THE CLIENT EXPERIENCE

What do you want a client to feel from the moment she decides to engage with you, to hire you, to come to your offices and to do work with you? This is the breakdown of what a client experience means. What do you expect the client to go away with in terms of the way she feels about your legal work. In short, what is your intention towards my daughter? as father's are wont to ask.

This matters because it is a crucial part of your pricing regime. Now for certain commoditised legal work, it is easy to adopt the take it or leave it approach where if the client goes for your price or not it makes no major difference. She can go hang but you cannot put across that attitude for heavier matters and so the client experience that you decide to create can give you a decided edge from the beginning and if you are in the running with other law firms.

Here is where life now gets unfair. If you feel you can be nice to the big client and not so nice to the small client you will eventually be not so nice to the big client. This is human behaviour and is just like the slave masters in the American South who by treating slaves like animals lost a lot of their humanity, inner strength and ability to work.
Sometimes it feels like you are running this big machine but who are you running it for?

What ideas do you put in the client's head about what legal services cost, what the marketplace is currently paying for the particular transaction and as usual how do you put this across?
Again, in a take it or leave it market you can decide to let the client go hang and a lot of businesses do so. You just have to decide how you will handle such cases at your own shop.

The good news about making the client experience a major part of your law firm pricing model is that you will have little competition. Everyone else may talk about it and use the words but they probably will not do it.
When last did you go to any shop where you left feeling really good specifically because of how they treated you?

And when the chips threaten to be down, the first thing to be shafted will be the client experience.
An example is how you look at the client, is she a source of your advancement ( fees, prestige etc) or not. One can just imagine the righteous outrage the reader is expressing 'me? Never' Only your behaviour will tell and it is no defence that everyone else is getting away with it.

Client service is about watching the client and paying attention just a bit beyond the forms and schedules you fill out. Using your mind and intelligence to see how, with the constraints you labour under, you can offer something.
In closing, note that client service is not about saying yes to everything and being an o yes member. It is way more difficult than that. It is about making your interests and that of your client come together profitably for both of you.

And that is the crux of the matter.