Where is the client relationship for lawyers?
This question was the subject, as every year, of a round table during the Law Management Summit on January 24. Christophe Wilmart, from Appointment, Jean-Marie Valentin, former associate lawyer of the firm SVZ and new entrepreneur, Jean Touttée, founding partner of the company Impact, and Martin Bussy, co-founder of Jarvis Legal.
The development of lawyers’ client relations responds to 3 issues:
- improve the image of the firm among its clients
- generate revenue from its customers
- gain new customers
We too often forget the gap in perception that exists between the image of the lawyer perceived by the client, and the image of himself that the lawyer perceives. A survey English which we have echoed shows, with supporting figures, that work remains to be done to balance this relationship.
The means to achieve this can be summarized in 7 key actions: 3 customer actions and 4 actions on your contacts.
Organize the practice around the client
Law firms are historically organized around partners. They are the center of gravity and interest of the firm, and not the client. This is the first cultural and organizational change that must be achieved: becoming “customer centric”, that is, putting the customer at the heart of the firm.
This organization was described in a previous article (Legal market: revolution or transformation). The client must be at the center not out of ideological principle but because he has decisively taken power in the legal market.
Jean-Marie Valentin, through his new platform project for connecting legal departments and lawyers (called ), also highlights the transformation of the organization as a prerequisite for digital transformation.
Concretely, how do we organize the firm around the client? By providing them with qualified information, by providing added value, by collaborating internally for their benefit.
Share information with your client
Sharing information with your client can be done in different ways.
First, the existence of a client space dedicated is an excellent way to give visibility to your client. He follows the progress of the firm's work, freely and without wasting the time of the firm's members. He participates in project mode in the reflection and validation of the documents drafted by the lawyer. This customer involvement is the corollary of the collaborative organization implemented internally.
The IT security of this type of tool is essential. The implementation of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) from May 25, 2018 requires lawyers to have a particular organization. In order to guarantee the integrity of your client's data on the one hand, and to be able to return them to them and destroy them on request, you should rely on a tool designed for this.
Finally, sharing large documents, by simply sending a link by email, is a widespread use. It is indeed very practical for both the lawyer and the client. Many tools currently used should be avoided, for obvious legal and security reasons (American servers, reading of documents by the supplier, etc.). Transfers of documents protected by passwords, or with a limited duration, and hosted on the territory offer much greater guarantees.
Bring added value to the customer
All lawyers bring added value. But how many customers are aware of this? This is one of the key points of customer relations: promoting your work to your customers.
For example, we can cite simplification tools for drafting company legal documents, such as those offered by Impact. Achieving productivity gains on these subjects allows you to work faster, with better quality, for the benefit of your client. On the other hand, you free up time to advise your client on important subjects.
Another example is offering your client access not only to the skills of your firm, but also to a network of partners around the world. Thus, we are assured of being able to respond directly or indirectly to any request from our client (multinational company, government, etc.). This is the approach of the SVZ firm today.
Share contacts within the firm
Contacts are in a way the “goodwill” of lawyers. As such, they have considerable value. But often a theoretical value, they are so little used and valued.
Managing contacts is often a headache. First of all, you must have a centralized and up-to-date contact list. It is not so simple. A tool as simple as your email software allows. But this is also the case for digital solutions on the market.
Then, how do we share our contacts within the firm?
This question has no definitive answer. It depends on the governance of the firm. Is each department within the firm compartmentalized? Is the associate paid if a colleague works with one of his contacts? How can you protect your image if you no longer control the firm's interactions with your contacts? These questions encourage us to maintain an individual management logic. However, the benefits of sharing contacts are numerous:
- cross selling
- verification of conflicts of interest within the firm
- strengthening the expertise of each partner across the firm's entire client network
- customer development
So many questions that find a solution via contact management software making it possible to trace each person's activity or to define business contribution policies. Thus each partner maintains control of his contacts while benefiting the firm.
Qualify and update them
Bringing your contacts to life is another important and yet difficult issue to implement. Through a very simple tool like SmartContact, Jarvis Legal offers updating of its contacts from Linkedin.
For its part, the company Appointment offers complete solutions: updating your contacts using their database of 240.000 qualified Director level contacts, information on movements and transfers of your key accounts, etc.
It is with this type of solutions that the firm ensures that it benefits from always up-to-date contacts. The work of commercial development or marketing distribution becomes even more relevant and therefore effective.
Working with a CRM tool
It is by working on your contacts in a CRM tool that you really develop your customer relationships. Thanks to the APIs of Appointment and Jarvis Legal, the firm can automatically update its contacts in its CRM tool, itself one of the modules of the firm's management tool. The information is not lost, and is distributed automatically throughout the office.
What and the role of CRM? Track the interactions that the firm has with each of its contacts, including prospects. Program reminders, join forces to enter a key account, enrich the information of each contact, this is how to land new files and new projects, both with your clients and with your contacts.
Send them qualified messages
Jarvis Legal's CRM function can also be linked to newsletter management software like Mailchimp. By qualifying your contacts, you directly create mailing lists that Mailchimp can use and thus send targeted messages to your contacts.
This is how your customers or prospects will discover your expertise, that of your associates or the conferences or courses you give. Your image progresses and so does your turnover.
Lawyers’ client relations are an increasingly important issue for lawyers. As the power of the customer has strengthened, it is important to ensure their loyalty on the one hand, and to win new market share on the other. The firms that are the first to embark on this path will clearly have a competitive advantage over the others.
Many strategic levers are already available, all that remains is to seize them!
