“Get closer than ever to your customer. So close, in fact, that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves”
Steve Jobs
I once moderated a panel of four in-house general counsels on “What GCs Want in a Changing World.”
The comments were enlightening on how relationships that build business are developed and how those relationships enhance the firm’s reputation. This blog has ten valuable takeaways from the session:
- Become knowledgeable about the client’s business and industry, but more importantly, know the client’s priorities.
- Use technology to make a G.C.’s job easier by helping them filter the clutter.
- Control costs with technology (e.g., video conferencing), but also appreciate the value of occasional face-to-face meetings. Recognizing how technology can allow time shifting by having video conference calls where travel would make it more challenging to schedule is an example.
- Inform clients of changes within the firm that might affect the firm’s ability to perform. Clearly, team disruption is a significant negative, particularly when the client finds out indirectly.
- Focus on becoming a source of stability and reliability. That observation may be the most important one we all need to burn into our memories.
- Offer value-added services that are not billed, e.g., C.L.E.
- Find the right balance of alternative billing arrangements. As one G.C. put it, “Billable hours are a tool for estimating, not the end-all billing policy.”
- Appreciate the global implications of what a client does and advise accordingly, e.g., dealing with data privacy and security differences in the U.S. and Europe.
- Be brief in communications but avoid an immediate response at the expense of adequate deliberation. One G.C. noted that everyone seems too quick to communicate, becoming driven by email and immediacy when requests are better answered with due deliberation that identifies the issues and suggests actual solutions.
- Recognize that relationships are about the work product and the iterative working process. Every GC expects surprises in their daily practice but not from their law firms.
