Understanding the objectives of clients

Geoff Wild New 146x219What will make your clients relish the opportunity to work with you again: content or delivery? Geoff Wild considers the issues.

“The closer we can get to understanding our clients' objectives, the better the service we will offer”

Both the content of a piece of work and how that work is delivered to the client are of great significance. If you had to choose between the two, to say which was the most important, what would you say?  

Most clients would say that delivery was more important than content, whereas most lawyers would say that content was more important than delivery.  

What this highlights once again is that lawyers and clients sometimes have different objectives and often see things from markedly different angles.  

The closer you can get to understanding your clients' objectives, the better the service you will offer. An improved service is likely to be used more often and may even justify a premium rate of charge.  

The client is happy, your business is happy and the individual lawyers involved are happier too. Isn't that a result worth striving for?  

Clients need advice they can use. Usable advice is targeted, timely and relevant. The style of delivery, the timing of delivery and to whom the advice is delivered are genuinely more likely to be important to a client than whether every last point has been addressed, or whether the report fits the house style, or contains every single relevant case law reference.  

By focusing mainly on content you can undoubtedly meet the client’s required service standards and the bill may even be paid without question. But have you exploited every opportunity to add and create value? Has the service been genuinely in tune with the client's needs? Has it made the client relish the opportunity to work with you again?

Geoff Wild is chief executive of Invicta Law.