Make simple changes that clients will notice

It’s not hard to improve professional services client-updates and newsletters, and investment research reports. Most are virgin territory when it comes to scope for improvement. They’re the blank bits on the maps of unexplored continents of client service.

But improving updates, briefings, or any kind of written document (this includes emails and websites) does take focus. Our pet mnemonic may be able to help you with that focus.

Here it is: ‘Running Animals Beat Crawlers’. It picks up on several principles in our writing training, and will help you remember the following checklist:
– Relevance
– Actions
– Brevity
– Context.

Relevance

Two points here. Get the right information to the right people, and make it clear who a particular update is relevant to – in the first few words of that update.

The first point (send clients and prospects relevant content) is a bit airport-marketing-book. And it’s often over-stated as a concern or risk. Firms of all kinds bewail the fact that they don’t have clean and reliable list and client-preference data. Well, no-one (or almost no-one) has.

The good news about the second point (make it clear who needs to pay attention) is that it’s easy to do, and it doesn’t involve huge software-and-data projects. All you have to do is make it clear who your information is relevant to right up front – in the headline, on the cover, in the first sentence.

You might highlight that this is a development that’s particularly relevant to smaller firms, or firms that are involved in a certain type of business. Or maybe you can flag that this is information that compliance officers, or general counsel need to pay attention to. Or finance directors and plc-board members.

So there’s a lot to be said for doing what you can in about relevance in the (rather long) interval between where you are now, and an idealised clean-data future.

The flipside is the effect that poorly targetted updates can have. Imagine you’re a general counsel at a commercial property firm, and you receive update on disputes over leylandii hedges. Your regard for that real estate team might slip a few notches. Don’t laugh. It happened.

Actions

Highlight any actions that clients can take. If you can’t think of any appropriate actions, ask yourself why a client should read what you’re writing – and why you’re sending it to them.

If actions aren’t clear-cut, but you think it’s a development that your clients and prospects will care about, then make the implications clear. Maybe you can describe common pitfalls, areas of uncertainty, or how relevant rules are usually applied.

Or use scenarios to sketch out what the development might mean to different kinds of firms in different situations – a good technique where the situation is a bit murky. Scenarios help to turn abstract problems into specific situations – you might even think about testing the scenarios with a couple of friendly clients to see what they think. And they’ll like as not give you further ideas, or the confidence that you’re on the right track.

Whatever you do, avoid the most depressing final sentence ever… “we will watch these developments with interest”.

Brevity

Send clients the briefest possible summary and make it easy for them to request further information.

Context

Make the context clear for clients. Expert authors often forget that clients may not be as up to speed on the detail and background of a particular development. While you may have followed the events and issues around a specific development, clients may have had other things on their mind.

Think about whether it would be helpful to explain the background to new regulations, or other cases that have covered similar issues. It’s often a good idea to put some of this background in a box, or text table. Or you might use a decision tree, flow chart, or data, to help clients see the bigger picture.

Lawyers who use numbers and data will stand out from the crowd

There’s a myth that lawyers don’t ‘do’ numbers. Believers say it’s because lawyers live in a world of words where numbers don’t get a look-in.

We’re less convinced – 0ur view is that business is pretty numbers-focused, and lawyers are part of business. Numeracy may not be a lawyers’ first skill, but it’s definitely in the skillset.

Clients do ‘do’ numbers even if lawyers appear not to. And there’s a lot of data that relates to legal topics – but when did you last see a chart in a law-firm update or briefing.?

Charts and data-tables (and interactive charts like the one below) would make memorable legal-update features.

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Here are three examples of data that clients would find interesting

A firm that uses data to explain or illustrate legal developments would show clients that they speak their language (our writing training includes a module on using data and charts).

Here are just a few charts that clients have never seen from a law firm (as far as we can tell, but we’d love to be proved wrong):

• Trends in EU competition fines:
  Here are some quick snippets of EU-competition data: over €2.25 billion in fines in 2008; six of the ten largest individual fines since 1969 were handed down in just two years – 2007 and 2008.
• Pension-fund debts of UK Plcs in last five years:
  It may sound like something you’d find in the FT – but pension-fund trustees would find this interesting, if a tad depressing.
• Statistics on IP mediation and dispute resolution:
  We couldn’t find published data on this topic, let alone charts of the data. It doesn’t mean that the data doesn’t exist, it just means that it’s not been gathered and presented in a way that supports an argument or illustrates a point.

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Interactive charts: a neat way to give clients an insight into data

A first step along the data-presentation road would be more charts and data tables in updates and e-bulletins. But if your team has found some interesting data that supports an idea you’re keen to explain to clients, then step right up to the interactive chart.

Interactive charts let you change variables and see how this changes results. As humans, we find this kind of thing very helpful because we learn a lot about the data-set as we see the results change. The demo we’ve put together uses data from a number of US clinics on the amounts of a specific drug, Avastin, prescribed to treat different kinds of cancer.

Interactive charts help you understand data. You can see the data change as you alter filters and parameters (see video above – full-screen view is best)

The key interactive feature we’ve added is a slider that lets you ‘time slice’ the data – as you drag the slider over the upper chart area detailed data on a specific month is displayed in the lower chart area.

The video above shows a very short (38 second) clip of a demo website we put together to show how interactive web-based charts can work. This kind of technology is pretty simple now: all it takes is a little thought and imagination, and knowing the right people (which means us).

Go to the live interactive chart (thanks to Majestic Research*)

Firstly, it’s a demo so there are a few glitches. Secondly, please note that the data shown is purely indicative and not for investment purposes. The data was provided by Majestic Research* – a New York based investment-research firm we’ve done some interesting work for.

Do have a quick look at the video above before you try the live chart – the video shows how the chart works.

To see the live chart – you can click-and-drag and timeslice to your heart’s content – click here.

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*Find out more about about Majestic Research at www.majesticresearch.com

Text tables show your readers that you’re trying to help.

Text tables give you a flexible way to sum up complexity. They’re a really helpful feature in any update, bulletin, article, newsletter, or seminar handout. Or pitch. Or pretty much any document that you can think of.

Clients value them as they summarise, and allow you to compare and contrast information.

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Clients find text tables useful, but authors
don’t use them as often as they could

They notice and remember text tables that highlight action points, explain pros and cons, or show the difference between old and new rules.

But many authors forget about tables or think they’re going to be too difficult to produce. We think that there are three reasons why expert-authors forget about text tables when they’re writing know-how updates:

• Text-only bias:
  If you’re used to thinking and writing great blocks of narrative text then a Word table is the last thing you’ll think of.
• Fear of Word, and it’s complex table-formatting tools:
  People find creating text tables in Word a pain because they’re not used to using Word’s table-formatting tools (and they haven’t got the benefit of automated Word templates).
• Internal design team and brand-and-design guidelines:
  At some firms, expert authors fight running battles with brand guidelines that don’t include helpful advice on how to format tables.

And here are some examples of how law firms can use text tables

We’ve put together a document that shows just how effective text tables and other non-text techniques (e.g. flowcharts and decision trees) are. It contains ten examples – to see our personal favourite click here.

Tame the Word-table beast: two helpful guides

We’re fans of text tables and what they can do. You can create timelines, rustle up a flowchart, or compare the new (or proposed) situation with the current state of play. But the way that Word creates text tables can seem a bit daunting.

Word’s powers are its weakness when it comes to text tables. It has very powerful text-table formatting tools, and some unhelpful default settings. Put these two factors together and it’s a cocktail of misery that puts lots of people off creating text tables. (Don’t be tempted to use Excel, by the way, as that’ll just create a different set of problems.)

But text-table help is at hand –  we’ve put together two pieces of advice to help you create clearer text tables:

a) One-page guide to five good table-features click here.
b) Detailed 15-minute video tutorial (see below).

A 15-minute video tutorial on creating text tables in Word

Now then, fear not – not every text table will take you 15 minutes. The tutorial is that long because:
– We’ve gone slowly and included every small step
– It’s basic Word rather than an automated Word-template.

If you click on the full-screen icon (bottom right of window below) you’ll see the video-tutorial at actual size (no zooms and pans to make you dizzy).

You’ll find it helpful to download the ‘five good text-table features’ guide first. It shows the table that’s created in the video with a list of the five tips, and it has a full-size version of the table that you an make your own notes on.

Updates: tiring to produce, and they put your reputation at risk

There’s just no way to soften the blow – it may be worse if your clients do read your updates than if they don’t. You might say that this is pretty obvious: why wouldn’t you judge lawyers by their opinions on a legal development?

But few law-firms think about updates in terms of the risk that they pose to their reputation – and revenue.

Publications are usually seen as something that you have to do to stay on the radar of prospective clients and keep up with other firms. So the idea that all the effort that goes into them could be counter productive really is bad news.

Law firms make clients drink from a legal-news hose

Take a few minutes to imagine what happens when there’s a legal development that merits an update or an e-bulletin. Firstly, a legal publisher like PLC will almost definitely publish an update before you do. It’s their day job, and they don’t have to fit updates around the rest of their work. It is their work.

If you think that a development is worth writing about, then it’s odds on that your competitors agree. So they’ll write updates and e-bulletins too. And, just like you, they’ll send them to clients and to aggregators like Linex and the Banking Legal Technology portal. So a client’s likely to hear about the same development several times over.

Collectively, law firms make clients drink from a hose of information.

Multiple updates on the same topic invite comparisons

And it’s really easy – and sort of irresistible – to compare what different firms say on the same topic.

If they read your update then they can immediately form a view on:

• Whether you’ve just wasted their time by getting them to read something unimportant.
• How commercially aware you are – did you miss the business impact?
• Your grip on the topic compared to your competitors’.

Think about client-needs, or turn the e-bulletin tap off

Clients can do two things to lower the reputation-risk of their client-facing know how:
– Turn the e-bulletin tap off and publish far fewer ‘news’ updates.
– Adjust your updates so that they give clients more of what they want.

Reducing your e-bulletin update output may seem a mad idea – many firms feel that they have to cover high-profile developments or their clients will think they’ve missed them. But let’s be clear – our suggestion is to cut down on the news items, and make sure that when you do send clients something it’s interesting and thoughtful.

Leave news chatter to your competitors, or cover it in a couple of lines – you could make a feature of the fact that you’re not bothering clients with run-of-the-mill developments.

If you want to follow the second option – adjusting updates so that you give clients more of what they want – you could make some simple changes:

• Talk to clients about what they’d like you to cover, and whether they’d prefer regular updates or informal briefings around a pre-agreed agenda once a month or quarter.
• Ponder our client-focus mnemonic Running Animals Beat Crawlers.
• Train your authors to write in a more client-focused way (e.g. have a clear summary, identify action points). Maybe some writing training would be a good idea – it’s a cheap way improve updates.

There’s lots of scope for client service, and distinctive approaches, around client updates. And you’re likely to be pleasantly surprised by how straightforward it will be to make the changes that clients value.

The good news – it’s a very low bar

All firms have similar problems and very few firms do a consistently top-notch job – just a few simple tweaks and you’ll stand out from the crowd.

A little less news, a little more focus on what clients want. Before you know it you’ll be offering clients clients an enticing taste-sensation, rather than making them drink from that hose.

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That picture of a broken cup: Brian Morris, a talented Australian photographer gave me his permission to use the image at the top of this article. See more of Brian’s work at www.mono-art.com.au