“Communication breakdown, It’s always the same, I’m having a nervous breakdown, Drive me insane!”
If this sounds familiar to you, I hope it’s because you’re a Led Zeppelin fan and not because your firm has trouble communicating with it’s clients. The truth is that communication with clients is a serious problem area for many attorneys and law firms. When your firm can’t effectively communicate with clients, it’s no surprise that client disputes will follow.
If a breakdown in communication is a sure fire way to enter into disputes with your clients, your firm needs to learn how to effectively communicate, and learn quickly. Here are some tips that will ensure that your firm can keep the line of communication with your clients open.
Tips To Avoid Communication Breakdowns With Your Firm’s Clients
Keep Clients In The Loop – As an attorney you know that when dealing with legal matters, sometimes things can tend to drag out for long periods of time where little progress is made. You may have heard that no news is good news, but you won’t find many clients who agree with that statement. Long periods of radio silence can make clients grow suspicious of what is actually being done with their case. Especially when you consider that their legal matter may already be the result of someone breaking their trust. Make sure you keep the lines of communication with your clients open, even when there isn’t much to say.
Establish a Primary Method of Contact – We live in an incredible age. Communicating with clients is as easy as ever. There are a number of ways you can stay in touch with your clients. Whether your client is an introvert who only wants to communicate by email or text, or you have a chatterbox who wants to call you from their home phone, it’s easy. Where the number of options and ease of communication can become a problem is spreading that communication over multiple methods. This can create disorganization and create an environment where it is tough to produce a paper trail of what has been discussed. Make sure you establish a primary method of contact with your clients that both parties are comfortable with.
Record All of Your Email Communication – Getting back to the importance of being able to produce a paper trail, make sure your firm records all of your email communication with your clients. By being able to produce an immediate paper trail you can avoid any disputes associated with your client making claims that they weren’t informed of key issues or authorize work to be done.
CosmoLex can effectively record and organize all of your emails by the legal matter they’re associated with, ensuring that you and your firm can always easily and effectively produce a paper trail to avoid any disputes with your clients.
Try CosmoLex for free and start communicating with your clients more effectively.
