Client Service Recipe: Knowledge, Empathy + Confidence

This one is simple.

Providing excellent client service to lawyers is never easy. Circumstances are often novel, stakes can feel high, and expectations higher. Yet legal marketing and business development professionals shouldn't wonder what it will take to make lawyers feel well served. Lawyers simply want your knowledge, empathy, and confidence.

Knowledge

Lean into what you know. If lawyers sense uncertainty, they won't be impressed. Do their clients pay them to be uncertain?

That's why it's important to appear certain when you are advising. For example: "Do I know this will work? No. Do I believe it's the right thing to do? Yes, and here's why."

Lawyers don't expect us to guarantee results. They do expect us to lead with our unique knowledge. When we do anything less, we undermine our credibility and that of our team, and we reinforce the idea that marketers are best used as order takers.

And when lawyers treat us like order takers, pause to think before you react. Often, giving orders is a byproduct of efficiency, though it may come off as superiority. It can also reflect insecurity, since above all else many lawyers are risk averse, and here we are asking them to take more time, work harder, be creative, and hope that it's worth the effort compared to just doing the thing they know.

When you can weave through bluster and impatience to learn what they want--which often is not the same as what they ask for--then your knowledge truly shines and you can give what they ask for, only better.

Empathy

Lawyers have hard jobs. Yes, many are paid well. They have fun toys. They dress well (some, at any rate). They take exciting vacations and their kids go to good schools. But look past that.

Every day, private practice lawyers work under unreasonable expectations. There's not enough skilled help below them. Partners senior to them treat them like they're still associates. Clients pay astronomical hourly rates and thus are unbothered by making unearthly requests.

All that, and they're trying to figure out how to be good firm citizens too, with expectations for mentoring, leadership, associate reviews, recruiting, committees, and more heaped on top of their 1,800-2,200 billable hours expectation.

Oh, and many lawyers are parents. Many are helping aging parents. Many have their own health and mental health troubles. Some are still figuring out what they want to be when they grow up. Some feel stuck.

Curiosity is the gateway to empathy.

So when they come off as a little bit gruff, step back. Don't let those highly polished exteriors fool you. Lawyers are just looking for a little help as they try to navigate the complexity, uncertainty, and discomfort of their own lives and careers.

Curiosity is the gateway to empathy. Rather than butt heads, ask open-ended questions.

• "What do you want to achieve?"

• "How will we know if this works?"

• "How did you arrive at this approach?"

• "Is success this specific thing, or is success a set of conditions? If we meet those conditions another way, would you be happy?"

Each of these questions shows that you want to know more about the attorney's ideas and mindset. They suggest you are looking for data or evidence, which lawyers are also well conditioned to seek. They show critical thinking and engagement, and they avoid the conflict that all too easily flares when a lawyer thinks we don't want to help them or don't like their idea.

Empathetic questions are your way out of many difficult conversations with lawyers.

Confidence

Consider that the lawyer's job is to advise their client. To make complex decisions simple, or at least easier. To interpret rules, regulations, or laws and advance strategy. To solve problems. To deliver value for clients, lawyers cannot be wishy-washy.

Lawyers judge marketing and BD professionals by the same criteria. Fair or not, they hold us to the same standards they believe their clients hold them to.

Therefore, when we share options and say, "What do you want to do?," we fail to advise. We lay the complex decision at their feet, ask them to parse the rules, as it were, and foist on them the very problem they have asked our help with.

Offer a recommendation instead. Prepare to state why. Expect to be challenged and doubted. Listen. Be curious. Seek more information. Compromise. Watch as you both see the shapes of the thing you want take form. By giving something to react to, you've moved the ball forward, rather than thrown the blank page back at them.

Similarly, "I don't know" will always be an unsatisfying answer to any lawyer's question. For sure, there are times we don't know the answer! In which case, the correct response, from a client service perspective, is "I don't know, but I will find out and get back to you."

You don't have to admit ignorance, either. Couch your response by saying "I have some thoughts, but I'd like to run them by a couple people on the team. Can I get back to you Thursday?"

When you prioritize knowledge, empathy, and confidence in your client service, lawyers will notice. Watch what happens for you then.