Some law departments find that wily clients, having been rebuffed by one lawyer from something they would like to do, shop around for another, more compliant, lawyer. Such forum shopping adds to the workload of a department, creates inconsistent advice, shifts the opportunity to give guidance from the most knowledgeable…
Cargill’s Law Department, according to a GC Roundtable report, asks clients not about their level of satisfaction with performance but instead “seeks to uncover the areas where the law department adds the greatest value – currently and in the future.” If clients can rank the activities of their law department…
When you ask your clients to assess your department, ask them not only to evaluate performance on a set of attributes but also to rank those attributes by importance. The more important the attribute – such as timeliness, understanding of the law, responsiveness – the more the clients expect good…
At a retreat a year ago, I learned about an arrangement that deserves mention. According to one of the lawyers at the retreat, the American Red Cross law department has chosen one person from each of its major client groups to be a member of what they call a “think…
An audit review of Austin, Texas’ Law Department conducted a client satisfaction survey. [http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/auditor] The analysis stratified the respondents into those who reported directly to the City Council and those who reported to the City Manager. The City Attorney reports to the City Manager, and in the two measures of…
A recently-published survey shows how employees of Austin, Texas, clients of the City’s Law Department, felt about the timeliness of the Department’s services and whether those services met their needs. [http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/auditor]. If that were all the survey showed, little would deserve note. But the survey broke clients by their frequency…
Ten percent of the Europe law departments who responded to a survey in 2003 had such a procedure. [www.practicallaw.com/A28843, pg. 2]. Clients of those departments had a defined outlet for performance or personnel complaints. Having never heard of a U.S. counterpart, I was interested that under these mechanisms clients can…
A survey conducted two years ago among European law departments (with median revenue of $1.8 billion) found that 46 percent of them used “standards of service,” which “commonly set out in more detail the aims expressed in the mission statement and relate to client care or administrative system issues. They…
At a retreat for a multinational’s law department, I learned of two law departments that followed a two-part service standard: (1) acknowledge all calls from clients within 24 hours and (2) if any document or advice slips behind schedule more than 24 hours, call the client My client adopted this…
Lawyers at McGuire Woods described a useful approach in Counsel to Counsel (March 2005 at pg. 22) A law department should gather key personnel from critical areas such as compliance, research, legal, sales and marketing. Divide those participants into cross-functional teams and give each team a case study regarding a…