legal sanity
why lawyers should get emotional with clients
Here are two facts:
- There’s a client service deficit in the law.
- Lawyers tend to regard emotions – their own and other people’s – as irrelevant to their work.
At first glance, these two facts seem unrelated. But they’re actually closely (even intimately) connected.
Some time back, I posted on the interplay of emotions and client service in this new era of customer control. I linked to a ClickZ article citing a (then) new book by Dan Hill called Emotionomics: Winning Hearts and Minds. Launching from the premise that humans are primarily emotional decision-makers, the book discusses how emotions factor into our business opportunities in the marketplace and workplace.
Picking up on this point from a slightly different angle, in a recent post, designer and marketing mentor Peleg Top says, Go ahead, get emotional. Top notes that, in marketing (and, I’d add, in providing) our services, “an effective way to generate action is to tell a compelling story, one that hits your customer’s emotions.” Suggesting that most service providers miss this mark, he observes:
If you look at the majority of service companies [ ], the common story is all about who they are and what they do best. If I’m the customer, why would I believe them? What would compel me to trust that they really know what MY problem is? What my needs are? No feelings are generated and I will pass over them without a second thought.
In this new economy, feelings are a main form of currency. It may require a leap into the unknown for many lawyers, but to build strong and lasting business relationships, we need to give our clients the emotional connection they’re craving.
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Thanks SO MUCH for this. I recently said in an L.A. Daily Journal (the local legal rag) article -- "if you believe commercial litigation isn't emotional, you're not a business litigator. Or you don't believe anger is an emotion." I'd add to that now that you also don't believe fear is an emotion. Conflict raises such powerful emotions in people that they will do almost anything to avoid it (unless their protected by the sheet metal of their automobiles, which permits them to vent their free-floating anger passing motorists with scowls, honks of the horn and hand gestures meant to indicate an impossible physical activity).
It's understandable that we attempt to eliminate emotions from "the law." We're taught to do so in law school. To avoid "passion and prejudice." To reduce the infinite variety of human experience to stories sufficiently stripped of texture, dimensionality and particularity for the purpose of assigning blame or freedom from fault in 18th century "forms of action."
As a mediator, I deal with the human emotion the law attempts to leave out of the equation every working day. As a lawyer, I found I "impressed" my clients the most when I was taking care of their emotions most directly -- by defending them well in deposition -- not simply by objecting to bullying questions, but by creating a circle of emotional protection from their opponent sitting right across the conference room table. It's difficult to describe how this is done, but after a client deposition, my client relationship always moved from the formal to the emotionally rich and resonant and I knew I had a client for life.
Sorry to write such a long comment but this idea of bringing emotion back into the equation is the most important work I do now and it's always exciting to see someone else addressing it. Thanks for contributing to what I immodestly see as a little bit of missionary work for the colleagues I left on the battlefield when I joined the peace summit of ADR.
This is fascinating