How to Create Great Client Relationships: 5 Tips

What results in great client relationships – attorneys returning over and over with cases? How many of these techniques do you use?

Create a great work product

A high quality, carefully proofread and accurate document results in return business. You have to give a great work product or your attorney clients are going to look for someone else no matter what your relationship is with them. Be analytical, almost obsessive about detail. You cannot stress the excellence of your work product enough. That is the service that you are providing, so that’s where you need to start – with your work product. Once you get that good and straight, then go start marketing and trying to build a business.

Be resourceful

You have to know where you can find things and you must have a can do attitude. Your clients rely on you. It does not strengthen client relationships to say, “I don’t know the answer.” You need to have the answer.

Be responsive to strengthen client relationships

Be honest if you’ve made a mistake or missed something. Come right out and say that. Attorneys appreciate honesty – it enables them to reposition themselves and trust you because they know you are going to own up to anything that you need to own up to.

Offer your clients “office hours”

Consider doing office hours in your clients’ offices. Go to their offices, discuss cases, meet with clients, and work on files. Attorneys may use this time to talk to you about cases. They will schedule clients to come in and you’ll meet with them. You’ll will sit and strategize about certain cases.

This practice may help you become a better legal nurse consultant. You’ll see the culture of your clients’ office, hear about office politics and get to know your clients better.

How do you bill for these visits? When I went to see clients, I kept track of the hours I spent on each file and divided the travel time between the patients’ invoices.

Strengthen client relationships by being attentive to support staff

Make their life easier. Don’t expect them to drop everything to help you find a file. Be respectful and appreciative. I cannot stress that enough. If that means that I have to do something twice or I have to send them something again, if they’re driving me crazy or whatever it is, I’m going to do that because it cultivates client relationships.

Sometimes the support staff moves to a different law firm and then they take you along with them to the new law firm, which is a sweet deal. Paralegals, legal assistants, even the law firm receptionist move around a lot. Paralegals are a lot like nurses. If they get to job that they don’t like, they just go somewhere else and that is extending your network because you’ve already cultivated that relationship with that paralegal or legal assistant.

Check out Dana Jolly’s podcast: “Winning Over Clients with Popsicles”. Dana is an experienced LNC who has built great client relationships. She shares her secrets in her podcast. Listen to it here.