Scott Benton: [00:00:00] Hey everyone, Scott Benton here. I am the host of the Classroom2Courtroom podcast. How are you? We’re here to help you easily transition from law school into your professional career as an attorney, and we’re here to remind you that the practice of law is fun.
Scott Benton: And today, we’re going to answer the question of, how do attorneys deliver the client journey journey. Best. How do Attorneys Deliver The Client Journey Best?
Now, let’s remember that as an attorney, you are in a service industry and you’re providing services to a client in a legal environment and a client who hires you to represent them. That’s what they’re paying you for. So essentially, you need to remember that you are their employee, so to speak.
And as such, you want to pay particular attention to that Employer-Employee Relationship. And it’s what we call, the [00:01:00] Client Journey, that you’re going to want to focus on. You want to pay close attention to what they go through, from the first time you meet, during your initial consultation, all the way to the point where you have wrapped up the case. And you are sending out the disengagement letter.
So, You want to pay attention to every step of the way. Now, at the firm I work for, one of the ideas we talk about a lot when it comes to discussing the Client Journey, is you’ll often hear us talk about the Disneyland experience, the Disneyland Experience. This is a term that it’s going to come up from time to time and really, many businesses worldwide.
Because if you’ve ever been to any of the Disney theme parks, really, but we’ll stick to Disneyland here since we’re talking about the Disneyland Experience. You’re going to be very familiar with the high level of quality that as a guest, you’re always going to experience in Disneyland. Now the staff at Disneyland, they’re so well trained and they’re so versed and knowledgeable about every [00:02:00] second that a guest experiences in the park. They know everything that can go right. They know everything that can go wrong and they have responses to whatever happens.
So that they can ensure that your day is going to be one that you really remember for the rest of your life, simply because of how good they’ve been able to make it.
So the Disneyland Experience is, it’s an understanding of every step that a park guest goes through, and it caters to every single possibility to make sure that they’re comfortable enjoying themselves with the rides, with the characters, with the park foods, with all of the attractions that are at the park. They want to make sure that you as a guest, are having a superior experience.
Whatever you’re doing at the time that you’re enjoying the park. And as you may know, if you have gone to Disneyland or really, any of the Disney parks, they’re very, very expensive. So the bar is set extremely high. [00:03:00] And by virtue of paying that much money to go and enjoy a day at Disneyland, not to mention your family, becomes quite pricey. The bar is set high, your expectations are high, and those expectations need to be met.
So at Disneyland, you’re going to notice that the park staff, all of them, they’re extremely kind, they’re personable, they’re helpful, and they’re really there anticipating your every need down to the most minute detail. They’re never rude, they lose their temper. They don’t get angry. They’re always friendly. They’re available to you and they’re helpful.
And these are really qualities that many businesses, they strive to learn from. They strive to emulate that Disneyland experience. And when they put their own plan together, for customer service, they see how demanding this really is to understand the full experience of the customer and the experience that they’re having and really putting themselves in the shoes [00:04:00] of the customer. To fully understand what that experience is when they are working with your company and interacting with you.
So, When you’re first meeting with a prospect, and this is someone who hasn’t really retained the firm yet, they haven’t retained your services as an attorney. They may not know how the legal system works. They may never have been to a law firm before, and they are probably, regardless of whether they’ve been to a law firm or not, they’re probably nervous about, what it’s going to cost to engage your services?
So, You really want to understand where they are inside their skin and in their shoes and put yourself there to really extrapolate out what that experience is. Now, as you probably know, out in the world of movies and television depictions and pop culture. Attorneys, they don’t always get the best treatment.
A lot of times, they’re sort of depicted as negative characters. So naturally, people, [00:05:00] especially if they’ve never been to a law firm before and haven’t really interacted with a lot of attorneys. They’re not always going to have the best treatment. The sort of best preconceived notion going into a law firm and meeting you for the first time.
They’re going to have a kind of a negative perception of attorneys and really, what to expect from a law firm. So, you need to make sure that when it comes to the Disneyland Experience that you are countering those negative expectations and you do that by building trust with them. So at the firm I worked for, one of our core values, and we talk about this all the time, is we build relationships, and we sincerely believe that if you build relationships, then all else will follow.
That’s, literally one of our core beliefs. In fact, we have our core beliefs listed and posted in our kitchen, and build relationships is right up there on the wall. So we’re always looking at that core belief, and all of our core beliefs. And this one is build relationships and all else will follow.
[00:06:00] So, building relationships is really going to be one of your most powerful tools that you’re going to want to focus on. when it really comes to providing that same Disneyland Experience for the clients that you’re going to be working with, especially, you know, those first impressions are important. When it comes to first impressions, you want to make sure that you’re doing that right and that you’re fully conscious of building building that relationship with them right off the bat.
While the subject of that client experience in that Client Journey, this can go very, very deep and businesses all around the world, really, study the Disney Customer Service Model all the time. And so, you’re gonna want to make sure that in your role as an attorney, that when you’re meeting with clients that you really are providing a service. Excellent Customer Service in addition to Excellent Legal Services. There’s another level of this, which is customer service, and you’re really providing those interchangeably are really at the same time.[00:07:00]
So, you want to make sure those air layered on top of each other. Excellent Legal Services and Excellent Customer Service and that you’re providing that to all your clients and really, even to your colleagues at work and to the vendors that you’re working with. But when it comes to clients, you want to make sure that you’re taking each step in the process that you’re working on with them, meaning, you don’t want to skip steps.
And a lot of times there’s a tendency or you see a way to kind of speed up the process and it becomes important that you don’t skip steps. Because skipping steps is what ultimately will lead to an erosion in that Client Journey. Remember, you want to preserve that Client Journey as pristinely as possible so that, your client is really having that Disneyland Experience when they first come in and meet with you and an initial consultation, for instance, or if you’ve been working with them for several months. You want to make sure their Client Journey is intact and that they are having a very good experience with [00:08:00] you.
And if you start skipping steps, steps, that can really start to break down the trust that frankly, you’ve worked really hard to build with them. So, while this next thing might not initially sound like it’s part of the Client Journey, it really is, you want to make sure that you’re taking care of yourself.
During the evenings and on weekends that you’re well rested, that your energies are restored, that you feel revitalized and that you’ve been able to clear out your mind so that, come Monday morning when you get into the office, you’re fully ready to go. You’re energized, your focused on the case in front of you, and you’re able to really think clearly and provide those high quality of legal information that your client has hired you to provide.
So, you know, If you come in sluggish or you come in tired or maybe like your football team lost the game that weekend and you’re a little irritated by that. Then, that’s really kind of a sign that you’re not taking care of yourself. And you need to rethink that and go into your Monday morning really checking that off your [00:09:00] list.
Yep, I took care of myself. I’m ready to go. Here we are. You’re hitting the ground every Monday morning. Because becoming negative, it’s something your clients gonna pick up on. They’re gonna feel that, you don’t want to project that to them because they’ll start to lose confidence in you.
They’ll sense something’s wrong, and it really erodes the power of that Client Journey. You don’t want to compromise the high quality that you have built up for the Client Journey and you want to really really work hard to maintain that.
So, again now, looking deeply into the entirety of the Client Journey. It can be a lengthy study, I mean, it can go on for days, weeks or months. it’s a subject that you can really immerse yourself into and have it occupy, your attention completely. And frankly, you really should look at that customer service you’re providing on that level.
You should learn it as much as you possibly can. It’s not something that we’re really going to be able to cover in just one podcast episode here. But it is [00:10:00] an important subject, and it’s one we’re going to look at over and over and over again. So you might want to keep an eye out for additional episodes where we discuss The Power of the Client Journey.
This subject is not exhausted, we’re definitely going to be talking about this very frequently on this podcast. So hopefully, this has been helpful. I hope this is helpful information and just opening up the subject of the Client Journey.
My name is Scott Benton, I’m the host of the Classroom2Courtroom podcast. And if this is valuable material to you and you’d like to get alerted whenever we have a new episode of the Classroom2Courtroom podcast coming out. You can go to our website our website, is Classroom2Courtroom.com you can leave us your contact information there and whenever we publish a new episode of this Classroom2Courtroom podcast then you will get that alert.
So, keep that in mind and check out our website if you like. If you do like this material, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe. And that way you can always stay on top of our newest episodes. And we hope you’ll join us next time [00:11:00] until then, we also hope you’ll join us in making the world a better place, one client at a time. Thank you so much and take care.
