Yours, Mine and Ours: Why Clients Benefit From Deep Relationships With Their Law Firms

Ed Poll, who writes LawBiz Blog, makes some interesting points about succession planning in his July 20 post, Keeping Clients After A Lawyer Retires.  Among the many valuable points Ed raises are:

- Have the rainmakers introduce younger partners to their client contacts
- Build teams around the top 20 clients, and to let the client know they have a team.
- Actively start cross-selling the top 20 clients. For more info see Larry Bodine's webinar: Best Practices Of Cross Marketing and Selling New Services To Clients.

I would add to this list.  First, merely introducing younger partners to clients is not enough.  Younger partners need to be featured, given opportunities to excel for the client and then “bragged on” by the senior partner.  If the senior partner doesn’t show respect, trust and admiration for the younger partner, why should the client?  Second, I believe the client should be involved in the discussion.  Many of the rainmakers don’t want to suggest to the client that they won’t be there to service the client.  But the fact is that the clients themselves think about how deep a firm’s bench is, what would happen if the senior partner became unavailable, etc.  They view the issue as a business problem and I think it benefits the relationship to let clients know you are thinking about their needs beyond any specific case.  Finally, I think everyone in the firm needs to know who the “successor” is for any given client. Some choices might be difficult ones, but any issues regarding the choice are better addressed when the rainmaker is still around to resolve them.

Its clear how this approach benefits the law firm: the loss of a major client cuts deep, particularly for smaller firms.  But why is this important from the client's perspective?  How much institutional knowledge has the client already paid for?  What would the cost be to replace that knowledge?  In some niche practices, there may not be a real alternative.  It is as much in the client's interest as it is in the law firm's interest to have a plan to cover anticipated departures as well as unanticipated ones.  McDonald's lost two CEO's to sudden death or illness in one year.  It happens, and there is no excuse to be caught short.