Verbatim: What Clients Say
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Walk the Talk in 2010
Cisco Systems CEO John T. Chambers told The New York Times (August 2) that his team had to push him to use Web 2.0 technologies. They told him: "John, if you don't do it our company won't learn how to do this. It won't be built into our DNA for the way we interface with customers, our employees. The top has to walk the talk."
Your law firm's brochures and Web site state, in so many words, that your attorneys are dedicated to meeting client needs and to providing the highest quality service, but is your firm's leadership walking the talk? Is your firm asking clients to evaluate your firm and its attorneys' performance, and really listening to what they are saying?
Protect client relationships
As you plan your 2010 budget it would make sound fiscal sense to allocate resources for implementing client service interviews, a cost-effective means of protecting as well as strengthening client relationships in a turbulent time for the legal marketplace. According to the Altman Weil 2009 Chief Legal Officer's Survey, corporate law departments plan to reduce the number of outside law firms over the coming year. Forty percent of the respondents indicated that less work would go to law firms this year, up from 26 percent last year.
"Most chief legal officers are skeptical that law firm attorneys are committed to changing the way they deliver legal services," according to Strategies' (the Legal Marketing Association's magazine) report on the CLO Survey.
"It's time to talk to your clients," writes Editor in Chief Aric Press in the August issue of The American Lawyer.You can either be part of their deliberations and process, or you can be surprised by their conclusions. I'd vote for the former."
Your firm's future is at stake
Listen to what the vice president of a major petroleum company said in a Strategic Client Interview: "I have a lot of respect for the firm that they're doing this. It means that the firm is smart enough to say, We want to stay in business for the next 30 years."
Verbatim is published electronically by JKS & Company LLC/Strategic Client Interviews. For more information on Strategic Client Interviews, contact Joyce K. Smiley at 561-775-9755, or jsmiley@jkscompany.com. On the web at jkscompany.com.
Copyright 2009 JKS & Company LLC. All rights reserved.
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