What would your clients say?

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I’m out of town this week (as I have been most of the last month) and decided this morning to order room service for breakfast.  I ordered scrambled eggs and rye toast.  What I got was scrambled eggs (but no salt and pepper) and wheat toast.  Mildly annoying, right?  I noticed the error, of course, and I’ll remember if I order room service at this hotel again.  I may even remember if in the future I’m deciding whether to stay here again — though probably not the incident, only the lingering feeling that things weren’t quite right here.  But it’s just mildly annoying; I didn’t call room service to complain, I didn’t ask them to fix the error, and I’m certainly not going to pack my bag and check out because of this.  Wondering what this has to do with your clients?

Most of us assume that our clients are satisfied with our service unless they complain.  But, as my story indicates, that may not be the case.  A small error can often be corrected without much effort, but uncorrected it can grow into a negative perception (can’t these people do anything right?) that can endanger the relationship — and perhaps the lawyer would have no idea until matters had gone too far.

The simple fix?  Ask your clients how things are going.  Are they pleased?  Is there anything they’d like to run differently?  Perhaps they do/don’t want to be copied on correspondence, internal memoranda, etc.  Perhaps they do/don’t want to be notified by telephone when something of minor importance happens.  Perhaps they do/don’t want to meet with you face-to-face on a regular basis just to review what’s happening.  Guessing is not helpful, but asking is.  And consider how to pose your questions to encourage honest response.  In other words, “What could we do to work with you more effectively?” might lead to more useful responses than, “Are you happy with the work we’re doing?”�

Bad clients and bad news

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There is such a thing as a bad client…  Tom Kane’s Legal Marketing Blog inquires, Are Bad Clients Keeping You Up At Night?  If you have bad clients (or wonder whether you do), the answer is surely yes.  Tom draws from a post on the Bootstrapper blog to help identify bad client characteristics and to suggest how to fire them.  (And if you conclude that a client isn’t a bad client, but an unrealistic one instead, consider these ideas for managing the representation to decrease the chances that your unrealistic client will morph into a truly bad client.)

What would Churchill say?  Maybe instead of dealing with a bad client, it’s delivering bad news that’s keeping you up.  An article, by Arthur D. Burger of Jackson & Campbell, uses Churchill’s 1940 speech reporting that the Germans had defeated the French army to illustrate how lawyers might responsibly and effectively communicate bad news.  In short: be frank about the news (especially if the news is the result of an error the lawyer made) and offer a plan that addresses the next steps.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan…  This isn’t a political blog by any stretch of the imagination, but this story can’t go unnoticed.

Tuesday Shorts 11/6/07

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Requesting an extension because of school vacation  Somehow, I missed this WSJ Law Blog post in early October, which reported that Weil Gotshal requested a delay in hearing dates in a bankruptcy case (set for December 18, 19, 20, and 27) on the grounds that “These dates are smack in the middle of our children’s winter breaks, which are sometimes the only times to be with our children.”  The response filed by Kirkland & Ellis called the reason “woefully inadequate” and noted that “The personal needs of a handful of professionals, unfortunately, must be balanced against the thousands of employees, creditors and other parties in interest . . . whose livelihoods and/or recoveries are dependent on (Calpine’s) successful emergence from Chapter 11.”  (The WSJ Law Blog post includes links to the actual pleadings.)  The WSJ blog The Juggle offered this commentary, which quotes Sylvia Ann Hewlett of the Center for Work-Life Policy as finding the request a “promising step” toward promoting work/life balance.

Confessions of a CEO  Fortune Magazine has published a fascinating article about Dominic Orr, a high-tech CEO whose workaholic habits nearly ruined his life. Events such as his decision to travel to a sales conference the day after his mother’s death, causing her funeral to be delayed by three days were the norm until he discovered that his goal was “to die a complete man.” Working with a therapist, now an executive coach, revealed that Orr’s life was missing hikari, which is the Japanese term for light and which Orr views as “speed to enlightenment,” and he resolved never to work again unless he could combine work with hikari.  He was able to do so, and the story of how he did is truly remarkable.

Office Politics: excluded from the group

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One of the enduring challenges for any professional is navigating office politics.  Regardless of the profession, office relationships can be extremely challenging and rewarding — sometimes even at the same time.  Challenges can come from a variety of sources: simple misunderstandings, failure to appreciate different skills and approaches, resentment about coworker’s work habits, etc.  Office conflict is a fairly common topic in a coaching engagement, and the good news is that it’s generally possible to resolve or at least minimize it.

Through the blogosphere, I was introduced to Franke James (pictured here), inventor of The Office-Politics® Game.  Franke has put together a marvelous board of advisers (including experts in the areas of executive coaching, leadership development, dispute resolution, employment law, PR and ethics) to answer letters.  Bob Sutton recently posted an Office-Politics.com letter and provided input on one of Franke’s responses.  I was delighted when Franke invited me to serve as a guest adviser and sent me a letter to review.  The letter began like this:

I am an attorney — specifically, a prosecutor. My problem is that there is a dominant clique in my workplace, and I have been regularly excluded (implicitly and expressly) from social events. I feel as though I’m in high school again, and my co-workers have formed an exclusionary clique comprised of only the “cool” kids.

It all began when another co-worker attorney — a temporary employee who I’ll call “Tad” — began making comments behind my back.

You can read the rest of the letter, in which this prosecutor describes how he and others in the office (all of whom are about 10-15 years older than the bulk of lawyers in the office) are excluded from group outings and my response here.  And don’t miss Franke’s response, which takes a different approach and adds some marvelous ideas.�

Working breakfasts, lunches, and dinners

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When I sat down to write today’s post, I intended to write about how excellent client service blends into client development. I’d planned to suggest some tactics for extending the relationship so you become a “trusted advisor” (to borrow David Maister‘s phrase). One of the tactics I’d planned to suggest was, not surprisingly, taking clients to a meal.

And then I read an article that my coach sent me from last week’s New York Times: Oh Joy! Breakfast With the Boss. To give you the flavor of the article, here’s a snippet:

PLEASE do not invite me to breakfast.

It’s not that I don’t like breakfast. To the contrary, I could happily eat eggs or cereal at every meal. But I write about life-work balance, and it feels a little contradictory to conduct an interview, or attend a conference, or give a speech, when everyone involved had to sacrifice sleep to attend.

I have similar qualms about working dinners. After a long day of work, why follow it up with more work?

. . .

There has been a shift in the role of these meetings-with-food over the years. In the 80’s, a 7 a.m. appointment was a sign that you were so important you had to start before dawn. We called them power breakfasts back then, and Masters of the Universe wanted to be seen at their regular table at dawn.

More recently, however, they’ve come to feel like yet another symptom of an overstuffed day.

But because working meals are important for many lawyers, it seems to me that the question become how to incorporate those meals into a schedule that fits the way you want to live. Whether you’d rather cram as many work functions as possible into your day or whether you’ve dceided to make dinner with your family a priority, is there a way to incorporate working meals and personal plans? Absolutely. Here’s how.

1. Plan intentionally. If you “go with the flow,” someone else will be determining the balance of your life. Instead, spend a few minutes every month deciding what commitments (business and personal commitments) are non-negotiable for you. Don’t forget to include time you spend on true recreation. Mark those on your calendars, and then consider what else you’d like to add in.

2. Exercise your discretion. When you have an opportunity to attend a work gathering, whether it’s a working meeting or business socializing, at times outside the ordinary work day, consider carefully before accepting. What will you be saying “no” to if you say “yes” to this event? Is the event important? Is it urgent? Do you want to do it? There’s no single “right” answer here that means you should or shouldn’t attend. The questions will lead you to your decision without dictating it.

3. Limit yourself. You either have learned or will learn soon that energy is not infinite. Adding morning and evening business commitments to a packed schedule can constitute self-sabotage if done without attention to the effects on your energy level. One client I worked with decided to limit herself to 2 evening commitments each week and never to schedule a morning meeting before 9 AM on the day following an evening commitment. Although she reduced the number of hours she devoted to work in this way, she increased her productivity during working hours as a result.

Are you happy with the amount of time you spend on working meals? If not, what changes will you make?

Make it memorable.

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One of the best books that I’ve started reading¹ this year is Made to Stick, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.  The thrust of the book is that ideas that are memorable share certain common features.  By learning those features, you can make your own ideas more “sticky.”  The six principles that the Heath brothers identified are:

1.  Simplicity
2.  Unexpectedness
3. Concreteness
4.  Credibility
5.  Emotions
6.  Stories

Read more about these principles and see illustrations (ranging from urban legends to important consumer health warnings) in an excerpt from the book here.

Made to Stick should certainly be required reading for litigators, but all of us need to make ideas memorable.  And what’s delightful about the concept of stickiness is that it’s an easy and enjoyable read that will pay quick dividends largely because the concepts (once identified) are rather intuitive.

Footnote 1: You might wonder why I’m recommending a book that I’ve started to read but haven’t yet finished.  That’s because I was reading it while on a business trip.  When I was packing for my flight home, I knew I needed to review some papers and so I packed Made to Stick in my checked luggage.  Big mistake.  My luggage was somehow mistagged when I left Richmond (even though I watched the Delta agent tag the bag) and I got the runaround when I tried to track it down in Atlanta.  Very long story short, it’s now been 15 days and there’s no sign of my luggage.  I’d be delighted to bellyache about this further (there’s plenty of grist for that particular mill!) but suffice it to say that I’ll have to pick up another copy before I can finish reading the book.

Tuesday shorts: 10/16/07

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Today’s shorts are very, very short.

Email interpretation:  We’ve come to rely on email as a quick and easy way to get a message across.  Quicker than voicemail and an easy way to create a record, we use email for everything from assignments to news to forwarding jokes.   David Giacalone of f/k/a offers commentary on a recent New York Time op-ed piece by emotional and social intelligence author Daniel Goleman titled E-Mail is Easy to Write (and to Misread).  Goleman describes neuroscience-based evidence that email lacks the emotional cues that keep us on track in face-to-face or telephone conversation.  As a result, Goleman writes, “we tend to misinterpret positive e-mail messages as more neutral, and neutral ones as more negative, than the sender intended. Even jokes are rated as less funny by recipients than by senders.”  The discussion is an interesting one, especially because, as Giacalone points out, written materials have always lacked emotional cues, and the primary difference may be the speed and limited attention we pay to writing emails.  Bottom line: be aware of missing context when you write emails and when you read them.

And Matt Homann of the [non]billable hour offers 9 success tips that underlie 25 Ways to Find a Client, based on a post by Dumb Little Man on 25 ways to get a date offline.  The tips are easy, simple, and just plain good ideas for living, such as, “Have a simple goal of making new friends. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Seek to find a great friend and see where things lead.”  Dumb Little Man isn’t so dumb.

I’ve also been intending to link to a Law Practice Today article about Matt Homann, specifically his Mini-Manifestos with 15 rules for clients and 17 rules for lawyers.  Practice would be much simpler and better for both lawyers and clients if everyone could apply these rules.  Examples?

For clients: 5.  You want to buy results, not time. Most lawyers sell time, not results. Make sure you both understand the difference before your first bill arrives. You will certainly understand the difference after.
6.  If you want to find a lawyer who sells results, look hard. There are a few of them out there. They are the ones who can still smile because they get to see their children before 9:00 at night.

For lawyers: 9.  Your clients will always know their business better than you do. They may even know the law better than you. Make sure to seek their advice before giving yours.
11.  Your clients have wants. Your clients have needs. They often don’t know the difference.

Practice skills: resilience (part 2 — the strategies)

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As promised in Wednesday’s post on resilience, today’s topic is how to be resilient in the face of challenges and adverse events.

I recently worked with a client who tended to get stuck in things that had gone wrong or felt like slights to her. For instance, after opposing counsel accused her of acting in bad faith in the course of a discovery dispute, she found it difficult to pull herself out of that and wanted to over-correct to demonstrate the good faith that permeates her practice. She felt personally attacked, and she felt defensive and angry. Critically, she experienced great stress in dealing with that lawyer and was concerned that her feelings could compromise her representation of her client. After some probing, we came to the conclusion that developing resilience would help her to move through those stages with greater ease. Here are some of the steps we worked through that resulted in a substantial shift in her ability to recover quickly from adverse occurrences.

1. Examine the event and assess what’s really going on. In this example, was opposing counsel offering valid feedback, or was he attempting to knock her off her game to gain advantage? Is there a third possibility? Was my client exhibiting bad faith?  (And if the upsetting event had been a mistake my client made, the task here would be to determine what caused the mistake — miscommunication, undue hurry, etc.) This reality check leads directly to step 2…

2. Put the event in “proper perspective.”  My client concluded that opposing counsel, known for trying to provoke litigation opponents through accusation and displays of anger, made his assertion because he calculated that it would draw her attention away from the case. Given that conclusion, ruminating on the accusation and bending over backward to prove it untrue would give the event more energy than it deserved. More importantly, such behavior could damage the representation and harm the client’s interest. Analytically, then, it made no sense for my client to continue to be upset or to react to the accusation. But it still hurt.

3. Self-reflection.  My client checked in with what she knew to be true. She knew that she was not acting in bad faith. She knew that she seeks to act and speak in integrity, and she knew that she had done so in this instance.

4. Acknowledge the reaction and then choose the response, and/or shift the emotional energy.  Emotions are what they are. They’re neither good nor bad. My client was hurt and upset by the situation, and it was important that she acknowledge that. Having done so, she then had the choice of whether to respond from the hurt and upset or to rely on what she’d uncovered in steps 1-3 and to respond from that knowledge. In other words, she applied problem-solving skills to determine what would be most effective.


In other situations where there’s no actual response appropriate (for instance, if a lawyer has been trying to develop business and is told no by a prospective client), the best action is likely to shift the emotional energy by asking what else is true. Does the “no” mean this lawyer is incompetent? That he’ll never get other business? Probably not. After acknowledging the disappointment, the lawyer can recognize that he’s been retained by other clients and has done well for them, perhaps shift to a sense of gratitude for those clients and that experience, and shift the emotional energy.

These steps facilitate dealing with whatever has happened by (1) acknowledging the event, its cause, and its impact and (2) responding to the event effectively rather than getting stuck in it.  That’s resilience, and that’s a key skill for lawyers.

Practice skill: resilience (part 1)

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I recently ran across a post by Ruthie on Ruthie’s Law inquiring, “Are you tough enough?”  Ruthie suggests that:

The most successful lawyers are the ones who can accept that occassionally making mistakes is the price of progression, pick themselves up, move on and vow not to make the same mistake again. The most successful of all are the ones who can make the same mistake a second time, pick themselves up and move on (although if you make the same mistake more than twice, you may want to ask yourself if you were really paying attention before).

Her post responds to this one by Dan Hull of What About Clients? that argues that lawyers naturally lack resilience but must acquire it to be effective in practice and in the business of practicing law.  Dan posits that

We lawyers are, in the main, natural-born weenies and squirrels. We are great people. But we sweat small stuff–part of our job, of course–and we over-react. We have amazingly poor defenses to each day’s hard knocks and battles.

. . .

However, without even doing an empirical study, it’s obvious to me that lawyer “over-sensitivity” is a huge problem in our lawyer worlds and workplaces. Our reactions to the sum of small bad stuff prevents us from doing the big stuff or from doing it well. This hurts us as people. But way more importantly, it hurts your client: the main event.

And, for the sake of completeness, Dan’s post was prompted by Mark Bennett‘s post on Resiliency, in which he responds to a post by Ed Poll arguing that lawyers “can’t sell” because they lack resiliency.  Mark, who writes the blog Defending People: The Art and Science of Criminal Defense Trial Lawyering, convincingly excludes lack of resilience as an attribute of criminal defense lawyers.

I find this conversation fascinating and worth some exploration.  My first question is, as usual, is it true that lawyers (as a group) lack resilience?  Whether it’s true as a generalization is much less important than whether it’s true for a particular lawyer, in my view.  And if it’s true for someone, the reason why it’s true is much less important than devising a method for that person to increase his or her capacity for resilience.

So, how can a lawyer choose resilience in the face of a challenge?  Rather than make this post one of mammoth proportions, I’ll provide some strategies on resilience on Friday… So check back!

Tuesday shorts: 10/9/07

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A few things from the last week that deserve to be highlighted…

Bruce MacEwen of Adam Smith, Esq. offers a fascinating interview with Bruce Stachenfeld of Duval & Stachenfeld, a New York-based firm that’s made the news recently with its unusual compensation plan.  The firm pays first-year lawyers $60,000 and calls them “opportunity associates.”  The pay goes to $80,000 after 9 months and then increases semi-annually in $10,000 increments.  After 2 years (and sometimes earlier) successful associates are promoted to “full associate” level, at which point the pay is equivalent to Cravath’s pay plus $10,000.  The Adam Smith interview offers the back story on how the program came to be and how it’s working.  Fascinating.

Steve Seckler of Counsel to Counsel reminds lawyers that “success in the legal profession means having the ability to generate work and the best place to look for work in the future is by keeping up the relationship with existing clients today.”  Cultivate those relationships!

Current or recent job-seekers have no doubt dealt with the question of what constitutes an appropriate writing sample.  Eugene Volokh of  The Volokh Conspiracy started an interesting conversation about the Ethics of Writing Samples recently, springing from a junior associate’s question about what can be used as a sample without requesting the firm’s permission (and thus tipping the job-search news).  The comments touch on ethics, copyright law, opinions drafted by law clerks and their use as writing samples, and more.  As one commenter observed, “what I find interesting is that people cling strongly to conflicting opinions. In practice, this seems to mean that whatever an applicant does is likely to result in a significant percentage of employers eliminating him for it, even though other employers would have eliminated him for not doing it. Wonderful!”

And Orin Kerr, also of The Volokh Conspiracy, posted Fewer Women Seeking Law Degrees,which cites an article from The National Law Journal reporting that the percentage of women in law school has declined each year since 2002.  While the drop isn’t precipitous (46.9% this year as opposed to 49% in 2002), it is significant.  The article speculates that “fewer women want a lawyer’s life.”  The comments spin off into a discussion of legal “jerkiness,” including which gender exhibits more of it and who will and won’t tolerate it in others.