Lawyers are paid to tell clients the law. Right? Wrong?
Lawyers are paid to help clients get from A to B in the most effective way possible. Knowing the law is a given. Most clients are sophisticated enough to know the basic law in their working area. What they want is your opinion, based on your knowledge of the law, your knowledge of their business, and your knowledge of their desired outcome.
Too many lawyers:
- a) Don't know enough about the client's business to understand the bigger picture. You should be like a doctor, asking wider questions before announcing your diagnosis. The discussion is part of the client satisfaction.
- b) Presume that the client is like them, and that the client's preferred outcome is the same as theirs. The client works under a myriad of pressures, both commercial and personal, which make desired outcomes unpredictable.
- c) Refuse to give clear guidance. This is often because of (a), and really really annoys in-house counsel.
So What?
- (a) Be curious about your client's business. It's normally the most important thing in their lives, apart from themselves. OK, and their families too. Or so they say.
- (b) Ask what the client wants to happen. Don't be afraid to ask the naive question, because the client is a human being, and his or her desires may not be the strict logical ones that you anticipated.
- (c) Give a recommendation, even if you are compelled to caveat it. Remember, though, that although caveats may delight your insurers, they can send a message to your client that you aren't as good as you said you are.
If you want some solid research to challenge partners who think that people buy for rational reasons (let's send them the brochure with our Legal 500 profile...), Predictaby Irrational by Dan Ariely is the book to read.
In the book he narrates a whole series of scenarios which he set up to test various theories. Two examples:
- Why removing an alternative purchase that nobody chose could change the one they DID choose, and
- How to price a $5.00 product to sell - he tried 3 ways: $5.00 with free p&p; $2.50 + $2.50 p&p; or Free + $5.00 p&p. You can see the answer to this particular test in a short video clip he created here.
We know that clients buy the individual lawyer, supported by the firm's brand. This book unpacks some of the science behind how they choose.
They've attended the partners meeting, agreed the strategy, budgeted for the training and even attended a few of the training sessions. So why won't they go out and sell?
3 possible reasons:
- Lawyers are the wrong sort of people to enjoy selling. A typical psychometric profile for a lawyer is everything you don't want in a salesman.
- There is little perceived reward. Once a partner has filled up his or her own pipeline, the revenue-recognition for sales-performance is seen as small when set against how hard it is. Most partners would prefer to get back to doing high-quality work for grateful clients.
- Lawyers won't work the process. Good salespeople (whether lawyers or not) know that sales is a process. Exceptional salespeople have an intuitive grasp of the process. The rest of us have to learn it, and do it methodically, day in and day out, not just when we feel like it or have run out of fee-earning work.
So a typical lawyer doesn't want to sell, isn't rewarded for selling, and when he or she does try and sell they do it unsystematically.
So what should we do?
Possibly focus on the untypical ones. The ones who want to sell. The ones who are selling, but know that they could do better. Perhaps even the senior associates who show the spark, and who could be promoted as a sales partner rather than a traditional client-facing one. You wouldn't expect the entire senior team of BP or Proctor and Gamble to go out and sell, so why expect a stellar sales performance from all your partners?
The answer seems to be to invest in the best.