someone new.

Although it is not an identical concept, this difference between the two types of relationship, file-by-file or a continuing one, is similar to the distinction between being an expert versus being an advisor.

An expert’s job is to be right—to solve the client’s problems through the application of technical and professional skill. In order to do this, the expert takes responsibility for the work away from the client and acts as if he or she is “in charge” until the project is done.

The advisor behaves differently. Rather than being in the right, the advisor’s job is to be helpful, providing guidance, input, and counselling to the client’s own thought and decision-making processes. The client retains control and responsibility at all times. The advisor’s role is subordinate to this, not that of a prime mover.

The file-by-file approach (focusing on the getting the job done, not on the other person) allows the partner to remain detached and unengaged. This approach emphasizes the technical knowledge and skills in which the lawyer has been trained. The lawyer does not need to be stressed by interpersonal, psychological, or political nuances. For many, this is a great blessing.

Relationships, by their very nature, are not as clear-cut as the negotiated contract terms of a transaction. On both commercial and psychological grounds, it is easy to see why some individuals might prefer the clarity of a “propose, get hired, deliver, get paid” method of behaving.

Other symptoms of the file-by-file approach include:

• Focus on rehearsing what you are going to say to the client in proposals and presentations rather than how you plan to get a true conversation going.
• Avoiding contact with clients unless there is something concrete to talk about.
• Too obviously trying to sell more work to get what you want rather than serving the client.

So what is wrong with dealing with clients on this basis? It clearly works; many partners have built their client bases on this approach.

The file-by-file approach is also inevitable. Clients increasingly treat lawyers as vendors; they audit bills, they use purchasing departments and consultants in their selection processes, they bargain hard, and they emphasize contractual terms. Then again, the first tangible acknowledgment that many clients get from their lawyer is a standard retainer agreement that lays out in no uncertain terms what the firm is going to do for the client — and to them — if the client does not pay the lawyer’s bill in a timely fashion.

The problems with this approach lie in the increasingly competitive world in which we live and in the changing mindset of many top managers in the corporate world.

In a truly competitive environment, the successful remain on top by constantly questioning how they provide the goods or services they sell, and by constantly challenging the status quo. "Can we do it faster, cheaper, smarter?"

Professional advisors who align their own internal thought processes with those of their most significant clients will inevitably gain the edge over those who do not, no matter how technically good they may be. Indeed, client satisfaction surveys consistently show that the lawyer’s technical skills are assumed and therefore taken for granted by their clients. Having open-ended conversations with clients, on the other hand, genuinely seeking their input into how the law firm could better serve their needs is a core characteristic of a continuing relationship, as opposed to a file-by-file one.

A continuing relationship is built upon mutual trust, where both parties are open in articulating what they need from the relationship, and where both sides are sufficiently flexible and willing to change their way of doing things. A continuing relationship will openly discuss the economics of the transaction, and will seek a way to make this happen. A file-by-file relationship, on the other hand, will be limited to hourly charge-out rates and the budget available for the file.

Of course, not all clients either want, or are suitable for, such a continuing relationship. Some, however, both do and are. As in all change efforts, a small-scale first experiment that has a high chance of yielding an early success is the wisest approach, rather than beginning with the most important relationships. If a partner is to learn a new skill, it is better to do so in a situation where any initial fumbles will not be costly.

If law firms are to capture top dollar for valuable contributions, they cannot, in the long run, afford to have their clients view them as counter-parties to a series of one-off transactions. Law firms need clients to think of them as partners in a continuing relationship. And the only way for lawyers to achieve that is to start thinking of them that way too.