When you are working in the legal world, you will come across a variety of clients from a variety of industries. If you have a client that is working their business throughout the globe, they need to be aware of all of the local laws that may be different in different parts of the world. These will be different laws that they need to adhere to as they navigate their business. This will be part of your job, as your firm would be the one guiding them through their business building strategies and any contractual obligations.
When you have a client that is working in different countries around the world, the experience that you give them has to be second to none. If they are shipping products around the world, for example, there will be limits on the weight of pallets that they can send, and it will be your job to advise them on what those limits are, which type of industrial shipping scale can be used, and whether or not they are meeting all of their legal obligations when shipping worldwide. There is a lot of red tape to get through, but you need to ensure that you are offering your clients the best possible experience. Below, we have four of the main issues that clients deal with when working with traditional law firms that they do not like. Avoid these, and you will be on your way to a solidified client relationship.
Don’t make your clients repeat information. If your client has discussed certain shipping information with you, or they have discussed which countries they would like to bring their business into, take note. Your client doesn’t want to have to keep repeating the plans to you, which means you need to be organised and you need to listen to what they have to say. Topics are often sensitive to certain legal matters, and the client can really get upset if you have to continue to tell the story over and over again.
You’re not communicating. Your legal firm needs to make sure that they put their client first, and if there are changes in the law in certain countries around the world your client is going to need to know about it if it impacts the business. Did you know that it takes over 40% of law firms around 3 to 4 days to get back to their clients? These law firms are not high performing, and you need to make sure that you are offering that high performance and that your clients want to recommend your firm to others.
A lack of transparency with payments. For the services that you gave your clients, they are going to pay you for those. You want to make sure that they have accurate invoices to be able to meet all of your requests for your payment. Clients will get annoyed with paper bills asking them to write checks. Make sure that you are all transparent about your fees from the very beginning, as this will make for a much more fruitful relationship.
You are not easy to communicate with. Every single law firm knows that clients will have different preferences when it comes to communication. Some would like to email, some would like a phone call, it doesn’t matter how people would like to communicate, you need to make sure that you are available. If you have clients with businesses that are worldwide, you need to also make sure that you set boundaries and you have an agreed time to talk. Different time zones require more attention to detail.