Client Relations

Client Relations Articles

• Best Practices: Solicit and Respond to Client Feedback

  What is the single most effective marketing strategy a law firm can implement? Without exception, the answer is, "Ask your clients for feedback and respond to what they say." It's just that simple.

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• Thirteen Tips for Improving Client Relationships

  The most neglected person in any civil or criminal litigation is often the client. We spend so much time preparing for the case and dealing with the other lawyers and the court that we often forget about building a relationship with our own client.

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• Client Retention Tips for Small Law Firms

  Here are ten suggestions for ways lawyers can build relationships with their clients.

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• Look at Yourself Through Your Law Firm Client’s Eyes

  How many law firm websites have you seen which are little more than a quasi vanity site, which really serves no purpose in addressing the clients' matters?

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• Treat Your Existing Law Firm Clients Like Gold

  Most lawyers get the vast majority of their new business from existing and past clients. These clients can be a source of new business both by sending new matters and by sending referrals.

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• Making the Most of Law Firm Client Surveys

  Client surveys have become increasingly popular among law firms. And with good reason. Properly designed, client surveys can help the firm in a variety of ways.

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• What You Can Learn From Client Service Surveys

  Law firms learn what their clients expect and how they perceive the quality of service by asking them. With this knowledge, firms can build or maintain a reputation for excellence and keep a competitive advantage.

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• Tips on Conducting Law Firm Client Surveys

  When surveying clients, a law firm should ask questions about the quality of service being provided; determine what other business opportunities might be available to the firm and seek suggestions on how the law firm can improve, said Tom Clay, a consultant with Altman, Weil Pensa, in Newtown Square, Pa.

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• Planning Your Law Firm Holiday Client Gifts

  It's amazing how little time many law firms and businesses spend thinking about their holiday cards and gifts. And it's amazing how such a little thing can work so strongly for or against a law firm when a client must decide whether to renew its retainer.

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• Ten Things to Consider About Potential Clients

  A potential client walks in your front door, or sends you an email from your Web site. How did that client find you? How did that client choose your firm from dozens of other competitors that could offer him similar services?  

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• Five Tips to Avoid Getting Sued

  Within a business, there are few things worse than getting slapped with the dreaded lawsuit. Not only are lawsuits expensive, but they can be time-consuming, draining and frustrating. So how do you avoid one?

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• Attorney Malpractice and the Unintended Client Relationship

  You've been there a thousand times.  Someone finds out your a lawyer and has a "quick legal question" for you. While you want to be helpful, you also don't want to expose yourself to malpractice or create an unintended client relationship. This article focuses on how unintended client relationships can be formed and the best way to navigate through those murky waters.

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• When to Say No: 10 Ways to Select and Reject a Client

  Client selection -- and rejection -- is the first line of defense against malpractice problems, but it has the added benefit of being a wonderful management tool for law firms.

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• How to Handle Difficult Clients

  A lawyer who has been practicing for any length of time at all no doubt has encountered the "difficult" client. This is not necessarily the client who simply presents a difficult case with complex legal issues, the client who stops paying a lawyer's bills as it nears bankruptcy or even the client who involves the lawyer in conflict of interest or ethics problems.  

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• Collecting Debt from Your Law Firm Clients

  Collecting debt from your law firm clients is a painful reality of doing business. However, the pain can be reduced if you institute a process and procedure for collecting debt.

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• Organizing Your Personal Injury Cases: A Step by Step Checklist

  Here are 16 steps to help you streamline the organization of your personal injury case.

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• Client Retention Tips for Solo and Small Law Firms

  Unless your practice is a strictly pro bono enterprise, your law firm is a business and should be treated as such. Therefore, at the end of the day, one of your practice's primary concerns should be profitability. To be profitable, your practice needs clients. But more importantly, for long-term viability, your practice needs to retain these clients.

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• Hit the Ground Running in Counseling New Clients

  When counseling the "new client" you will need to obtain as much information as possible about the business and operations of the client so that you will be able to start making a contribution as quickly as possible.

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• Create Your Own Executive Summary of the Activities of Your New Clients

  As you go through your client's documents, you should develop your own "executive summary" that includes the information that will be most essential to your activities and which you will need to know as you communicate with executives, managers and outside business partners.

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• 5 Tips for Small Law Firms to Deal with Negative Online Reviews

  Expert tips on how to navigate the new, increasingly convoluted world of online reputation management.

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• Don’t Leave Your Client Relationship on the Sidelines

  Many lawyers leave their clients on the sidelines, on the outside looking in. It may be time for attorneys to replace this strategy with one that educates their clients and encourages them to join the legal problem-solving team.

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• Customer Service Best Practices

  Like any business, law firms recognize that how they treat their clients is an integral factor to their success. In an industry where clients often return for repeat business, and where referrals often come from previous clients, it's no surprise that law firms must be thoughtful and strategic about how their clients are treated.

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• Creating a Client-Driven Law Firm

  Despite improved marketing and planning strategies, many law firms fail against the competition because they lack the infrastructure to sustain their efforts and achieve results. The push for increased volume and leverage and the lack of client-service and project-management skills have driven clients to look elsewhere for legal services. This article describes the need for change in law practices and offers a change process that will allow firms to stay in the race.

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• 6 Things That Drive Clients Crazy and How to Avoid Them

  Clients call lawyers when they have a problem. Business questions, a death in the family, a divorce, an accident, a bankruptcy -- all are potential stress producers, and the last thing clients want is more stress or irritation because of their dealings with their attorneys. Lawyers need to find ways to eliminate the unnecessary irritants that really send clients up a wall.

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