Most law firms organize internally by business function — marketing, intake, onboarding, attorneys, operations, customer service. Clients experience one firm. No matter how your business operates behind the scenes, no client should feel the gaps or seams.
Highlights
- Your departments may work well individually, but a seamless client experience depends on how well the departments work together.
- Auditing a few recently closed matters from first contact to completion will expose client service gaps, where the handoffs between departments work or don’t work.
- Closing the gaps requires one firm leader to own the whole experience.
A prospective client finds your firm through a referral, an ad, or, these days, an AI search. They visit your website and contact the firm. They talk with a receptionist or intake specialist, schedule a consultation with an attorney, decide to hire the firm, sign an engagement agreement, and begin working with the legal team.
Before much of the legal work has even begun, the client may interact with marketing, the admin team, a couple of attorneys, accounting, paralegals, and other support staff. A smaller practice may have many of the same departments, just handled by individuals rather than teams.
Clients don’t make departmental distinctions. They hire one firm and normally one primary attorney.
Law firms organize by function or department because it’s an efficient way to run a business. Marketing creates demand. Intake, or the front desk, responds to inquiries. Attorneys advise clients. Paralegals and other staff help deliver the work. Each function can have clear responsibilities and do its job well. The challenge is making the handoffs between them work just as well.
The Handoff Is Where Clients Feel Your Org Chart
Let’s say your website boasts responsiveness and clear communication. The person or team answering a prospective client’s call reinforces that message by responding quickly and guiding them toward a meeting with the right attorney. That attorney has a productive consultation, discussing options, answering questions, and building an initial plan of attack. By the time the new client signs the engagement agreement, your firm has set expectations for a high-quality working relationship.
Then the matter is handed off, and the client waits a week without hearing from anyone. The next contact comes from someone new who hasn’t been introduced or involved, so the client must re-explain their issue and remind them of the plan already created. As the matter proceeds, calls and emails aren’t returned quickly or consistently. Things don’t feel organized anymore, and that’s what the client will remember.
Once your firm sets an expectation, every handoff and interaction reinforces that expectation or undercuts it.
Even When Everyone Does Their Job, the Experience Still Breaks Down
This is what makes these gaps so frustrating and so difficult to spot. Nobody necessarily made a mistake, but the client still waited a week and had to explain their situation multiple times.
Your firm creates departments, but your clients also experience how promises, information and expectations move, or don’t move, between them. When a handoff breaks down, the cost goes beyond the client experience. Team members waste time catching up and doing extra work, diminishing their efficiency. Client frustration can also spill over internally as people try to figure out what happened and who was responsible. Over time, those experiences can also cost your firm repeat business and referrals.
Does Your Promise Survive the Handoff?
Investigate. Follow the client experience step by step, from first contact through matter completion, to see whether expectations carry through to the end, including team handoffs and ongoing interactions.
You don’t need the hottest new AI client management technology, but you should still have the basics:
- A consistent approach for documenting information
- Standard steps for client and inter-departmental interaction
- A way to measure that everything is working as planned
The goal is to take the right actions, use processes and systems to make those actions easier to repeat, and reduce dependency on individuals or memory.
Exercise: Track the Client Experience
Here’s an exercise to try. Pick three typical, recently completed matters and trace each one from the client’s first interaction through the end of the engagement. Use what you already have — systems, notes, emails, records and client feedback — to reconstruct each client’s experience. As needed, bring together each team member who interacted with that client.
Follow the Client, Not the Department
As you track through each stage, ask:
- Did we clearly set and manage client expectations?
- Did we follow our documented procedures using the appropriate systems?
- Did we accurately capture and maintain client and matter information?
- Did our client and team interactions meet our quality and timeliness promises?
This will help you understand what’s working and where you need to improve. If a process is outdated, assign someone to update it. If fields in your intake or matter management systems aren’t being correctly used, schedule training. If you’re not confident that turnaround times are being met, implement or enhance systems to measure them.
Related articles on Attorney at Work: Read “Everyone Needs a Production Number,” and “Got a Process for Your Process? Law Firm SOPs in 5 Steps.”
Taking Ownership of the Whole Client Experience
Departments naturally focus on their part of the work, which makes it easy to miss what happens between them. Someone in leadership must take responsibility for the whole law firm client experience, looking across the firm, spotting patterns, bringing the right people together, and making sure improvements happen. If that’s you, meet with your team periodically to walk through a few actual matters, and repeat this exercise. The people closest to each function still own their part of the work and client experience, but you can make sure everything works together.
Your client sees one firm. The handoffs determine whether they keep seeing it that way or start noticing the org chart underneath.
Image © iStockPhoto.com.
Sign up for Attorney at Work’s daily practice tips newsletter here and subscribe to our podcast, Attorney at Work Today.
