legal sanity

My 6-year-old son is a baseball fanatic. He knows everything about his beloved New York Mets, down to the daily action on the farm. Since we live nearby, he’s eagerly tracking the construction progress at Citi Field, the Mets’ new ballpark that’s slated to open in 2009.

To give him a taste of what the new stadium might be like, on a recent family trip, I arranged for us to attend a Cleveland Indians game at Jacobs Field. From unobstructed views of the beautifully groomed turf to easily accessible concessions and luxury box seats, the stadium is designed to optimize the visitor’s experience.

While I’m a fan of my hometown Shea Stadium for sentimental reasons, it’s clear that it was not built with the customer’s concerns, perceptions and feelings in mind. By contrast, as conceived, Shea’s successor follows a new trend in baseball to cater to the attendee’s desire to have – and pay a premium for - a more intimate ballpark experience.

I’ve previously written about this trend toward customer experience management (CEM). Like other new business concepts, CEM puts a right-brain spin on service delivery. It considers how businesses can map, improve and deliver experiences that their customers or clients value on both a functional and an emotional level.

Given the widespread reports of impaired client relationships, law firms may want to take a closer look at the client experiences that they routinely offer. A firm’s CEM audit could include an appraisal of its:

• physical plant

• lawyers’ business relationship skills

• approach to business development

• client-centric marketing programs

• client satisfaction survey results

• client attrition statistics

This kind of honest appraisal will provide a solid platform for launching effective law firm CEM initiatives.

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I’ve previously written about moral intelligence and the emergent Conceptual Age that places a premium on empathy, meaning and human-to-human connection. I’ve also discussed how the incoming generation of lawyers highly values meaningful work.

Echoing these markers of a warming social-cultural-business climate, the Christian Science Monitor has a great piece on college efforts to “prepare students to be moral exemplars and socially responsible leaders.”  The key components of this campus-based moral leadership campaign are:

• Striving for excellence

• Personal and academic integrity

• Contributing to a larger community

• Taking seriously the perspective of others

• Ethical and moral reasoning

Duke University is one of the campaign’s early adopters. Its endowed program, DukeEngage, funds undergraduates who want to spend time contributing “to the public good anywhere in the world.” If you visit the program’s main site, you’ll find links to some very inspiring blogs that chronicle the students’ experiences.

As these kinds of programs take root in colleges and universities across the country, they’ll likely spread to graduate schools, including law schools. Transitioning from this academic milieu to the law firm environment, newly-minted lawyers will have little tolerance for anything less than positive law firm leadership.

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Lots of people theorize about a philosopher’s stone for converting loose connections into a golden resource network of referral sources, prospects and clients.

I don’t believe that there’s one sure way for lawyers to build an effective network. Like any relationship-building endeavor, however, networking requires an element of mutuality - a healthy combination of giving and receiving that’s organic and not contrived.

Duct Tape Marketing’s John Jantsch offers his take on organic networking in a post that asks: Are There Holes In Your Network? Jantsch notes that our clients often come to rely on us for more than the scope of [our] products or services.” They trust us to point them to other reliable resources – plumbers, educators, realtors and the like. So, it’s well worth our time to “build up a network of superstars all for the benefit or [our] customers.” There’s mutual benefit to gain here. As Jantsch points out, “a funny thing will happen on the way to building your network - you will begin to receive referrals from your new partners.”

Judging from the new content initiatives at his blog, Kevin O’Keefe understands this organic aspect of network development. Kevin’s company, LexBlog, builds blogs for lawyers (I was one of LexBlog’s first clients and my blog production partner, Lori Herz, is about to launch her own business site on a LexBlog platform). Kevin’s blog now features highlights from client blogs as well as client interviews, including this one conducted with Lori and me.

Of course, you could claim that this is all just clever marketing. It is. But, it also creates and fortifies a natural web of connections linking LexBlog and its:

• Blog audience

• Current clients

• Prospects

• Referral sources

This inter-connectedness is the foundation of any successful business network.

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Torts. Mold. Waste. Lawyers are no strangers to the subject of toxicity. But, when we consider such noxious forces, it’s easy to overlook some of the most pervasive ones: the people we work with.

I’ve previously written about difficult people in law firms and organizational disrespect in the law. Seth Godin offers his take on the subject in companion posts on toxic employees and toxic bosses. In both, Godin highlights the role that leaders can play in fostering, controlling and remediating workplace toxins. He sums it up well when he states: “Because bosses are often able to define reality, at least for those in their sphere of influence, they can cause whole sections of an organization to go off the rails.”

If you think that complaining is the best way to deal with our toxic coworkers and firm leaders, think again. According to the Chief Happiness Officer, our complaints only make the workplace more toxic. That’s because complaining quickly goes viral, stems innovation and fuels bad relationships.

One possible antidote to this kind of toxicity is positive leadership. Business coach and speaker Anna Farmery highlights this point through a touching personal anecdote about the value of recognition. She aptly conveys how genuinely recognizing people for their efforts and achievements increases positive energy and reduces negative energy in virtually any situation or environment.

For more insight into the dynamics of toxic law firms, you can check out Jean Lipman-Blumen's book, The Allure of Toxic Leaders.

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In my most recent post on intimacy and the lawyer-client relationship, I wrote: “It’s basically the same kind of intimacy that fuels healthy connections to family and friends. Many lawyers find it hard to drop the mantle of authority and really get to know their clients as human beings who have fears, hopes and challenges. But, this kind of sincere human-to-human exchange is what compels prospects to become clients and compels clients to stay with us and refer us more business.”

The bottom line is that our business relationships are not the cool, aloof, dull and dry second-cousin of our personal relationships. Business relationships are personal. They require us to be genuine and empathic. So, when we’re out in the world engaging with prospects and clients, it’s important to throw our selves into the mix. It’s also important to understand those aspects of our selves that tend to attract and repel people.

In a post called How to be likable to people who are complaining about you, columnist Penelope Trunk candidly reports on her recent experience with a panel audience that took issue with her message and her personal demeanor. Gerry Riskin similarly weighs the business-personal nexus in a post listing 7 Client Interaction Blunders That Blow It Every Time. The list includes: (1) Not being yourself; (2) Not listening and (3) Trying to be cool or aloof. Notably, Riskin derives his list from a post by fellow blogger Brad Isaac illuminating 10 First Date Blunders That Blow It Every Time.

Author and speaker Tim Sanders lends another perspective on navigating the personal side of business relationships in a commentary titled Don’t say an unkind word to help. He reminds us that a tameless tongue can wreak havoc on our business and personal connections.

This last point was recently brought home for me by a Small Firm Business article called Small Firms Think Big When It Comes to Clients. The piece gives me a very nice nod for the client service I provide to Equinox Fitness Clubs. But it features (with a photo no less) my former law partner Larry Rosen, now of Rosen Weinhaus in New York. Along with Corey Kupfer, Larry and I partnered in a successful Wall Street practice for five years. Although we all decided to go our separate ways - and naturally experienced some tensions during the dissolution – we’ve kept our business and personal ties intact. In fact, Equinox initially contacted me about handling its trademark work on Larry’s recommendation.

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