How to Be the Indispensable Advisor Your Clients Love
If you want to be loved by your clients, command higher fees, and become absolutely indispensable, it all comes down to this…
You have to stop seeing yourself as a litigator or transactional lawyer. Litigation leaves clients miserable and legal documents on their own are virtually worthless.
When my father-in-law died, after spending a few thousand dollars on a set of estate planning documents with his personal lawyer, I thought that lawyer must have committed malpractice because the documents didn’t work.
Why didn’t they work?
Because the lawyer completed the transaction (legal docs) for my father-in-law and never followed up with my father-in-law to make sure his assets were owned properly or that he’s legal documents stayed up to date with the changes in his life.
Divorce lawyers finalize their client’s divorces and never make sure their estate planning documents are updated.
Business lawyers put in place LLCs and S-Corporations and never make sure share certificates are issued, agreements are put in place with vendors or team members, or that the client has the right insurance in place.
Are we really helping our clients when we see them as a transaction, a case, or a matter?
No, we aren’t offering anything more than our clients would get if they went online.
So my question for you is what will you do when they realize they don’t need you? Or has it already begun?
Please don’t tell me that you’ll deal with this by decreasing your costs and becoming a virtual law office providing unbundled legal services as seems to be the trend these days – that’s a recipe for failure unless you do it so that you are creating a killer experience for your clients that they cannot simply replicate by going online and doing it themselves.
So many lawyers are trying to compete with online companies providing “buy them as you need them” document preparation services. But unbundled legal services, deep discounts and doing nothing but turning out reams of paper do nothing to build relationships with your clients.
It’s a one shot deal at best and doesn’t provide an ongoing revenue stream for your business. That’s a recipe for misery and a Going Out Of Business sign (as many law businesses, even large ones, are learning).
As I learned in building my own practice to more than $1 million in revenue, the best way to keep your clients coming to you (and referring their friends and family) are to follow these 5 tips:
1. Give away the legal documents for free. Yes, free. You’re not selling the paper – you’re selling the client YOU, your energy, your counsel, your advice. Clients call lawyers because they need help. They want you to take care of them, to love them, to make it easy for them. The documents are merely the by-product of the relationship.
2. Give away free legal documents on your website to generate leads you can then build a relationship with and convert into lifetime counseling clients. As an example, we do this at http://www.KidsProtectionPlan.com where we let people name guardians for their kids for free because we know that many of those people will need a fully counseled estate plan once we develop a relationship with them.
3. Narrow your niche. Stop trying to serve everyone who calls or walks in your door. It devalues your service and who you are. Decide who you love to serve and who you do your best work for and build your business around deeply serving these most perfect clients.
4. Create a billing structure that encourages your clients to communicate with you without fear of the cost. Most of the time, clients don’t want to talk to you because they know they’ll get a big fat bill at the end of the month. This can keep them from telling you about significant changes in their lives or businesses.
5. Learn to love your clients again. Stop seeing them as cases, transactions, and matters and return to the reason you went to law school. Connect at a heart level, whether you do it virtually or in-person. In this new economy, it’s the only path to your success.
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