Role of social media in the transformation of the legal industry

Social media has transformed the way people communicate and network. It has become a part of the daily routine for most of the individuals today. The number of individuals using social media is increasing by leaps and bounds and so is the case with businesses as well. However, the degree to which legal professionals have embraced social media remains unclear.  It is noticed that the industry has changed its mindset and is using these new networking tools.  A recent survey about the use of social media marketing in the legal industry by LexisNexis reveals that 81 % of the respondents have already used social media marketing while another 10.1% of respondents say they plan on utilizing social media for marketing within the next six months.

It is not only marketing which is being influenced by social media but it is used in litigation also to get hold of evidences which may be important in deciding the facts of a case. In recent past, social media evidences have been a key part in hundreds of cases. It has helped in determining the mental state of a person, evidence of place and location etc. The civil procedure rules, the litigation rules in England and Wales outline that electronic documents which can be demanded can include instant messages and material from social networking sites. 

Lawyers are using social networking platforms to strengthen their professional network, get latest industry updates and to keep a vigil on what can affect their clients’ interest. Professional networking site LinkedIn has hundreds of groups where lawyers join and network with like minded people. There are groups exclusively for in house lawyers, general counsels and other legal professionals where non lawyers are not allowed to join. Mobile applications on smartphones are also playing an important role. Lawyers find themselves more comfortable using their thumbs instead using all their fingers on keyboards.

Increasing competition always gives an edge to the consumers. With the introduction of Legal Services Act the competition is set to rise. Those who are not using social media must think about changing their mindsets and be open for networking through different channels of communication as change is the need of the hour for survival. Be it any legislative change or any major happening in the legal industry it spreads like fire in the forest and all because of the impact of social media in our day to day life. No doubt it has become an inseparable part of the marketing strategies of not only law firms but for all the businesses.

Is Client Retention a Real Dilemma?

I recently got an opportunity to present a webinar on “Client Retention – A Dilemma” and it was amazing to see the feedback of the attendees. I got good feedbacks and bundle of questions in my inbox the next day. Few of them stated that they know about the good client retention strategies. However, most of them were not sure about the outcome of their strategies and were confused whether they go with the ‘X’ or ‘Y’ or may be look for the ‘Z’.

Before presenting the webinar I too got lost for sometime, it was tough to pick a good strategy and tag it as “best” keeping in mind the business need. Client retention strategies sometimes are like choosing the best option at random and praying that it works for you. And if that doesn’t work, you end up seeing yourself in profound regret. However, with a planned and right approach an organization/firm can implement a good strategy and gain trust of their clients. Though, it would be difficult to give an assurance that the chosen approach would let that organization/firm retain their client in the long run. So, I choose to keep apart the topic of ‘Client Retention – A Dilemma’ and look for questions which many professionals and organizations ask to themselves:

a) How do I increase my profit margin in the present economical break down?

b) When is the right time to look for options and dive in with a full proof plan?

c) Which strategy to choose and implement to sustain my business interest?

After, working on these few points I realize one can very well face these questions if he/she is thinking as per the client retention strategies. Since globalization everyone has one question in their mind, how to gain clients’ trust and earn good profit margin at the same time. This is one vision which in spite of the size of the organization or firm (big, medium or small) everyone has. This has also given a right and simple answer to such organizations that they can grow and make profit if they are able to retain their client for long. Though, client retention is not a one time process and requires a continuous approach with analytical and research skills, a big challenge is to study the ever changing economical conditions and understanding the complex behaviors of clients at the same time.

Provider’s Approach + Quality + Ethics + Satisfactory Service = Client Retention

We can divide ‘Client Retention’ into two parts:

First, in which service provider’s course of action and image gets reflected through their overall skill sets, ethical practices, quality services and most importantly proactive approaches towards getting the work and providing best services to their clients.

Secondly, it depends upon the Clients’ satisfaction and their willingness to come back again and give work to the existing provider.

Undoubtedly, every provider wants to experience the second scenario in each and every case. But, the real problem arises when they fail to execute the planning and end up loosing their client with loss of business and more over an existing business lead. We all know that clients are served by processes and it is important to look for right process for the right client. Every now and then we see experts’ researches, which focus on client retention’s problems. However, the problems which come in my mind are the implemented procedures and its poor executions by the providers. It is important to estimate and evaluate every single step and act accordingly to build a strong bridge between providers and clients for the mutual benefits. Providers should know about their vision and goal to attract clients and retain them for long.

Here is a small process which can help them in taking the first step towards ‘Client Retention’:

Know Yourself: Each provider should know about their work culture, environment and the nature of their working. This gives an edge when they approach any client and ask for work or recommendations. A thorough knowledge of your company and work helps in building trust and strong relationship with your present and future clients.

Add Expertise: When you know about yourself you always look for additional expertise which you can add to your skills. So, adding expertise in your company helps in competing with the emerging market competitors. Use of innovative ideas and updated technology gives your company an extra edge and helps you to walk hand in hand with the new emerging global market.

Remove Weakness: It is always advisable to add skills and delete or remove your weakness, if you want to grow in life. Likewise, if providers want to reach the higher level, than they have to Shift + Delete (permanent deletion) their weaknesses and have to add strength to growth and achieve success.

Act Quick & Smart: Providers should keep in their minds that it is easy to know and add expertise but the real test is their instant reaction to a LIVE scenario. So, with the above points, one should have the right approach and understanding towards the execution and working in day-to-day world.

Keep Improving: The above listed points are not a one time strategy. It is a continuous process and requires continuous improvement to achieve the goal of creating a favorable environment for a client friendly approach and a step towards retaining a client.

Few points on Client Retention:

“A single idea, if right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences” - Jacques Maritain

Studies have shown that approximately every organization/firm uses client retention strategy to run their business interest. However, only few are confident about their approaches and know what they are doing will benefit their clients and in return help them adding revenue and building clients’ trust. Few of the points which I thought to share with you:

a.) Maintaining the Existing Database – ‘Know Your Clients’: Every provider has their own database for their existing clients and they work accordingly to provide satisfactory services and maintain the account well. However, provider should focus on segmenting that database to know everything related to their clients (organisations or individuals). This includes the details like: 

i. How long is the relationship with the client?

ii. In the beginning, which specific services client was looking for? 

iii. What additional services I am able to offer? 

iv. How much interest client has shown in the additional offers? 

v. How frequently I interact with the clients?

vi. How sound is the relationship?

vii. Is the client confident enough to recommend me to others? 

viii. Tracking the clients’ feedback, complaints, important days and/or events (personal/ professional) related to them

b.) Adding value to the strategies for each client: After segmenting the data, provider should work on the ‘Specific Approach Strategy’ (Giving importance, as per the business needs and feedbacks) for each client. 

c.) Building Trust: To gain the trust and confident of the existing clients it is important for providers to implement ethical practices and honest approach in the operations. Implementing best IT infrastructure in place to ensure confidentiality and security of the data or any small information provided by the client will help the providers to build a strong relation. Clients may need to be convinced that the providers they have selected are true experts with the confidentiality and security system in place and are not over promising about their services.

d.) Proper use of communication channel: Using a right communication channel to address clients is a key to success. Providers should use a proper channel for a smooth and error free communication with their existing clients. Every client should be informed about the updated expertise and unique offers provider has for them. With emergence of social media and other marketing channel it is easy to target your segmented market. However, as this strategy is being used by everyone else in the market now days, chances are your competitor is using it rigorously and can attract your existing client with their lucrative offers. You have to make sure that you planned it right and do not leave any margin for even a small error. Service provider can use social media platform like: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Blogging, etc with other good strategies like e-mail marketing, newsletters, organizing or attending an event/seminar, promoting knowledge through Education-Based Marketing, etc. All these will allow provider to be touch with the clients and increase referrals, strengthen client loyalty and build good image in market.

e.) Handling Existing Clients’ Account: It is believed that good customer service is the most important aspect of running a business. A polite, friendly and helpful approach to maintain a single or variety of existing clients’ account helps providers to do well in the market and build credentials. Providers should hear their client and carry a fair, honest and reliable approach while communicating and providing best possible solutions to their clients. Regular communication with your existing clients will go a long way in helping you to understand their needs, tasks and requirements at hand. Drawing attention of the clients on the key areas that requires improvement will give your client an idea that you are thinking for their betterment and would not mind taking your advice or your services.

f.) Loyalty Programs: These days, providers use loyalty programs like: discounts, special offers, etc to keep their existing clients busy and attracting them with discounts and other exciting offers. So, to keep clients within the reach, provider can implement this strategy to gain advantage. This also helps the providers in staying in touch with client and helps building a personal relationship.

g.) Always Welcome Complaints: Though, it is always difficult to interact and maintain a good relationship with an irate and complaining client. It is advisable to proactively hear the complaints and take quick action. Through this approach providers can think of building a long relationship and looking for improvement areas which needs to be fixed for better customer service. It is just a matter of proactive approach with a right solution. As a human everyone is allowed to do mistakes but by taking the responsibility and assuring for quick positive action on the same will help building credentials in a long run.

Welcoming complaints help providers to know the:

I. Do’s & Don’ts they should look for while providing services to the existing clients

II. Current procedure of working

III. Right approach for specific problem

h.) Tracking the results and monitor responses: It is very important for a provider to look for feedback and monitor the responses accordingly. This helps them in improving the work process and gain the confidence of their existing clients. By better feedback response (positive or negative) provider can build a personal and trustworthy relationship with the client.

i.) Mark Your Excellence: For any business and its strategies if the end result is not up to the mark, nothing is going to work and provider would end up loosing their existing clients and business. I am sure the best quality work helps provider in connecting more with clients and getting additional work with satisfied clients’ recommendations. So, without even thinking of result, provider should keep in their mind that giving best quality is most important aspect in any kind of business. Any of the provider’s best or innovative idea will fail if they will fail to perform at their best.

I am a great supporter of continuous improvement and believe that we can retain our clients by measuring and studying the end results and keep improving until we reach our objectives and improve as much as we desire. I am sure with all these small changes we can increase our client satisfaction goal and can face any challenges even in the economical slow down. In the fast changing global market, providers need to work towards comprehending and implementing these kinds of strategy in their current businesses to ensure that their existing clients are turning up again and adding more services. The more number of clients’ association and fewer dropouts in a business help in improving the bottom line and can make the work of provider more rewarding.

Draft n Craft specializes in outsourcing of legal and paralegal services. We have provided more than a handful of advanced solutions to various clients in the U.K. and the U.S.A.; we take immense pleasure in serving all business needs, from the very basic legal undertakings to the most complex and farthest orientations. Contact us

Legal Outsourcing: A Victim of Conventional Realism

Bickel & Brewer was the first law firm to outsource and open its office in India in 1995. It’s been more than a decade since it happened and ever since then many law firms have outsourced their work to the off-shore vendors. Since then, legal outsourcing as an industry has evolved a lot. What started as a mere project almost 15 years ago has become a multimillion industry today. It is expected to reach at least $4Bn by 2015. Legal outsourcing to an extent has revolutionized the legal profession, one of the most dynamic and challenging profession across the world. We have at least 12,000 professionals associated with legal outsourcing presently and it is predicted that the number will go up to 15,000 by 2015.

The recent developments in the legal industry be it cost pressures, ABS, Jackson’s Reform or the fruition of consumerism which is quite a new phenomenon in legal profession, elicits the fact that there’s an immediate need for law firms to create competitive advantage. A solution beyond alternative fee structures needs to be created to survive and outsourcing could just be that solution which can rejuvenate the legal industry.

But despite all the growth this industry has witnessed in the last decade, there still lies an aura of myths while dealing with offshore vendors. While outsourcing can be an apt solution for almost every type of law firms, it is still marked as a concept meant for bigger firms only. On one hand where the advancement in technology has virtually removed all the geographical barriers, it is still perceived that a simple task of transferring data from one location to another can be daunting and can lead to loss of control.

There’s no denying that the issues revolving outsourcing are vital for every law firm and cannot be compromised at any cost.  At the same time it is not an impossible phenomenon.  The industry growth talks for itself.  In short it’s the right time for law practitioners to amalgamate with outsourcing and create an analytical approach that can help them cope with changing legal environment.

As said by Mr. John F. Kennedy  “There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.”

While you were sleeping…

A lot is changing in the current legal market.  Be it the United States or the United Kingdom where we are seeing the legal industry going through turmoil.  With the Alternative Business Structures being implemented and of course the LSA, the law firms are a little shaken up.

What is everyone doing to beat this change and move ahead in a manner which is fruitful and gives that competitive edge? In a recent webinar by me on Legal Outsourcing – Paving theRoad Ahead!!, I had attempted to focus on this issue.  We are seeing that today, it has become a more of buyers market rather than a seller’s market.  And clients today are demanding more and more cost effective services with the high quality.

We are seeing a trend where we have external investments being pumped in to the law firms, super market law shops selling legal services and of course something which cannot be missed is the extensive mergers which are taking place in the industry. By joining forces, the smaller law firms hope to widen their service offering and to retain existing clients. For larger firms, mergers are giving way to ready-made regional offices and international offices or expanded practices. These are definitely some of the things which are coming in to light. 

However, another important change which we see happening is the more and more utilization of outsourced legal and paralegal services.  Yes, infact legal process outsourcing has jumped up to action like a spring and is being used by more and more firms now. A very recent study showed that almost 15% of the law firms in UK are now outsourcing and reaping benefits off it. 

While law-firm profits have been moving up slowly since the recession, earnings haven't returned to the expected growth. And the gap between the wealthiest and lesser players is expanding.  And outsourcing is emerging as a savior.

The road blocks which existed for outsourcing have cleared out and has given way to firms to go ahead in that direction.  The key thing here is to wake up and smell the need to do something different than the conventional ways of practice.  While you may be sleeping, your competitors may be moving ahead and getting that competitive edge which will help them to survive in this current market scenario.

If you are not riding the wave of change……..you’ll find yourself beneath it.   Are you one of those who are waiting to “follow” others or the ones to be the “leaders”?

Professional Privilege - The Global Perspective

Confidentiality is an ethical principle associated with numerous professions such as law, medicine within which it is forbidden to disclose any information to persons except to authorize. Legal Professional Privilege is far narrower in scope than confidentiality.  It is in one sense a subset of confidentiality, since only communications that are confidential can be privileged.  The legal professional privilege is rule of law by which confidentiality of communications between a lawyer and a client is protected.  The effect of privilege is to allow a party litigating to withhold a document which is otherwise discoverable.  By contrast, mere confidentiality is no bar to discovery.

I being an attorney can very well appreciate how every legal professional is obliged to keep anything pertaining to the client confidential. The duty of confidentiality is much broader than the attorney-client evidentiary privilege, which only covers communications between the attorney and the client. Law recognizes many such communications as privileged communications and in case of breach, repercussions are also stated. Communication between a doctor and patient, communication between a lawyer and client, communication between a Clergy and a communicant in a Church, communication between husband and wife, all are treated as privileged communications and must be kept confidential.

Both the privilege and the duty serve the purpose of encouraging clients to speak frankly about their cases. This way, attorneys will be able to carry out their duty to provide clients with fanatical representation. Otherwise, the opposing side may be able to surprise the attorney in court with something which he did not know about his client, which makes both attorney and client look stupid and sometime even cause loosing the case in hand.

In some jurisdictions the attorney must try to convince the client to confirm his or her conduct to the boundaries of the law before disclosing any otherwise confidential information. In India, professional communications between attorneys and clients are protected as ‘privileged communications’ under the Indian Evidence Act, 1972, Section 126 and Section 129. These sections prevent a legal adviser from disclosing professional communication. As a critic of these sections, I can add that Indian law is silent on some aspects such as patent agents; trademark agents are not included in the ambit of these sections as they are not regarded as variety of lawyer and are out of common law privilege.

In England, the main category of privilege afforded to a communication is legal professional privilege. The Civil Procedure Rules 1998 ('CPR') Rule 31.15 establishes a right to inspect documents in civil litigation, and provide that a party to whom a document has been disclosed has a right to inspect that document except where the party making disclosure has the right to withhold such inspection.

There are two forms of legal professional privilege, which apply to differing groups of people:

Legal Advice Privilege: Legal advice privilege protects confidential communications between lawyers and their clients for the purposes of giving or obtaining legal advice.

Litigation Privilege: Litigation privilege protects confidential communications between lawyers, clients and third parties made for the purposes of litigation, either actual or contemplated.

The attorney-client privilege is one of the oldest recognized privileges for confidential communications. The United States Supreme Court has stated that by assuring confidentiality the privilege encourages clients to make "full and frank" disclosures to their attorneys, who are then better able to provide candid advice and effective representation. The attorney client privilege is subdivided into two parts:-

Attorney-client communication privilege

Attorney work product

Attorney-client communication privilege is a legal concept that protects certain communications between a client and his or her attorney and keeps those communications confidential. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 26(b) (3) (A) covers Attorney Client Communication.

In American civil procedure, the work-product doctrine protects materials prepared in anticipation of litigation from discovery by opposing counsel. Under the work-product doctrine, "tangible material or its intangible equivalent" that is collected or prepared in anticipation of litigation is not discoverable, and may be shielded from discovery by a Protective Order, unless the party seeking discovery can demonstrate that the sought facts can only be obtained through discovery and that those facts are indispensable for impeaching or substantiating a claim. That is, the party unable to obtain the information has no other means of obtaining the information without undue hardship.

There are a number of exceptions to the privilege in most jurisdictions, chief among them are:- the communication was made in the presence of individuals who were neither attorney nor client, or disclosed to such individuals, the communication was made for the purpose of committing a crime or tort, the client has waived the privilege by, for example, publicly disclosing the communication.

A corollary to the attorney-client privilege is the joint defense privilege, which is also called the common interest rule. The common interest rule serves to protect the confidentiality of communications passing from one party to another party where a joint defense or strategy has been decided upon and undertaken by the parties and their respective counsel. An attorney speaking publicly in regard to a client's personal business and private affairs can be reprimanded by the bar and/or disbarred, regardless of the fact that he or she may be no longer representing the client. Airing of a client's or past client's dirty laundry is viewed as a breach of fiduciary responsibilities.

As a concluding remark I can say that professional privilege is the basis for which confidential communication must be protected when legal counsel is sought.