I have to marvel at the experience of a friend who is having
his long-time lawyer for various personal matters draft a relatively basic
will. Of course, the friend should have signed a will long ago. The important
point is, he’s hiring a lawyer, the one who has helped him with a number of
business matters, write one now. Key
point: repeat customer.
The other key point in this story is the lack of service he
is getting from both the lawyer, a one-man shop, and the lawyer’s legal
secretary. In my own experience, and writing of course very generally but with
some knowledge of this subject, legal secretaries tend to become very solicitous
of the lawyers they serve. They are, after all, there to ease their lawyer’s
way. And they do. In so proceeding, however, without sufficient oversight and
coaching, they can begin to accommodate their boss’s needs at the expense of
the client. Pertinent example: The legal secretary in our little will-drafting
scenario emails a lengthy form to the client seeking information needed to
draft the document. Things like his heirs' names—in this case, his kids—and their
birth dates and his assets and stuff like that.
Easily enough completed by the client and returned to the
legal secretary so the lawyer can put together that will.
So is it just out of sheer laziness that the legal secretary
is emailing the client back to ask how old his kids are? Can she not compute
the birth date specified on the form he just provided to her? Is she sparing her
boss’s time—and her own—at the expense of the client? And, in so doing, is she
pissing that client off?
It’s when the client starts to think, what a pain in the
ass, that there’s trouble. If a repeat client is finding dealing with the
lawyer, or, in the lawyer's effort to streamline productivity, his legal secretary, to
be annoying, will that client be incentivized to return with more and bigger business in
the future? Will he keep saying good things about this little firm? Or will the
legal secretary’s inability to do basic math to figure out someone’s age start
being the punch line in stories told about the firm?
What is your legal secretary emailing to clients?
—Lori Tripoli
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