Recently, an in-house counsel told me, “Our law firms are spoiled and dull - I want to shake things up.” If ever a clue was dropped about retention, this was it. Yet there were no outside counsel within hearing distance. When asked about what he expected from his firms, he told me that he hated to be surprised by a problem that an outside lawyer already knew about. He expected more responsiveness and information from his firms and their lawyers.

I asked about the internal pressures he and his colleagues are under and if he shared these with his outside firms. The response was, “they don’t ask, and many of them who earn lots of money from us, don’t even get our business.”

Lawyers and marketing leadership, start asking, start learning, start communicating more. Client retention is certainly based on high quality work and cost management. But you must initiate a more active communications effort to keep the relationship going.

Clients come up with the darndest questions. A recent prospect put off retaining us since they were already assembling a list of current and recent clients. And then he called and asked, “What do we do now?” Validating the real potential is the first step, not assembling the list. For each prospect, I suggested asking questions such as:
1. How would you define the current relationship?
2. What is the client’s satisfaction level with your work? Can you be sure?
3. Do you know what activities are considered important by your client? And how would they rank you?
4. Before approaching the client, does your relationship need reinforcing?
5. What internal pressures are on your client?
6. Who is the real final decision maker on your retention?
7. What other firms does the client use and how do you stack up?
There are many more questions but once they are answered fully, the pursuit and closing of new work can move along rapidly.

I’ll let you know how this client fares.