Speaker 1: This is Chris Hargraves, and welcome to the Tips for Lawyers podcast, episode number 45. You can find any of the references or show notes for this particular podcast at tipsforlawyers.com slash podcast slash 45, following pretty much the same pattern we're doing for a while now. But if this is your first episode, then welcome to the Tips for Lawyers podcast. Today we are going to get into some client communication techniques and strategies. In particular, with a focus on those core legal skills that I've been talking about recently. And to that end, I wanted to remind you that you can get a great series of lessons on the core legal skills, as well as some other fundamental areas in legal practice at the Lawyers Library, which is my free resource available to young lawyers. It's easily found at tipsforlawyers.com slash lawyerslibrary, all one word. And there you will get a bunch of different things. You'll get a few downloads. You'll get guides to help you meet and exceed your budget, to help you improve your legal drafting, and to help you stand out a little bit from the crowd by doing some things that are not necessarily what everyone else is doing. The other thing you'll get there at the moment is the Essentials course, which is my six-part video course available for free in the Lawyers Library. So head over there, register for the library, and get some great information there at tipsforlawyers.com. So that's all the introduction I wanted to get into today. So let's get into our client communication techniques and strategies. This particular episode, I sometimes focus on different aspects of client communication. This one, I wanted to focus on all client communications. So that's really not a focus. It's a more general approach to client communications. And I wanted to do that because it is within that subset of client communications. Often we get caught up in speaking like lawyers to each other. We get caught up in writing to and from other law firms. We get caught up in drafting contracts, or maybe doing submissions before a court. And those things have their place. But at the core, what we are doing with our communication is serving our clients effectively. And I honed in on that recently with some client interview techniques in an article I did not too long ago, and I will put a link to that in the show notes. Some five effective communication techniques you can use within your client interviewing that allows you to get the information. Get the information you need as well as make your client feel well-loved, which may or may not be the impression I'm trying to give, but you get what I'm trying to get to. So I think the first and most obvious thing that you need to be aware of with clients is that often less is more. As lawyers, we have a tendency to explore every given little avenue, nuance, tendril, and inquiry that we can think of. See, clients actually only, generally speaking, want a couple of things, depending on what your practice area is. If you're doing advice work, what clients want is the answer in a timely fashion and at cost or under cost, depending on their point of view. And that's all they want. They don't want a list of what they've told you, spending three pages of your letter back to them, that someone has to type and they know they have to pay for, for someone to generate a list of what they've already given you or told you. Maybe they don't want to have the case citations or the specific statutes or quotes of what judges have said in the past. Now those all might be things you use in a different context. You might use them in submissions. You might use them in court documents. But you don't necessarily use them in advising the client. The client, at its most fundamental, wants to know the answer. Now. I appreciate there is a certain amount of butt covering that goes on here. And there is an element of protection in explaining the basis of your advice to your client to ensure that you've got no misunderstanding of the crucial facts. But I see letter after letter to clients which set out pages and pages of information, most of which isn't that relevant. You can really boil down that protection mechanism to a much simpler form than what we usually do. So. I really think the first tip. To be able to understand what you're trying to say. Is to keep it succinct. And that goes for whether you're speaking. Whether you're writing. Normally it comes up in writing because we think we should put as many words as possible on the page. But that's not necessarily the best approach. And for most clients it will simply irritate them. And that's where you get a call to say. So what's the upshot of all this? What do I do next? And that's really what they want to know. I think the next thing that's worth bearing in mind while we're talking about that element of succinctness. Is to. consider what the best mode of communication with your client is. These days, when communication techniques are a lot more varied, you might have the ability to email, you might have the ability to send a letter, some people still send and receive faxes, maybe a telephone call, maybe a text message, and you really need to get in your client's head at this point. What would they actually prefer in terms of communication? I know a lot of lawyers are hesitant to communicate by way of text message. I'm not 100% sure why, but I assume it's for the same reason people used to be reluctant to communicate by way of email, and it's because they view it as a certain degree of informality that perhaps they don't want to apply. And as lawyers, we do prefer, not necessarily correctly, but there is a natural tendency for us to prefer to do things in a more formal way, and that could be partly connected with the cost of the communication. So, I'm not 100% sure why, but I assume it's for the same reason people used not necessarily correctly, but there is a natural tendency for us to prefer to do things in a more legal services, and it partly could be connected with the fact that we're all just a little bit stodgy. So, have a think carefully about the appropriate mode, and ideally do this beforehand. Sometimes you can save a lot of time by simply doing a phone call. If that's within your parameters and you're able to simply call a client and give them the good news or the bad news, even if you then follow up with an email or something confirming the contents of your discussion, if you think that's required, it will sometimes allow you to gauge the reaction of your client a lot better than perhaps sending a letter would. And then you can adapt to the situation, and you might be able to adapt your written approach as well, because sometimes clients react in unexpected ways, and we don't necessarily know what they're going to do. But on the telephone or in person, you have a better ability to gauge that, because their reaction is immediate, and they can't really hide it from you like they can in a written advice. That leaves nicely into the third element of effective client communications, which I wanted to talk about today, which is striking the right tone. And I think a lot of people do have a problem with this. I will put a link in the show notes at tipsforlawyers.com slash podcast slash 45 to the article I did on striking the right tone in terms of legalese as part of my legalese series a little while back, because that highlighted what I think a lot of people don't know about legalese. And I think a lot of young lawyers struggle a lot with, which all of their letters have a tendency to look identical. That's because they've learned to write in a particular way. And that way generally reflects how judges write, because what lawyers do during their university training is they read a lot of decisions, and they write a lot of academic papers. And as a result, our advice work has a tendency to come out sounding and looking like an academic paper. It's a very nuanced and subtle area striking the right tone, and I know there's going to be disagreement about it. And plenty of people disagree with me about the kind of tone I strike. But where you want to really be aiming in letters, if you can, is what I'm going to call the friendly expert. So yes, you want to maintain a certain degree of professionalism, but your tone doesn't need to be stodgy. It doesn't need to be overly formal, provided you're communicating in a way that's easily understood, and you're getting the message you need to get across, which comes back to the element of succinctness. And that's why those little extra phrases that we add into things all the time, those little snippets of Latin, and the we note that's, and we advise that's, they really do get on my nerves, because they serve no actual purpose, other than the fact that we can't think of any other way to start our sentences. I've read entire letters, and I'm talking pages and pages, where every paragraph has started, we note that, which I found frankly amazing. And that wasn't from a young lawyer, that was an experienced practitioner, the example I'm thinking of right at the moment. So it is common, but people don't write like that. A lot of people speak like that, and that I think is the relevant point. So have a think about what tone you're trying to use, and what you're trying to communicate, especially with your clients, because the tone of your letter, or your call, or your email will influence fairly heavily how they react to it, if you're trying to stay upbeat, then be upbeat in your tone. If you're trying to give a dire warning, then you can achieve that too. You just need to actually give it some thought, so that not everything looks like an academic treatise on the law, or in the area of X. I've already dealt with repeating facts, but I had it here as a separate point in my notes, because it's obviously so high on my list of things not to do. In letters, I really see no reason to repeat facts back to clients, unless they are absolutely essential to... your advice. Now what you might do, if you think it's necessary, is put all the facts in an appendix, bearing in mind the clients never read it, but it may offer you the necessary protection that you and your firm are looking for. But there is, of course, a certain amount of value in face-to-face interviews and repeating facts, and that's to ensure that you've properly understood them before you go off on a wild tangent. So to ensure that you've understood facts is certainly a legitimate way of doing things, and I would just encourage you not to do it too much, but to repeat the facts back to the client if there's any doubt. Ensure that you've got a good understanding of them. Run them through in a linear way. Often clients give you facts in a disoriented way, and you might be able to do that a little bit better, setting them out succinctly to ensure that you've grasped what it is you've been told, and therefore have a good understanding of what you need to do next. The final client communication technique I wanted to give you is the fact that you can do this in a simple way. It's an overall approach to client communications, which is the better you know your client, the better you will be able to communicate them. What do I mean by that? I mean, you will be able to say things in the way you know that client responds to well. You will be able to use a mode of communication that you know that client prefers, whether it be email, whether it be letters, whether it be phone calls. You will be able to react better and predict how they are are going to react and try and head those sorts of things off at the pass. You're able to anticipate their questions. There are some clients who like you to simply write a one paragraph and they don't care about any of the legal reasoning. You could throw all of that in appendices if you actually need to provide it at all. They just want to know the answer. They trust you. They trust that you're making good decisions and they know that they're going to go with your recommendations. Such clients, of course, are gold and you should hold on to them at all costs, but they are the clients who are going to go with your advice and appreciate and respect the effort you've put into it and will pay their bills without needing to see a 10-page letter as evidence of your working like you have to do in your maths exams. So know your client because the other category of client is the one who does want all the case citations. They want to poke everything. They want to test everything. They want to make sure you have considered everything and as a result what you might need to do with them is actually work through your process in greater detail because they are the ones who read every letter that you send. They are the ones who tell you about all your grammatical mistakes that shouldn't be in your letter. They are the ones who ask you about things they've googled or found on Wikipedia and they are the ones who want to actually read the statute and the cases that you have referred to and get a personal understanding and for a lot of lawyers that's actually quite irritating because you start to think, well, I'm the expert. Why are they second-guessing everything I do? But it's really no different to what most of us do in terms of medicine when we're sick, in terms of electronics, when we're doing our own research there. We like to poke around the edges. We like to test the salespeople and we like to have a good and appropriate understanding for ourselves of what it is we're actually getting ourselves in for. So I don't really begrudge clients knowing more about their legal matters than what we might be comfortable with. If anything, it makes us nervous because sometimes clients come up with good ideas that perhaps we hadn't thought of. So I think knowing your client helps you know where they fall within those categories. So I think knowing your client helps you know where they fall within those categories. So I think knowing your client helps you know where they fall within those two spectrums and how to communicate best with them. The better rapport you have with your client, the better you know them, the better you can react and adapt to those things, but better yet, predict in advance how they are going to go with that kind of communication. So those are my tips today and I'll just recoup them just quickly for you. You need to communicate succinctly. You need to use the right mode of communication and in doing so, you need to make an effort to strike the right tone. Avoid repeating the same thing over and over again. You need to make an effort to strike the right tone. Avoid repeating the same thing over and over again. You need to make an effort to facts unless it's helpful or necessary, and if you do have to do it, do it in a way that's actually beneficial or at least a way that doesn't get in the way of what the client actually wants, which is the advice or whatever the product is that you're seeking to produce for them. And finally, know your client. Know your client like the back of your hand and you will be able to communicate with them far better than if you only have a surface level knowledge of them or have only met them a couple of times. Those are my tips today. I'll see you next time. Bye-bye. client communication techniques and strategies. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Once again, head over, if you did, to tipsforlawyers.com slash iTunes, or jump on the iTunes app and leave a review and a ranking, hopefully five stars. If you're getting something out of it, I would really appreciate it. It makes a big difference, a big difference to me. And as always, you can get the show notes at tipsforlawyers.com slash podcast slash 45, where I will link up those couple of articles that I mentioned, as well as a few other resources, like the Lawyers Library. That is the Tips for Lawyers podcast, and I will see you next time.