Why Corporate Law Firms Need a Client Value Team by Allison Nussbaum
T
he core function of a client value (or client success) team in a software company is to ensure that clients receive ongoing and lasting value from the product and services they have purchased. As the leader of a client value team, I see it as understanding the client’s success criteria (objectives), desired outcomes, tolerance for risk, communications preferences, and more. In the software environment, we have well-defined processes for onboarding new clients and users, and for evaluating client value along the lifecycle of the client relationship. For years, I have wondered why most law firms do not engage this way with their clients.
Takeaways from 2022 Legal Marketing Events Recently, I attended the Thomson Reuters Institute Marketing Partner Forum, the Legal Marketing Association Annual Conference, and the virtual LMA Tech West Conference. These conferences are where law firm marketing, innovation, and business development professionals gather to learn about and discuss best practices from leading thinkers and visionaries in the legal industry. Not surprisingly, I was drawn to sessions focused on technology and client service. There were several stand-out sessions that took me back to this idea of law firm client value teams.
Shifting Client Expectations Require a Different Model I heard repeatedly that the general expectation is that lawyers will handle all aspects of the client relationship. They do so while practicing law, serving on committees, and developing new business. This is an unsustainable model and has been for decades. It was born in a time when the demands of practicing law were different—and most importantly, so too were client expectations. Today’s clients want law firms to provide much more than they did even five years ago: matter budgets, practice innovation, status reporting, and more. None of these services were a regular part of the typical corporate lawyer’s day. Now, they are the norm. Marketing, IT, and knowledge management departments work hard to find technology solutions to solve all of the clients’ needs; however, given all that is on the lawyers’ plates, adoption can be problematic.
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Attorney Journals Orange County | Volume 195, 2022
Delivering Client-Centric Service At the same time, expectations for innovation have grown, and firms are being evaluated on their ability to deliver truly clientcentric service. At a base level, they want to know that their legal fees are being invested into programs and processes that benefit them (the client). I suspect that most lawyers in firms do not think about client value in this way; to them, value is measured by the result they obtain for the client. In recent years, we have seen an increase in law firms hiring business professionals to handle the business of law. There are now chief client officers, chief innovation officers, and chief content officers—this is a great start, but it still leaves most of the client relationship work in the hands of the lawyers. In my experience, most firms believe that they are client-centric, but when push comes to shove, without a dedicated and focused investment in the client experience, they are likely to fall short of their clients’ expectations.
A New Paradigm: The Client Value Team Given all this, is it time to change that paradigm? Is it time to put the day-to-day work of managing client experience into the hands of professionals who are trained to do so? I submit that the answer is yes. Perhaps the vision for the modern law firm should be for lawyers to be subject matter experts in their areas of practice or industries. Leave the management of clients to professionals whose role is to ensure that clients are receiving the greatest value possible from their firms. Of course, this is a hard sell—I am well aware that many lawyers believe they can and should do everything for every client. There are law firms that have embraced elements of client value teams and their programs are extremely successful. The goal should be to better understand the client’s world— from how they approach their business objectives to the internal pressures they manage—and determine how the firm can partner with them to achieve their business and legal goals.
How to Organize the Team The ideal situation is to have a dedicated client value team reporting to a Chief Client Officer.
