More Thoughts for Success
July 3, 2009
To be a great corporate lawyer, you must listen to what your clients and others say. I remember somebody telling me, “You don’t learn very much by talking. You already know what you’re going to say, but you can learn a lot by listening to others.” Taking the time to listen also lets you take the time to think about the issues you’re dealing with. It is so easy to just react without thinking. There’s so much pressure to do things quickly these days, in this age of instant communication. Someone emails you a 100-page document, and an hour later they expect your comments back. It is important to resist some of those pressures to the extent that you can and take time to think – that includes thinking about the bigger picture and not just the details. Sometimes you can get overwhelmed by the details.
I also see many lawyers who seem only to be trying to win points negotiating a transaction without really taking into account the bigger picture or looking for the win/win approach where both clients achieve their objectives. So many times it’s as if they think there’s a scoreboard someplace and someone’s keeping track of how many points they won. Unfortunately, I have seen that more and more as the economy has turned down in the last few years. Transactions are harder and harder to get done – people are focusing on details and worrying about things that they never would have worried about before. Some things, they should be worrying about. Maybe they were too blasé in the past. The stock market was booming, money was easy to borrow, and companies were issuing their stocks at maybe inflated prices; it wasn’t so important to get, say, the best representations and warranties. Now people are more concerned. But the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. From a financial point of view, I suppose it’s good news for law firms but not such goods news for clients, because we have to spend so much more time on every transaction and more deals are being terminated before they are consummated. You can raise issues about every provision in an agreement if you want, but you have to recognize what’s important and what’s not so important, and how to get to a good result for your client rather than winning points on each provision of the agreement.
Part of what I’m suggesting can be characterized as trying to become a partner with your client. Try to go out and visit clients as frequently as you can. Go out to their offices . . . out to their factories . . . try to attend board meetings. That’s a good way to find out about them, learn what their issues are and what’s bothering them – what the challenges are. It also shows clients that they are important to you and you care about them. The general counsel of a company told me a few years ago why he picked our firm to handle a very important matter, rather than a large Wall Street firm. He said, “Both firms have great lawyers, but I know that we will be a much more important client for you and your firm than we would be if we went to the Wall Street firm, and I like knowing, for example, that when you’re taking your morning shower and thinking random thoughts about the day ahead, you’re going to be thinking about me and my problems rather than about some other client.”
I learned very early in my career the importance of teamwork. I couldn’t do it all by myself – not only because I was certainly not an expert in every area of the law, but because no one person can think of everything. It is so important to have teamwork and to be practicing in a law firm or legal department where there is a spirit of teamwork. For example, brainstorming often is the best way to solve tough legal problems. My partner Milton Cohen used to talk about “sharing” difficult legal problems. He had a national reputation as an expert in securities law. He really was responsible for the whole framework of what’s called the “integrated disclosure system” of the federal securities laws. When he had a tough legal problem, he would call in some of the best lawyers we had in the office and brainstorm. It made me realize how important it is to bring other minds to bear on difficult issues. That’s not always easy in every firm. One thing I love about my firm is that it has a culture where that’s very important. People aren’t so worried about their own clients that they’re reluctant to spend time to help other people.
Also, in terms of teamwork and client service, my philosophy is that we don’t need to just meet the expectations of our clients but to exceed their expectations. I work very hard making sure we give superb service to our clients. Clients pay a lot of money for legal services; they want first-rate service, but they don’t always get it. One of our big jobs is to see that they do get it . . . and get it on a timely basis. (As an aside, great advice that’s delivered too late may be totally worthless – certainly not as good as not-quite-great advice that’s delivered on a timely basis.) I read an interesting article a couple of years ago called Raving Fans. The thesis of the article is that the goal of any business, whether it’s Wal-Mart or a law firm, is to make its customers into “raving fans.” It means trying to make your clients enthusiastic fans of your firm – people who have such a positive experience that they want to call you when they have legal matters and will recommend you (rave about you) as a lawyer to others. This again brings me back to the importance of thinking about things from the client’s perspective, for that is the only way to know what you need to do to give your clients such a positive experience.