Enhance Your Legal Operations with the Customer Service Management System for Legal

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So, as an attorney in today's world, do you sometimes feel more like a customer service agent than an actual attorney? You have emails, texts, phone calls from clients to return 24/7, and it's really hard to keep all your clients happy. So, over the course of the last decade, our law firm has serviced thousands of clients and managed to keep the vast majority of them extremely happy. I want to talk to you today about how we did it and how you can apply certain tips and strategies to your law practice to make your relationship and communication with clients a lot less stressful. So, please come join us for episode 9 of the Josh Gerben Show. Welcome to the Josh Gerben Show. Because law school didn't teach business. Hi everybody and welcome to episode 9 of the Josh Gerben Show. Today, we're going to talk about client service in the digital age. There are so many ways for clients to get in touch with us and bombard us with messages, and they want responses yesterday. So, how do we deal with this? I have managed thousands of clients over the course of the last decade and I'm here to explain to you how I've done it and some tips and tricks for how you may do it in your practice. So, I think the best place to get started with any conversation about how to manage your clients and your communication is ensuring that you have an excellent rapport with your clients.And this starts from day one and it continues through day two, through day a hundred, through year five. And what I mean by this is you have to have an excellent bedside manner. I liken the delivery of legal services very much to the delivery of medical services. And as lawyers, I think it's sometimes hard to take ourselves out of the lawyer bubble and understand how things appear from the client side. So, to do this, I want you to think about the last time you went to a doctor's office and whether or not that was a positive experience or no. Because we've all been there, right? We've gone to the doctor, we've waited in the waiting room for an hour. We get in to see the doctor about whatever problem it is and they're just like "ehh." They spend two minutes with you. They kind of, you know, don't pay much mind to whatever it is you're telling them. Whatever you found on Web MD that you're bringing in. And saying "I think I have this." They're just basically saying - they're looking you over and they're saying "it's probably this and here's something and goodbye." Right? And they're in and out of the room and they didn't even seem to really care about you. They didn't even really seem to care about what your concerns were. And you probably went home thinking how that doctor's no good, right? But then we've all had an experience, too, where you've walked into a doctor's office, haven't had a wait forever - that's like a surprise, right? Like, wow. I got to see the doctor. I only waited for 15 minutes and then we're in there with the doctor. And they're spending time with us. They ask us a few questions about our family. They ask us about what's going on at work. They ask us about how we're feeling and all these different things that are going on in our lives. And they get into whatever the symptoms are you're having. And they spend some time talking to you about what it could be, what they're thinking, how they're evaluating, what they're seeing in the moment with you, how they want to treat it, right? All these different things that they're just explaining to you and they're doing it in a way that's not in medicalese, right? They're not using all these big fancy words. They're just talking to you like a human being.And when you leave that doctor's appointment, whether or not that doctor was any good and actually identified what your problem was, you probably left thinking you have a good doctor because they sat there and they listened to you. And they explained to you in very clear terms what they wanted to do and why they wanted to do it. Now, what would your client say about you when they left a meeting from your office? Or they left a phone appointment with you? Or conference call? Would they feel that you took the time to know about them? Do they think that you took the time to understand what their concerns were about their matter, rather than just saying "well this is how the law works bla bla bla bla bla bla bla," right? Did you actually care? Because if you cared, it will come through to the client that you actually care about them. And if you don't really care, then that's gonna come through too. You know, you can't authenticity. And when you - just like when you walk into a doctor's office and you have some doctors that genuinely care about their patients because this is what they do and this is they feel their calling is, do you feel the same way about your clients? So, if you do care about your clients, you already are on your way to having excellent client service. Because when you have these conversations with your clients and when you explain what the legal situation is, and what the next steps are, and what the entire process looks like, and you do it in a way that is not confusing and full of big words, and all these other things, but just talking to your client like a human being - then that clients going to leave your office, leave the telephone call, and think "you know what? I got a great lawyer." And because they think they have a great lawyer, and hopefully they do, when they call you or email you again and you explain to them it can take a few of days to get back to them, they understand. Because they know when you get to them you're gonna take the time and you're gonna care. So, in my practice, ever since I started in 2008, the one thing I've always been able to do with my clients is connect with them on a business level. And here's what I mean. I'm a trademark attorney, right? I help people protect their brand, but typically there's a lot of business and marketing issues that go into protecting a trademark or registering a trademark or whatever it may be. And if the attorney only knows trademark law and says "well, this is what the law says about this trademark that you're trying to register and enforce" it's just a very transactional black and white relationship with a client, that isn't normally going to pull any warm and fuzzies to the surface, right? But what I'm able to do is understand a client's business and the practical business realities around whatever's going on with the trademark. Again, whether it's a new trademark they're trying to select, whether it's enforcing an existing trademark, understanding the practical business situation on the ground is something that a lot of attorneys can't do. And I ask my clients questions to understand this. What's going on in the business? Where are they in a particular marketing program? All these types of things just to understand the backdrop, the business backdrop, to whatever the legal problem is. And by actually caring what's going on in their business, I develop a rapport. You know, I grew up in a family business, right? My dad ran 12 automotive centers in and around the Philadelphia area, so I really understand the struggles that a small or mid-sized business goes through when they're doing a variety of different things. I grew up in it. I breathed business when I was a kid. It just was my entire life and that's an advantage I have and I deploy that with my clients, because I can genuinely understand what they're going through and have empathy for what they're telling me they're going through from a business context. So, my recommendation to you is the very first thing that you do when you think about client service is that you think about what special skills do you have? What superpowers do you have to connect with your clients? What's your background?What can you really understand about what your clients are telling you and how can you explain things to them in ways that just is normal, right? Not these big words and all these "well if this happens, that happens and we end up-." Who cares what happens three years from now? Then we care. But what's going to happen today, tomorrow, the next day, two weeks from now? Because that's going to depend on how your relationship goes with your client. So, now that we've kind of handled the mindset and one of the bigger overarching problems in client service, which is that attorneys just do not connect with their clients a lot of times on a personal or business level. Once you've done that and once you've established a relationship, typically now all you have to worry about is doing four things and you'll keep that client happy forever. The first is to set expectations about communication around whatever matter you're working on. So this would involve figuring out how do you respond to emails, phone calls . We'll get into the details in a second, but having expectations set is critical. The second is making sure the other staff and attorneys at your firm follow the same expectations that you've set with the client as they're working with the client, as well. There's going to be nothing more frustrating to the client than knowing they can get to you and get the answer they want, but your staff or other attorneys do not get back to them in a timely manner. The third is to be efficient in your communication. There is no client that wants to read an email like this, okay. You need to be able to provide short, concise emails or you have to figure out a way to communicate differently with your clients so that it's an efficient communication. And finally, the most important one perhaps of them all to many clients, is to come in on budget, okay? Do not tell a client it's going to cost X and it come back costing, you know, B, C, D. You need to ensure that you're on budget and if something's going to happen to that, that you get back to the client and get authorization to go over the intended budget. So, the first pillar here is to set client expectations on a communication. In my practice, where I have literally thousands of clients, this has been something that's been extremely important for us because we simply get more phone calls and emails in any given day than we can possibly respond to. You know, I remember starting my law practice and the rule at the law firm was if you got a phone call from a client before three o'clock in the afternoon, it had to be returned the same business day. That's great and if you can do that, fantastic. But I think most of us will say, well the reality of my schedule is that I just can't return phone calls that quickly. Especially because when you return the call to the client, typically they have substantive questions about their matter and you may need to pull the file and review the file and be ready to talk intelligently to the client about their matter, right? So, what I typically do at the start of any engagement is explain to clients that if you need a phone call, it could take two or three days. In today's world, that can seem like an eternity, right? But on routine matters, there's no reason that a client in today's world needs to expect to get you immediately. If you set the expectation that if there's a routine matter and you can work the client in your schedule, you know, in the same calendar week, in most cases and your clients okay with that, then you should be fine. But telling the client that's how it works before you even get started, it's incredibly important. you know, a lot of times during the engagement process as lawyers, you know, we know that there's a prospective client out there we're gonna be calling and emailing them back right away, right? They were like, okay, we got to get back into it, you know, we want to make sure that no other lawyer gets in there and takes the client from us. And then, once they're in the door, we're kind of like, "ooh we got them," you know? "We'll get back to them on weekend." Well the client's like, "wait a second," you know? They feel like it's it's a bait and switch. When they were trying to become a client, you get back to them within the hour, and now it takes three days. But setting that expectation when they're engaged is critical. You could say "look, now that we're getting engaged as a client, this is how it works." And I always explain to clients this: if I get back to you right away, I may not have the answers to your question because I haven't had a chance to pull your file and refresh my memory as to what's going on. So, if you need to talk about it, let's just set an appointment, right? And we have easy ways to set an appointment. You know, we have a calendaring system online that clients can go on and self-schedule calls. And if they're not there yet, then we have staff that can help them get on my calendar. And in the vast majority of cases, this makes our client communication much smoother. Now, I don't doubt that there's always going to be an emergency here and there. And I think setting expectations about emergencies is important, too. You know, I always tell clients, "look, if you want the number to my Batphone," right, "if you have - if you need to shine the Batman signal in the sky or the trademark attorneys signal in the sky," you know, "I can be available for that. But make sure it's a genuine emergency and not just "I have a question about something." Right? Because that's just not the way our practice works. Now, everybody's practice is a little different. Most of my clients do not make up a huge percentage of our overall revenue for a year and that's just a business decision we make. If you have a client that's 50% of the revenue for the year for your firm, you may have a different level of service that you need to provide that client. You may need to have your own cell phone for that client to call that you answer 24/7. If you have that kind of client, right. But whatever way it goes - even if it's your only client and it's the most important person in the world - understanding what your availability looks like and understanding how they can get in touch with you solves a ton of anxiety and a lot of emails. Like, "I can't get in touch with you. Why can't I get in touch with you?" It solves all that kind of problem when they know what the expectation is. And then, of course, you have to deliver on that, right? So, let's not forget the back-end of this is you have to make sure you're delivering on whatever your promises were. The last thing I want to say about setting expectations on client communication is you also need to make sure that channels are well defined. I find it's a problem, you know, clients these days, they want to text you. If you want to accept text for your clients, that's fine, depends on the practice area. And I don't like it because I can't really create a file with a text. I'd have to like print them out somehow. It's a whole whole ordeal and I don't need clients emailing, texting me, and calling me. I just can't keep up with all of that, right? So, we tell clients "look, we just don't accept text messages as a way of communication. Just not in today's world." Doesn't work like that. An email and telephone is the accepted form of communications, but you need to set that with your clients depending on how you want to communicate with them. Because if they start texting you, and you start texting back, are you creating the right file, right? You know, are you keeping that communication on file? Is it just - are you too available, you know? Because you can't ever break away because people are texting you all day long. Figure out what works for you and your firm, but make sure you talk to clients about that so they know how to get in touch with you. To let them know what your preferred method of communication is and how you work with your clients. And, again, the flip side of the coin is if you've got one or two clients you may need to communicate the way they want to. So, find out the way they want to communicate with you and deliver on that. And find ways, find software, find whatever you need to find to be able to deliver on the communication style of the client if they are that big and important to your practice. So, the second pillar of really good client service is to ensure the other attorneys and staff in your law firm know how you're expecting them to communicate with clients, and what the client expectations are as well. One of the things that's very difficult is that, you know, in my world, as the owner of the business and I worry about my clients 24/7, right? And I'm on 24/7. And I'm always responding to people, but that's not the response - same responsibility level that other attorneys and staff share at our firm. And they're gonna have communication with clients just like I do. Ensuring that everybody else at the firm knows, "hey, in this particular instance for this client, this is how we're communicating. These are the rules of the road for how we're communicating with this client and we need to deliver on it" is incredibly important. I've seen too many situations over the years with other law firms where, you know, you - and even sometimes with us - where someone's used to a certain style of communication from the principal or the person that brought them in, and then other people in the firm start working on the matter and the communication is different, right? It's just not the same. Again, those other folks in the firm also may not have the same rapport with the client that the person that brought the client in has. So, if I'm on the phone with the client for half an hour understanding their business, developing this relationship, but we get to a point in the process where there's another attorney at the firm they've never heard - worked with before, that other attorney now fighting an uphill battle to get into the clients good graces. So, if the client emails that attorney or paralegal or whatever it may be, and that person doesn't get back to them immediately, all of a sudden, the expectations and the rapport that that person had with me, they're like - well, now they might feel passed off, right? Or they might feel like they're not getting the same level of service. So, ensuring that everybody knows what's going on with a particular client and how that client needs to be serviced and ensuring that they're keeping up with your expectations as the law firm manager, owner or whatever it may be, is incredibly important . So, our third pillar here is going to be having efficient communication with your clients. And what I mean by this, again, is we don't need emails that look like this. If I get an email that's ten paragraphs long from a service provider, whether it be my accountant or whoever it is, there's no way I'm going to read that. I am just too busy and you should assume your clients are extremely busy running their businesses. So, if you're going to send an email or you're gonna send some kind of message, a voicemail, whatever, make it short and concise. If what you need to explain to the client cannot be done in a short and concise email or phone message, then you likely need an appointment, right? You need to have a conference call. You need to go meet with them. They need to come into your office, whatever it may be. We have a lot of clients that we work through a lot of issues with and the one thing I can tell you in sending out a lot of emails asking for even very simple things from clients over the years, is that people just do not read and really absorb what's in an email that well. They're going through it too quickly. So, if we send a client an email and we ask for three things, I typically get one or two, right? So, I can say I need these three things to file your trademark and I'll get one or two back. And I have to send another email to get the third thing. If I ask for just one thing, I'll typically get a response with the one thing, right? So, the more complex the email gets, the less the clients absorbing it, the less the clients understanding it, and the less you're going to get back. What you need now - the one tip I can give you here is that if you want to try to avoid a long phone conversation with a client where there's a lot of back-and-forth because you think you could just present the client with information, let the client absorb it before you even get on a phone call, is there software we use - a program called Snagit, okay? And what Snagit allows me to do is I create a little screen captures on my screen and I have a microphone at my desk, and I can talk to client through the screen capture. So, if I'm saying "hey, here's your trademark application," right? "We got a refusal, here's the reason for the refusal." Bring that trademark in, show them the difference in the goods and services, show them the difference in the marks, explain the arguments we'd want to make, how we'd go about it, what the process looks like. I spend four minutes on the video, right? And then I can send the client a link to the video. Now they've got a video they can watch on repeat. So, if I'm saying something that they're not quite getting and they want to watch it a couple of times, they can. Plus, it's not they have to sit there and read through this text and really understand the way that I write, because the way I write might not be the way that they really can understand. But if I'm just talking them through something, it's a lot more likely they're gonna get it and that saves me a lot of time on endless conference calls or meetings, because I can put the information together and put it to the client. Now the client may still have questions, but they've got the vast majority of information and they've understood it before we have to have a conversation. And I will just tell you, and I will leave you with this on the Snagit thing or whatever screen capture software you want to use, I have received such positive feedback on this over the years because clients also don't look forward to getting on the phone with their lawyer, right? Or coming into the law office. They've got other things they need to be doing and by being efficient in my communication and just giving the client the information they need in a very easily digestible manner, they are grateful for that. And it goes, again, toward building the rapport with the client. So, our final pillar today is budget. And this is just critical, right? If you tell a client something's gonna cost $3,000 and you show up with a $10,000 bill, you may as well just move towns, right? You're going to get bad reviews. The client's gonna be furious with you. You have to keep an eye on budget. In my firm, we do mostly flat rate work and this is helpful because we go through the process. You know, some clients we spend more time on for whatever reason. More communication, a little bit more complicated, some clients spend a little less time on because it's a little bit more streamlined, you know, there are more streamlining their communication or their matters a little bit less complicated. And that's where flat fees really work, because in some instances you may lose a little bit, if you will, and other instances, you may win a little bit. But it all evens out over time and ultimately you're delivering the same value to each individual client. But, if you can't do flat rates, I understand. There's instances where flat rates are not really ideal. You need to make sure you're constantly on budget with clients. When we work on an hourly rate matter, what I typically tell clients is "look, we have a capped hourly rate and what that means is we're gonna start with an initial budget, let's call it $2,000. And we'll bill against that $2,000 until we get close, and at that point we'll stop and say hey we're close to that initial limit. Here's where we are in your matter. Are we okay to keep proceeding?" Because now the client understands, okay this is how the bill has looked so far. And I can approve another two thousand three thousand dollars of time, whatever it is,because I know they've made enough progress to justify their bill. And then, we'll continue to have check-ins throughout the process. Again, gonna depend on how your clients are, right? If you have a client that's a fortune 500 company, they're gonna be a little less concerned about every couple thousand dollars. But if you're dealing with people that are paying you as a small business, medium-sized business, these budgets are going to become incredibly important that you keep an eye on. The minute you just forget about budget and send client a bill that's outside their expectations, you've just ruined all the rapport you've ever had with that person because that's all they're gonna see now - is the money. So keep that in check. Keep a close eye on it and keep talking. Be open and honest. Have lines of communication about money, just like you always want to have lines of communication with a spouse. Make it, even if, you know, about tough subjects, you want to have lines of communication and be very open about money and budget to your clients. And this, again, will go a long way if you're someone who always keeps his or her word about what something's going to cost and what you're going to be able to deliver. You're going to earn that trust and a longer leash from your clients as time goes on. So, I hope you've enjoyed today's episode. As you can see, client service really starts with the relationship that you can have with your clients, and the rapport that you build over time gives you a longer and longer leash on what you can do and not do with a particular client. But the bottom line is, every client's likely to be different. And just always remember your bedside manner. And if you do that right, the vast majority of times, you're gonna have clients that are extraordinarily happy with you and your law firm and spread the word to others. So, if you enjoyed the show today, please do me a favor. If you're listening on iTunes, please subscribe, rate and review us. This helps other people find the podcast. If you're on our YouTube channel, same thing. Subscribe, leave some feedback. All these things help us have other lawyers discover the content online through the magic of algorithms at Google and Apple. Also, if you'd like to connect with us further, I'm on social media. We got Instagram, we got Facebook, LinkedIn. Those are the three places we're at. Come find me if you have any questions or would have liked to suggest a show topic. My email address is just josh@joshgerben.com. So, again, I hope you enjoyed the show today and we'll look forward to seeing you next time.