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[00:00:07] Scott Benton: Hey everyone, Scott Benton here. How are you? I’m the host of a classroom 2 courtroom podcast where we help you easily transition from a law school student into your professional career as an attorney and where we make the practice of law fun. And today we’re going to take a look at how you’re showing up for your clients.
[00:00:23] Scott Benton: And as a simple thought exercise, we’re going to take a look at how to make sure that you deplete all the oxygen in the room. That’s right. We’re going to. Figure out how you can go into a room and deplete all of the oxygen.
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[00:01:24] Scott Benton: Keep in mind that at a law firm in general, clients are hiring you because they have a problem that’s fairly sizable, or it’s complex, or it’s just far beyond their ability to navigate.
[00:01:34] Scott Benton: And they need someone like you to provide the necessary legal services for them to accomplish their legal goals. Now sometimes those goals are scary for them, or maybe it’s a situation that’s extremely difficult. And they’re under a lot of pressure. Hiring an attorney is not something people tend to do every day.
[00:01:55] Scott Benton: And in a lot of cases, they’ve just never set foot in a law firm before. [00:02:00] So this is really unfamiliar territory for a lot of clients, and talking to an attorney at first can seem stressful because there might be, I don’t know, concerns about cost or possibly upsetting their family members by hiring an attorney.
[00:02:15] Scott Benton: The bottom line is that potential clients who show up to talk to you about their case can already be in a fairly negative headspace themselves, so it really becomes important to be aware of how you’re showing up. And you want to make sure that you’re not transferring any of your own stress, whether it’s business stress or personal stress onto your client or potential client, but that you’re showing up in a way that counterbalances their potential negative headspace that they’re already coming into the firm with and that you are taking a position that is purposefully brightening up the space that you’re meeting in. You’re purposefully Brightening up the space. You always want to do that. Whatever space you go into.
[00:02:58] Scott Benton: Now, [00:03:00] granted, you might have a lot on your plate at the moment, and that might include a heavy workload, or maybe you have a trial that you’re preparing for, you could have some personal or family issues you’re dealing with, but you always want to keep in mind that you’re working in a service industry and your clients are your customers.
[00:03:17] Scott Benton: Now, as such, your clients are the lifeblood of your business and of your firm. So you need to do everything you can to make sure that they experience a high level of customer service and that they feel like they’re receiving what we like to call the Disneyland experience. Now, the Disneyland experience.
[00:03:40] Scott Benton: is a type of customer service that you receive at any of the Disneyland resorts all around the world and it’s so well regarded and the bar is set so high that business schools routinely study the Disney customer service model and they study it very closely. So if you can raise your own level of [00:04:00] customer service this high as an attorney and you deliver on the Disneyland experience you’re going to have a very happy and most likely a very loyal client base.
[00:04:10] Scott Benton: Now, if you’ve ever been to any of the Disneyland resorts, you’ll know what I mean by the Disneyland experience. And if you haven’t been to a Disneyland resort, what are you waiting for? Go check it out. Have a great time. Pay close attention to how you’re treated while you’re there. That’s going to give you a lot of valuable insight into what high quality customer service feels like from the client’s point of view. But, okay, if for some reason you’re still committed to depleting the oxygen from the room, then you certainly have an entire range of options to choose from. For instance, you can show up late and unprepared for your meeting without apologizing or really even acknowledging your delay.
[00:04:51] Scott Benton: That always puts tension into an interaction right from the start. You can look stressed out. You can even look distracted while you’re [00:05:00] talking to your clients. And you can do more talking than you do listening. In fact, if you’re not listening, that alone can often just about deplete any and all traces of oxygen from a room.
[00:05:12] Scott Benton: Imagine what it would be like if you were at Disneyland and all the cast members, they call the people who work at Disneyland cast members, what if all the cast members were not listening to a single word you had to say? You’d simply never go back to Disneyland again. And they know this and this is why they give you the Disneyland experience.
[00:05:31] Scott Benton: It’s extremely profitable for them and it’s going to be profitable for you and your firm if you end up using it. Now, I didn’t even get into much detail about depleting the oxygen out of a room, and already you can see that there’s no oxygen left for anyone to breathe, and yet all you did was show up a little bit late, you looked stressed, you didn’t listen, and you did a lot of talking.
[00:05:52] Scott Benton: Now imagine how far you can take this idea, and how airless the room can become, and if you choose to go this [00:06:00] direction, I think you can see that you’ll be driving people to another law firm entirely that does know how to deliver on the Disneyland experience. But, as I said, this is just a thought experiment. And I know you would never intentionally go into a meeting to create an oxygen poor environment for your clients. It’s just something that you really want to be aware of, and you need to know that can happen. You want to know that can happen so you can catch and correct it before it spins out of control and you lose a client.
[00:06:29] Scott Benton: Now if you lose a client, then you’re going to have nothing to add to your to do list, you’re going to have no legal services to perform, you’re going to have nothing to bill for. And you’re not really going to be able to utilize the success cycle that we talk about on this podcast.
[00:06:43] Scott Benton: So I hope that’s been helpful. My name is Scott Benton. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode. Now if this podcast is material that you like and you want to get notified whenever we post a new episode, you can go to our website. Our website is classroom2courtroom.
[00:06:58] Scott Benton: com. That’s classroom, the number [00:07:00] two, courtroom. com. You can leave us your contact information. We’ll send you an email anytime we post a new episode. You can also stay on top of all of our new episodes by sharing, liking, and subscribing wherever you find this podcast. And until the next episode, we hope you’ll join us in making the world a better place, one client at a time
[00:07:19] Scott Benton: thank you so much
