"Winning Tips" is designed especially for lawyers--each month, gain insight on trial strategies, client communications, witness prep and jury behavior from one of the country's foremost trial consultants.

PREFACE: WHAT THIS BOOK WILL DO FOR YOU

Lawyers used to tell their clients what to do and their clients did it: now clients question lawyer's advice and are often actively engaged in decision making. Lawyers used to send their bill and the client paid it: now clients question line items and demand cost effective service. The 1990's have been called "the decade of the client" and it looks like this decade heralds a permanent change. The Wall Street Jounal, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Journal, Trial Magazine, to name but a few have all devoted extensive coverage to this change. Clients are more sophisticated, more aware of what lawyers really have to offer, and able and willing to "shop around" for better quality lawyering at lower rates. Their choice is rarely predicated on quality of lawyering. Clients generally only look at a select group of lawyers whose expertise is roughly equal. The client's final choice is made on the quality of services delivered, not on the quality of lawyering.

Service is how legal expertise is delivered to the client, and that includes everything from unreturned telephone calls, to failure to keep the client appropriately informed and prepared, to an lawyer's patronizing attitude. Many firms and solo practitioners lose a great deal of new and repeat business because, regardless of their excellent expertise, they fail to satisfy the client in terms of service. The problem is, clients rarely make known their complaints or dissatisfaction to their lawyers; they simply go out and find another lawyer.

Not only do lawyers lose business by failing to attend to client satisfaction, but their success with the clients who do retain their services is limited by poor delivery of services. Clients are reluctant to cooperate with lawyers who fail to treat them with the respect and value they deserve. This reluctance may not be conscious or obvious, the lawyer will simply not be getting everything they need to succeed as fully as they might be able to otherwise.

The key to delivering legal services in such a way as to ensure client cooperation and satisfaction is communication, communication that supports and enhances the client's value to you in a way the client clearly sees and understands. Each chapter of the book deals with a critical area of actual or potential client dissatisfaction and gives you communication tools and techniques specifically designed to transform those problem areas into areas of client cooperation and satisfaction. The tools and techniques are illustrated with practical examples showing you exactly how, in the reality of day to day legal practice, to apply these techniques. Interviews with managing partners, executive directors and marketing directors of numerous top level firms illustrate points made as well as solutions offered. You will learn, for example:

• how to listen in a way that makes your client feel cared for and valuable,
• how to make it safe and inviting for your client to trust you,
• how to elicit information from your client that makes them feel valued and assures your greater success,
• how to explain billing and other case-management issues in a way that is supportive of good client-lawyer relations,
• how to handle troublesome aspects of the case without losing the cooperation and good will of your clients
• how to handle difficult clients without losing the client or the case.

The best way to use this book is first to read through it quickly, to get an overview and sense of the issues covered. Then go back and read those chapters or sections which apply most particularly to your practice. Work with those techniques until they feel familiar and easy for you to use. Then keep the book handy as a reference guide. When you come up against a particular difficulty with a client, or a particularly difficult client, look up that issue in the book, and work with the suggested techniques.

" Connecting With Your Client " is meant to serve as a training guide and manual for legal assistants and support staff as well as for lawyers themselves. Encourage assistants and support staff to read the book, so that they can be supportive of your determination to deliver your services to your clients not only at the highest level of legal expertise, but at the highest level of client satisfaction as well. Your practice will benefit enormously, both in dollars and reputation.