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22 February 2007 / Allan Carton
Issue: 7261 / Categories: Features , Profession
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A shared understanding

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Allan Carton explains how getting closer to your clients helps build a better business

Clients take the legal work you do for granted. However complex it is, they assume you can deal with it if they have already chosen you. So, yes, make sure you and your colleagues get it right. But most clients would say: “So what? That’s what lawyers are paid to do.” Get it wrong and you’re in trouble. Rescue a client from a real jam and they may love you forever, but you can’t build a business around these occasional triumphs.

So assuming all the decent lawyers in your area provide legal work reasonably well, what would make someone choose one from the other? Recommendations? Yes, but what makes clients or your accountant enthusiastic enough about your practice to want to tell their friends and clients about you? Maybe because you are a specialist in some area, but usually there is more than one specialist in any area and just how specialised are most lawyers? Perhaps some genuine specialists can still

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