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