There’s No Sure Thing
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.
