This issue is about client relations, and I want to start somewhere most people wouldn't: the front desk.
As some of you know, my very first job in this field, at a different law firm than the one I lead today, was as a receptionist. That firm represented corporate clients, not individuals, so the calls looked different than they would at a personal injury practice. Still, I answered the phones. I greeted everyone who walked through our doors. I was often the very first voice or face someone encountered when they called or visited, whether it was general counsel checking on a matter or a business partner trying to get in touch with the office manager.
Nobody trained me to think of that as client relations. Nobody had to. It was obvious, even then, that how I answered the phone or how professionally and warmly I greeted someone in our lobby could shape whether that person trusted the firm enough to keep working with us.
That job taught me something I've carried through every role since, all the way to COO. Client relations doesn't start with the attorney. It starts with whoever picks up the phone.
Every single person in a law firm or legal organization, whether they touch a file or not, is part of client relations. The receptionist. The paralegal. The billing coordinator. The person who mails the closing documents. If we only teach relationship-building to the lawyers, we've missed most of the people with whom our clients actually interact.
So, we teach it. We talk about tone. We talk about follow-up. We talk about what it means to make someone feel heard, especially on what might be the worst day of their life.
Here's something I still do, even now that my calendar is packed with ALA responsibilities on top of running a firm. I respond to every voicemail. Every e-mail. Every LinkedIn message. Not because I have the time. I don't really. I do it because you never know when that relationship will pay off.
If we only teach relationship-building to the lawyers, we've missed most of the people with whom our clients actually interact.
The person who reached out about something small today might be a referral source tomorrow. A business partner. A future employee. A colleague at another firm who calls you for advice or gives you a piece of advice you desperately need. Nearly everyone around you could be a client, or something even more valuable than a client, if you treat the relationship like it matters before you know why it will.
I've come to believe that the most transactional relationships in our profession are usually helped along by the real ones underneath them. A client doesn't sign with a firm because of a contract. They sign because someone made them feel like a person and not a file number.
That's what Edgar Guest was getting at, I think, even if he wasn't writing about the legal industry in 1915. Strangers become friends. And in our world, friends often become the reason a firm survives another year.
Teach your whole team that. Start at the front desk — it's where I did.
