Why Law Firms Should Robustly Assess Their Client Relationships

Back in 2019, I penned two satirical "love letters," the first sent by a fictitious IP client to its fictitious law firm, the second sent by the law firm in reply to the client's letter.

Melodramatic and humorous by design, these letters made many IP professionals chuckle. Particularly astute readers noticed how I generously sprinkled Easter eggs into the letters, in the form of intellectual property and legal jargon that has alternative non-IP and non-legal meanings suitable for "lovers."

Although I employed levity to capture readers' attention, the substance of the letters actually is quite serious. Together, the letters highlight challenges inherent in many law firm and client relationships, such as:

• Friction due to misaligned interests, or a perception thereof

• Mistrust and misunderstandings

• Actual or perceived complacency

• Adversarial, zero-sum, or transactional mindsets

• Absence of fit-for-purpose protocols and tools for working together

In a given relationship, if these challenges are allowed to become chronic, a law firm's relationship with a client inevitably suffers. The client may send less work, interactions may become turbulent or vulnerable to bumps in the road, and worst case, the client may transfer its work to another firm.

Firms that passively or reactively tend to the building and maintenance of client relationships do themselves and their clients a great disservice. In contrast, firms that take a proactive approach position themselves for great success, including growth and higher profitability.

Robustness Matters

Client relationship assessments are an excellent tool for law firms to demonstrate their commitment to client service, and to proactively drive up their performance in ways that will get, and keep, clients' attention.

Unfortunately, all assessments aren't created equal.

In some law firms, relationship partners commonly take an informal approach, merely asking clients, "How are we doing?" or "What can we do better?".

Other law firms send satisfaction surveys to clients. Then, they dispatch to the client the firm's managing partner or another firm representative who's not part of the client service team to discuss the survey results.

Although the above approaches may gather instructive bits of information, they often fail to elicit holistic, candid, and actionable feedback and insights. This is because they may not examine all relevant aspects of the firm-client relationship. Also, they may not foster ideal conditions for client contacts to be fully transparent and communicative of needs and frustrations.

Hallmarks of a Robust Client Relationship Assessment

A highly-effective client relationship assessment is comprehensive. It looks at all aspects of the relationship, including the firm's tactical performance, responsiveness, capabilities, fee structures, initiative, and interpersonal engagement, among other aspects.

It's also two-sided, amassing honest client and firm perspectives and comparing the two to tease out reality and perceived reality.

It also brings the law firm and the client together for constructive dialogue and brainstorming.

And it leads to tangible action plans that a firm executes, and regularly revisits, going forward, so that it can perform at a consistently high level that creates strong organizational and personal bonds between the parties, all for mutual long-term benefit.

Our Client Relationship Assessments

Quartal IP leads robust individualized relationship assessments to give law firms new clarity and help them define specific avenues for strengthening key client relationships.

• For each client of your choosing, our collaborative framework gathers and compares feedback from your team and that client on pertinent aspects of the firm-client relationship.

• We conduct one or more joint sessions with you and your client to identify areas in need of improvement, facilitate greater mutual understanding, and prepare an action plan.

• We then help guide your implementation of designated action items, assess their ongoing effectiveness, and serve as a resource going forwar​d.

Please contact us if you would like to discuss how we can help you strengthen your client relationships.