Where to start? – there are just so many violations of effective client management. That said, am I shocked? Can’t say that I am entirely. We all know that Narcissus’ attitude of “it’s MY client” is rife throughout Law Land. In fairness, it’s also found in many other industries, as well. Many service professionals don’t want to “share” their clients with others at their firm. So where does this attitude come from? Frankly, it doesn’t matter; it simply needs to be stopped in its tracks.
Especially in this case where we’re talking about:
- the Chair of the firm
- advancing the firm’s exposure at the client to the new CEO and GC for
- on-going and highly-remunerative work.
This is cross-selling Nirvana.
Boatloads of research confirm that the (unsurprising) fundamentals of successfully nurturing current clients are:
- Increase the touchpoints at the client.
- Get more partners at the firm meaningfully involved with the client.
- Get more practice areas servicing the client.
(On second thought, they must be surprising and unfamiliar to some.)
Below are two charts from Redwood’s Think Tank showing the sharp decline in client attrition when more partners and practice areas serve a client (attrition rate of clients on the vertical axis).
The other thing that struck me is that Narcissus felt entirely comfortable, nay entitled to voice umbrage. This requires severe attitude adjustment. Perhaps being sent to a re-education “camp.”
Seriously, this has to be addressed frontally and fast. Perhaps with an element of public shaming, the purpose of which is not (really) punitive but rather to make it crystal clear to the partners and the firm that this attitude and behavior are completely unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Even if some continue to think this way (and some will), this action will give them pause next time a similar situation arises.
That’s called institutional learning. And more of this will better serve your clients, your lawyers and staff and, ultimately, your firm.
Now, back to Bruce….
Bruce, this was one of those pieces that upon reading through the first few paragraphs I fully expected an entirely different message.
You explained how “although the GC and the Chair had never met, the company already knew and respected this firm and used it from time to time for some specialized matters” so we can certainly conclude that there clearly existed some prior client relationship.
You then explain how the “groundwork for the meeting was laid when the company appointed a new CEO who was acquainted with a (good and reasonable) partner at our firm; partner reached out to the CEO who set up the meeting with the GC.”
And here is where I expected a very different interpretation.
The title of your piece is Partners Behaving Badly and having heard from so many GCs and in-house counsels over the years, about how they absolutely detest lawyers going over there heads to try to get favorable attention from their bosses, I just naturally expected this to be a rant about how this partner behaved badly by doing an end-run on the GC.
You fooled me! While I am certainly not condoning any partner thinking that their clients should be regarded as proprietary (that certainly is behaving badly), this example does lead me to wonder whether there is more going on here and whether the GC was simply going through the motions . . . to satisfy his new boss.
Patrick:
As I would expect, a very thoughtful response from you; thanks as ever.
I think the real answer to the interesting “going through the motions” possibility you pose is that the GC actually didn’t know what our firm could offer in addition to the focused and rather minor matters it was already handling, but following his meeting with our Managing Partner-friend, he was in a position to decide on his own initiative and on the merits that the firm deserved a bigger “share of wallet.”
But that was not clear from our initial column, so thanks for the chance to clarify.
Bruce, the charts on page 2 give Managing Partner the information to confront Narcissus in a way that might show Narcissus the benefit of being a little more open. MP can use your data to show Narcissus that if the firm can cross-sell a second practice area to General Widget, then Narcissus’s chance of losing the client goes down by 1/3, and if the firm can cross-sell a third practice area, Narcissus’s chance of losing the client goes down by 2/3. Appealing to Narcissus’s self-interest might succeed where pure rationality, collegiality, partnership, and the common good would fail.
If the chairman wants to go in for a little bit of public shaming, this sounds like a delightful opportunity to take what Mark Stevens, in his book “Your Management Sucks,” called a clown vote, as in asking the board of directors to vote on “How many of you clowns don’t want to make more money?”
I can envision myself, in the Chairman’s position, circulating a memo or e-mail to the partners, stating that the firm has been solicited by General Widget to make a pitch to get more of its legal work, that the Chairman is in favor of getting more work from General Widget, and that Narcissus is opposed to getting more work from General Widget. The Chairman would then ask how many of the partners are in favor of getting more work from General Widget, and how many are opposed.
From the Chair’s explosion, it sounds like the problems are not at all limited to Narcissus. If numerous and widespread, they have evolved over some time, and may be pretty well entrenched in the firm’s culture.
Supposing we take your final set of “news” as axiomatic, what paths are available to the Chair and his allies to make firm-wide changes that accord with such axioms? What are the pit falls that must be avoided, and what are the prospects for success? Are there available case histories (not necessarily even in Law) to illuminate how such a changes might be executed?
Perhaps we need to return to the Leadership archive for ideas.
Mark L.
Narcissus attitide might not sound so foolish if you take into account the salary system of said firm. If his salary is based on an “eat what you kill”-system, then actually he acts quite rational. It is the firms system that is badly set-up then, it should have included some “communistic” aspects.
The behaviour of Narcissus (without knowing any background) sounds for me as if not (only) something is wrong with Narcissus – that may be, then you have to throw him out. But if your firm’s salary system is wrong then then other Narcissuses will pop-out inevitably…