And that means we are the ones who actually read your work product.
As a result, we do know just how smart you are, and how hard you work. We know you know the law. We know you have been up all night editing and proofreading the memo that's now sitting in our inbox. But being the first ones to read your work product also means we are the first ones to notice if you have misunderstood the brief. We are the ones who end up removing your previous client's name from the boilerplate language you drafted for us. We are the ones who catch your typos and your dangling modifiers. Indeed, if anyone can attest to the amount of time and money you can waste, it's us.
OK, fine. So I have plenty of personal experience as a victim of infuriating client service. But what right does that give me to tell you how to do your job? After all, we generally don't let patients lecture surgeons on their scalpel skills, or ask passengers to coach pilots on their landing technique. So why do I get to tell you anything about how to win at client servicing?
The answer is that I have been in your shoes. Once, long ago, I was well on my way to joining the tribe of young business lawyers. But when the financial crisis torpedoed my plans, I took the first job I could find, and embarked on an adventure that took me from economic research to community advocacy to forensic accounting and public policy. I worked at large organizations and small, public and private, for-profit and charitable.
It was exhilarating, confusing, and a lot of fun. And all of it was client-facing.
Sometimes I was lucky enough to have an experienced manager or mentor to learn from, and sometimes I had to make it up as I went along. Over the course of a few years, I'd had a chance to see the full spectrum of client reactions to lawyers, consultants, accountants and advisors of various kinds, ranging from gratitude, relief and occasionally even delight on the one hand, to disappointment, confusion and occasionally rage on the other. I once watched a client chase a partner around his office with a sword.
Lawyers are by no means unique in their ability to infuriate clients. But when it comes to business, the profession does suffer from a bit of selection bias (bright young people join the profession because they are interested in law, not business) and from a delayed and limited exposure to basic commercial concepts. This isn't without consequences: Sending young associates out to work on commercial matters without a solid foundation in business thinking is a little like allowing doctors to practice medicine without having taken a course in basic anatomy. The results can be extremely amusing, but also occasionally dangerous.
I may not be a practicing attorney, but I remain a lawyer deep in my soul (and on the register of members of my local Bar Association). This blog is my way of giving something back to the profession, by taking some of the basic business knowledge that consultants, bankers and accountants take for granted, and packaging it up for young lawyers in a way that makes it easy, relevant, and maybe even fun.
A word on tone and style: If I sound curmudgeonly or blunt, it's partly out of shame (I have been guilty of almost every sin I describe), and it's partly just my way of keeping things interesting. I write this with deep love for the profession, and fierce affection for anyone who is brave enough to join it, and who wants to be good at it.