Treat Clients Well

Beverly Michaelis, of the Oregon State Bar Professional Liability fund, blogged about key strategies to improve your client relations and service. Her advice: "T-R-E-A-T Clients Well".
T - Timeliness
R - Responsiveness
E - Empathy
A - Assurance
T – Tangibles

Communicating well, being able to listen to what your clients are saying, hearing what they are asking, and responding accordingly, will lead to success. If your clients don't have the experience they expected, they may unfairly believe you have not done your job.

Everyone Makes Mistakes

There have been a lot of headlines in the news lately about people making mistakes, which proves once again that no one is perfect.  Making mistakes is part of being human, and lawyers, just as everyone else, make them.

Lawyers’ practices are filled with plenty of opportunity for error: important deadlines and events are missed due to miss-calendaring, conflicts of interest are missed due to manual conflict checks, important documents are misplaced, etc. All of these mistakes can lead to malpractice suits and other problems.

When a mistake does occur, it is important to take responsibility, tell your client what happened and apologize. Trying to cover it up, blaming others or acting defensive will only make the situation worse.

It’s also important to have policies in place to prevent mistakes from turning into crises. A prime example of a policy to limit mistakes is performing a conflict of interest check before you take on any new case. If not performed (or not performed correctly), taking on a case you shouldn’t can lead you to lose a client, be forced to return retainer fees, waste countless hours of time and be sued for malpractice.

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If you have a website that’s not getting sufficient visibility and new clients, we can help. Visit www.abacuslaw.com or call 800-726-3339. You’ll be glad you did.