your highest income producer or your best non-lawyer if they don’t believe in client loyalty. I have done it and never regretted it. You should couple a client loyalty program with quality assurance standards and hold people accountable. In my firm, for example, every client is talked to once every sixty days and receives an update letter every thirty days. Sound impossible? Absolutely not. I have a program designed that shows me the case name, status of the case, and the last time an attorney talked to the client, and the last time the case manager talked to the client. They are required to have a 95% or better success rate. If they don’t, they are given thirty days to pull it into line and if not, they receive a written warning with the consequences spelled out. I tied bonuses in my firm directly to client service. Only you can decide where to spend your marketing dollars. And only you can decide the return on your investment. I have often said that my name is my most valuable asset and my marketing program keeps my name out in front as one who puts his clients first. The return on this investment is immeasurable! THE FINAL CAVEAT The rules and the thought process sound simple but it truly requires the top leadership to define the program for the rest of the firm. You have to make a client loyalty program non-negotiable with respect to continue employment with your firm. If you allow one person for any reason whatsoever to not be accountable, it simply will not work because your other remaining employees will know you do not truly believe in the program. I went to great lengths to implement my client loyalty philosophy in all aspects of my firm including having a Client Advocate available for dissatisfied or concerned clients, creating, and living by a Client Bill of Rights, and utilizing High- Performance Training Classes for law firms to teach people how to be people persons. I quit hiring non-lawyers based on legal experience but rather based on ATTITUDE not aptitude. I did not allow ego driven attorneys in my firm. I did pre- hire testing, and I did annual yearly profile testing to see how our people could improve. The return on the investment – essentially free marketing through client loyalty – is truly priceless. In closing, I would have to tell you one other side benefit – the unexpected one. Because we were a true client-first firm, our work culture changed. We attracted the best of the best and we had a waiting list of people wanting to work with us. It is because we were allowing our people and our clients to establish relationships that give mutual satisfaction to each other.
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