Everything clients want from a law firm….

Have you ever thought that everything clients want from a law firm are things that our fee earner want from the Legal IT dept.?

I hadn’t thought of it this way until a colleague raised a number of points that were raised by some senior people from large global organisations at a recent conference.

"We want consistent service from a global service provider, even if it isn’t in the home market, we still want the same good service in a distant geography"

"We want a legal services team that really knows our business"

"Don’t do what we tell you, do what we need"

“We don’t want academic legal answers, we want relevant business explanations and solutions”

Change the wording slightly.

"We want consistent service from the central IT dept., even if it isn’t in our office, we still want the same good service in a distant geography"

"We want a legal IT team that really knows our business"

"Don’t do what we tell you, do what we need"

“We don’t want technical answers, we want relevant business explanations and solutions”

Makes sense doesn’t it!

Now I’ve been pondering how to sum this post up. Is there an answer to all the problems of delivering a great service in those points raised? I couldn’t come up with a nice black and white answer, but then maybe this is a case of a problem shared is a problem solved?

p.s. thanks must go to my colleague in Asia for this post, the points are plagiarised from him. cheers Andy!

Share

3 thoughts on “Everything clients want from a law firm….”

  1. Jason,
    I triple what your colleague Andy pointed out! In fact I think you can take it a step farther and extend the concept to fees. Law firm management wants from its IT Dept and its vendors: excellent quality work, completed on deadline, for a predictable budget. So… AFAs for clients are not a new way of thinking; they are in fact exactly what law firm management itself expects from everyone else.

  2. Playing off of Ayelette’s point, we (Legal IT) use project management in order to deliver projects on time and within budget. When the scope of a project changes we renegotiate the deliverables. When it looks like we can’t hit a milestone we discuss it with our clients. LPM is not a new way of thinking, it is in fact what law firm management expects from everyone else.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.