Building and maintaining relationships for law firms in London during this hardship

 

At present, there are countless law firms in London that are decreasing their work operations while we all work through this new COVID-19 landscape. It’s a hard time for solo and small law firm lawyers that until lately had fabulous plans for this year, but that doesn’t mean everything has to stop for their practice. There is some very crucial work you can keep doing even if your doors aren’t completely open. For instance, today is the most perfect time to concentrate on building and improving your client relationships.

Though their operations may be closed for quite some time, they shouldn’t stop building relationships with existing clients or seeking out relationships with fresh ones. How they treat their clients (especially right now!) will become a major part of the reputation and will influence their work for years to come. Here are three steps that they can take today to get the ball rolling.

1.       Revisit past discussions

With this newly available free time, now is the best time to revisit and review the ways you do things. Exactly, take a look at the history of messages (emails, texts, phone calls, in-person meetings) you’ve had with your past and present clients. Go through everything and take a careful look at how you’ve presented yourself so far.

·         Are you following the right tone from the beginning?

·         Are you defining the rules and expectations for the relationship?

·         Did you highlight how and when your clients should get from you?

·         Do you appear knowledgeable?

·         Did you react in a timely fashion?

If you don’t like what you find or if something doesn’t match with your standards or goalposts, begin developing a fresh client communication policy that you can start using right away.

2.       Personal communication

It’s quite easy for a possible client to fall out of communication, even more during the present state of the globe. This doesn’t always mean you’re being overlooked or that they’re no longer absorbed. Odds are that their priorities have been (rightly) rearranged.

You won’t pass a line by sending them a personal note, email or call, but it should be the appropriate kind of message. Now is not the time to put any burden on clients to make decisions. Rather today is the time to reach out with a message of understanding and concern. To make sure that they are alight and doing so as a friend, not their lawyer.

3.       Think about accommodations

In most of the law firms in London, a large number of decisions are taken on a case-by-case basis. No two cases are undistinguishable and most are custom built to some level, and that can make it feasible to find ways to customize a project to a client.

For any business, embracing each client can quickly get complex. That’s why it’s necessary to plan in advance when it comes to making accommodations. Have a plan so if this discussion comes up you’ll be totally loaded with options. If you get the repetitive feedback from a lot of clients and everyone is asking for housings then you can execute some of those changes lastingly.