calls, be available for walk-ins, or to just focus on client matters
without interruption. If you fail to establish, and then protect your
productive time, who will? If it helps you to follow through, block out
these times in your calendar and give your staff the authority to help
enforce these boundaries.
Next, let every new client know what your communication policy is
and work to educate your current client base as to the changes. You
might place a short paragraph in your engagement letter or new
client information sheet. Let them know when you will be available
to take and return calls and explain what an emergency is and what
it isn’t, so everyone is on the same page. Staff can take messages and
offer what assistance they can when you are not available.
Establish a policy on responding to email and, as a risk guy, I strongly
suggest you allow yourself time to carefully consider your response
to any substantive inquiry. Shooting out an immediate response to
every email that comes in is a bad idea. How about text messages? I
find them to be quite an annoyance. As with email, establish a policy
and let everyone know what it is. If you don’t want clients texting
you, you will need to tell them and also explain why. For starters,
I immediately think about preservation, miscommunication, and
acknowledgement problems. I don’t know about you, but I sure as
heck am not going to have my cell by my side every minute of every
working day so I can check every text I receive as they come in. In
fact, my phone is off more than it’s on when I’m on the road.
In my mind, this issue is so important the following bears repeating
one last time. In order to effectively manage your attorney-client
relationships, you must help your clients help you do what they have
hired you to do. If you happen to now be, or ever find yourself, a little
irritated at being bothered by some of your clients, I encourage you
to consider whether or not the problem might be you. If and when it
is, that’s good news because you can definitely do something about it.
You just need to decide to do so. Truth be told, how do you think my
kids and I all made it through their teen years? I took my own advice
and considered what my role in any relationship problem might be.
All I can say is, it made a world of difference.
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