Most lawyers claim to pursue high standards of "quality", and see quality as the cornerstone of their strategy. They are right. Achieving quality is the best way to make clients happy, to spread a positive word of mouth and to grow the practice. But what does quality actually mean? I see five dimensions in quality: expertise, relationship, effectiveness, service and style.
Expertise. Quality implies, of course, that the lawyer is a reliable legal expert. She knows the law and how to deal with legal issues. This quality is what lawyers learn and develop at law school (although that's just the beginning). A law firm that claims to have a superior level of quality, or "excellence", because many of its members are law professors and frequently publish articles in legal periodicals, implicitly define quality as legal expertise.
Relationship. But there is more than legal expertise in quality. There is also quality in the relationship between the attorney and the client. The ability to inspire trust, to show empathy and respect, to connect with the client and make the client feel at ease and secure, to listen carefully, to communicate in a clear, concise and simple way, to understand the client's problem and objective, to create a collaborative, mutually beneficial relationship, to manage expectations, to solve possible conflicts or misunderstandings... this are all areas that nothing to do with legal expertise, but that have nevertheless a powerful impact on whether an attorney and a law firm will be perceived as high or law quality. Note that this dimension of quality is not taught at all in law schools.
Effectiveness. Besides expertise and relationships, another pillar of quality is the ability to get results. After all, clients do not go to lawyers for the sake of listening to sophisticate legal reasoning, or for the sake of a warm and feel-good relationship, but because they have problems or objectives and need them solved or achieved. That means, for example, winning the case, closing the deal, improving the client's situation in a negotiation, finding a way forward in a complex situation, obtaining a permit, or providing an advice that is clear, practical and actionable. Wouldn't quality be an empty and vain concept if it didn't include effectiveness?
Service. Finally, service also contributes to quality. This is mostly about speed, availability, reactivity and accessibility. The importance of that dimension could not be overestimated. It is not a nice addition to quality; it is an essential component of it. When asked about their definition of "quality", many clients put speed at the top of the list.
Style. When there are typos in a legal memo, it does not make the advice less effective, but it does not "look" professional. It is not about substance, but about form. It is about avoiding typos, getting impeccable layout; it is about using a quality paper for correspondence; about the quality of the coffee in the meeting room and of the sofa on the waiting room; about the elegance of voice of the receptionist and about having your shoes polished. It's about looking like a Lexus more than like a Toyota. Some lawyers are extremely sensitive to that aspect of quality. Sometimes, it becomes an obsession, and a matter of identity. Some clients care, some don't: they know what a lavish paper does not make the advice on it better. The contribution of style to quality can be discussed: does a great style actually add value to the client, or is it just a look-good, feel-good device for the lawyers themselves?
Note that combining these five dimensions may sometimes be tricky: service requires to react quickly, but expertise and a zero-typo policy requires to double check everything in order to make sure that the advice is complete and 100% reliable, which takes time (and costs money).
Law firms that focuses on only one dimension of quality (most of the time, legal expertise) might be convinced they are top quality (because, for example, most of their partners are law professors), but their clients might have a very different opinion if these partners, despite their superior legal mind, misbehave in relationships (for example by being arrogant, showing no interest in their client's business, etc.), fail to provide practical, actionable advice, or do not return phone calls or respect deadlines.
Moreover, to many clients, legal expertise is a black box. They don't know, and don't want to know anything about it, just as the buyer of a car may not be interested in the functioning of the engine of his new car. If they have no legal background, they may even be even to understand the legal discussions at stake. In other words, many clients are not in a position to perceive and assess the degree of legal expertise of their attorney. What they can always perceive, on the contrary, is the quality of the relationship and of the service, the effectiveness and the style. Improving these areas may therefore have a stronger impact on the perception of quality by the clients that improving legal expertise.
It does not mean that legal expertise is not important. It is of course a must. It is something that clients expect their lawyers to have, by definition. It's a pre-condition for being in business. But what will shape the client's perception of quality, to a large extent, is unrelated to legal expertise. Lawyers who ignore that do it at their own peril.
We could even go further than this five-leg definition of quality, and go for a post-modern definition of the concept. Quality is whatever the client thinks it is. In my own practice, I often ask to my clients their definition of quality in relation to the assignment they give to me. How will they judge whether my work is top quality? I try to use their answer as my guiding philosophy for working with them. When I suggest to lawyers to ask the same question to their clients, they often look at me as if I just said something really weird, or as if asking that question was a sign of low self-confidence. But I am convinced that to get things right in the area of quality, it is essential to look at it with a fresh eye from the client's perspective. I find the answers from my clients extremely helpful, and none of my clients ever looked negatively surprised by my asking the question, quite the contrary.
Antoine Henry de Frahan
making this kind of article is best!
Posted by: writer jobs | December 16, 2011 at 04:25 PM