Attorneys are a lot like strippers. The world is all about our client until the bill is paid…..

I can across a post on a very well respected legal marketing blog called Legal Marketing Blog.com. The title of the blog was “How Convenient is it for Clients and Prospects to Reach You?”. The blog makes the common sense point that in pretty much any profession, the easier you are for your clients to access you the more goodwill you build resulting in greater client retention and referrals. Makes good sense right? Of course right!

What I found humorous was the attempt to lay out these principals to the legal profession. The proposition that attorneys will read this and change the way they do business was very intriguing to me and contradictory to what every legal bone in my body tells me after 20 years. In fact, there is about as much chance of that as there is any validity to my untested theory that I can go backwards in time by putting my auto up on cylinder blocks and going in reverse at full speed…

It is a time tested and well accepted position that 98 percent of attorneys don’t give a shit about who can get a hold of them and for the most part actually go to great lengths to keep people from getting a hold of them unless of course the person is calling about their unpaid bill or the call will generate a substantial billable rate. If the call will not generate a fee you have as much chance of talking to the attorney as Johnny Cochrane rising from the dead. Client goodwill is something only mused about in terms of what you could have done after the client has told you to F*** off and/or files a grievance with the State Bar. Not that you will learn anything when you send the next client’s call to voicemail.

The golden rule from what I have seen is that a client is just a means to an end with no form substance or history unless a payment is late or a trial is about to start…. Other than that all phone calls are unnecessary time wasting annoyances. Client service is for sales people. We attorneys are not sales people; we are highly educated and skilled professionals who are above client service small talk. You come to us for results, dog us when we don’t get them and forget about us after we come through. Doesn’t this justify the fact that I don’t give a shit about you the client? Right? Of course right!

I know solo and small firm attorney’s who have taken so many cases beyond their ability to provide client service that the only way you will get a hold of them is to impersonate a judge or an investigator from the State Bar of Texas. In my 20 years, there have been 4 times where I looked at a practice and predicted that an attorney would be sanctioned by the State Bar in some form within a few years. I was right each time. It was not rocket science in each case, the attorney absolutely did not give a shit about any of his clients other than getting a check. They avoided client calls, didn’t return calls, full voicemail’s etc etc. The ” if” was easy. It was only a question of when…..

Lawyers at large firms often don’t give a shit about their client any more than small or solo firms but they are able to do better damage control because they have people they pay to give a shit and to tell them when they’re not giving a shit is about to cost them money such as more work from the client or the referral of a new client.

Small firm and solo attorneys lose out the worst because they they don’t give a shit to the same extent as big firm attorneys but they generally do not have any “I don’t give a shit” damage control procedures in place. They therefore don’t find out that the “I don’t give a shit” philosophy has cost them until they are fired. They also get hit with the double “I don’t give a shit” whammy when they are fired and the client bad mouths them. Obviously referrals are not forthcoming from pissed off clients….

Large firms generally have enough “I don’t give shit” buffers in place that the client may never realize that his/her attorney does not give a shit.

In my experience, do you know what the solo and small firm response to this problem is? You guessed it….

“I don’t give a shit”

Are there excellent kick-ass client service oriented attorneys out there at small firms and large? Of course there are. I know many. There are however also a ton of attorneys out there. In my experience the “I don’t give shits” far outnumber the “kick ass” and they are not reading legal marketing blogs… Why? You guessed it!

THEY DONT GIVE A SHIT