Debut of guest author, Bruce Heintz, as Outside Looking In

Law Department Management Blog welcomes as a guest author leading law-firm consultant Bruce Heintz. Bruce has written five posts which will appear in the next few days. Each begins with a pithy quote from a GC that raises a particular law department management issue. Next, Bruce asks readers a question regarding the issue and closes with his observations.

“When We Squeal, They Try to Make Us Happy”

… exclaimed the GC, complimenting the relationship partner from one of the company’s primary law firms. But do law firms, in general, respond quickly and emphatically enough to a law department’s concerns and complaints?

The relationship partner’s job, in addition to providing expert legal advice, is to keep clients satisfied and loyal. This means looking for trouble by periodically quizzing members of his/her firm’s client team, asking law department members “how’re we doing,” scheduling formal sit-downs with the GC and others, and even engaging a third party to conduct client satisfaction interviews.

And acquiring the client satisfaction feedback is only the beginning: the real test is how the relationship partner responds with actionable, remedial solutions that engage the law department to partner with the law firm to achieve implementation for the mutual benefit of both.