Client Relations

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I used to practice family law. I concur with one lawyer’s observation that family law gives you the opportunity to interact with a lot of good people at the absolute worst time in their lives. It can also be a very rewarding type of practice. Here is a great idea from the American Bar Association…

The ABA GP Solo and Small Firm Division put on some nice programming at the ABA Annual Meeting. (And I’m not saying that just because they asked me to speak.)  I participated in two 90 minute programs called Perfecting Your Practice and Protecting Your Practice. I joined Uber-consultant Ross Kodner, Catherine Sanders-Reach from…

The subject line of this post is obvious in many ways, but there’s really some depth behind it. In all of our endeavors, we are generally satisfied when we get what we expect. (Well, that may not be true for the pessimists, but this post isn’t about them.)

Therefore it is important to the attorney-client…

I have several good friends and colleagues who do similar work for other state bars and Canadian law societies. We have some great discussions via e-mail. Recently we had a lengthy discussion about who or what answers your phone. For many law firms, economic reality dictates that the firm should no longer pay a full-time…

Developing new client service models is an important aspect of law firm planning and management. There is no doubt that clients have different expectations about service now than a generation ago. Some of this is related to technology. E-mail allows us to exchange messages hourly as opposed to the old "mail a letter and wait…

The Ten Commandments of Client Relationships has been around for a while. The Canadian Bar Association indicates that it originated with the Queensland Law Society of Australia. These simple ideas help you set the tone you want for your staff and publicly affirm your commitment to good client service. This PDF is formatted to easily…

Appearing rude or arrogant is something we lawyers need to guard against. The temptations are many. At how many Christmas parties this year will you walk by a group and hear someone make a patently ridiculous statement about a legal matter? The temptation to stop and correct is strong, but if you do, those people…

Does your law firm provide an extranet for any clients? Do you understand why an extranet might be useful? Could an extranet actually pay for itself?  Continuing my emerging Dennis Kennedy theme week, here’s his article on Extranets. It is a concise primier.

A recent article in the Fulton County (Gerogia) Daily Report adds one more item to the list of things you should never say in an e-mail, which is paraphrased as: "Gosh, I just may have made a $1,000,000 malpractice mistake." When the law firm was fired and the files were turned over to the client…

As hard as we try, we will still all make mistakes. Losing your keys is one thing, but a mistake that impacts a client matter will keep you awake at night. How do you deal with such an error? Well, the first and hardest step is to immediately contact the client and let them know.