How lawyers can ‘bulletproof’ their best clients

Gerry Riskin gave two separate presentations at this year’s Get a Life conference. His pearls of wisdom were invaluable.

According to Riskin, studies show that only 30.7% of clients recommend their primary law firm. That leaves a lot of room for client poaching – and it means that the vast majority of clients aren’t referring others to their lawyers.

Competition in the legal arena is fierce. Competitors can draw clients away from you by creating a ‘cool offering,’ listening to clients, understanding and meeting their needs, caring & showing they care, being responsive and handling problems. If you’re not already doing the same, you’re vulnerable. Identify and ‘bulletproof’ your best clients by meeting them at their place of business for the purpose of discovering and meeting the client’s needs (off the clock!).

Riskin reminds lawyers that latent client needs can only be unearthed through active collaboration with the client – you’ll never know unless you’re constantly working with and listening to your clients.

Unfortunately, although most lawyers are good at getting the substantive legal work done, they aren’t as successful at completing ‘non-billable’ work – including important business development and client relationship work. But the good news is that it doesn’t take much to change that. According to Riskin’s “slight edge” theory, the difference between winners and losers is action – but it only takes marginal moves to be a winner. In other words, you need to be only slightly better, but consistently so.

Finally, Riskin noted that lawyers think differently than other people – which doesn’t always work to their advantage. They are perfectionists. Lawyers need to learn that it’s OK to make mistakes – they need to TRY things that aren’t going to work.

It is only through trial and error – taking action – that real progress can be made.

At the end of one of his presentations, there were some questions about what lawyers should do when they practice in an area which is generally comprised of ‘one time’ clients. Lawyers often make the mistake of thinking that a client is a one-time client, in part because they fail to identify those latent client needs and fail to establish long term relationships with them.  Kevin Chern of Total PMA pointed out that ‘one time’ clients don’t have to be. I agree – and I wrote about it in a post entitled “There’s No Such Thing as a “One-Off” Client.