Keeping the Client when the Partner Leaves

From: Stacy West Clark, Swcconsulting1@AOL.COM

Have any of you advised your firms on what to do to prevent a client from following a departing partner to his new firm?

Consider that in my scenario, the departing partner had all the recent contacts and working relationship with the client.  However---the client originally came to the firm because of the name partner's reputation (who did not actually do any work for the client--only the departing partner did).

What specific strategies would you employ to keep the client with the firm?  Any thoughts would be appreciated!  What would you advise your own firms to do in this scenario?  

Stacy West Clark Consulting, LLC
Marketing Advisor to Small Firms and Solo Practitioners
swcconsulting1@aol.com
610-291-5704
Devon, Pa.

From:  Larry Bodine, www.larrybodine.com Web and Marketing Consultant

Now is the time for the name partner to swing into action.  He/she should contact the client, visit them at their offices and sit down for a meeting.  The name partner needs to present a compelling offer -- either personal service to the client or special expertise that the competing firm does not have.

Unfortunately, it's probably too late.  Clients hire lawyers, not law firms.  The name partner should have held this meeting when the client first came to the firm.  The firm's mistake was not having many partners get to know the clients, and failing to cross-sell other practices to the client.  The best way for a firm to keep clients when a partner leaves is to spread the relationship around.

The best you may be able to make of this is a lesson learned. 

Larry Bodine
Web and Marketing Consultant
www.LawMarketing.com
Glen Ellyn, IL
Tel: 630.942.0977
E-mail: www.larrybodine.com

From:  Doug Folk
pdfolk@FOLKLAW.COM

Having recently gone through this experience, I can tell you there is little you can do to "prevent" a client from following the departing partner. Your question suggests that the departing partner had all the significant contact with the client(s) and that the firm did not broaden the relationship by either getting the name partner who attracted the client involved or introducing other members of the firm to the client.    Assuming you have several clients that are in this situation, I recommend the following:  

1.    Review all the affected clients and prioritize your list of keepers (i.e., ones you want to keep), ones you know will go to the departing partner (and therefore are a lost cause), and ones that may not be worth the effort to retain (you will work with these clients as time and your cost/benefit analysis permits).

2.    Get the name partner involved immediately in retaining the keepers. Have your staff prepare a briefing for the partner on the client's current work, status of same, and your plan for servicing this work without the departing partner. This has to be done quickly as timing is everything if you want to keep these people. Ideally, the name partner, client services director or other person who you designate as the lead to retain the client will contact them within 24 hours of learning of the departing lawyer's plan to leave.

3.    Pair up the name partner with a new service team for each of the keepers and go see the clients at their office. Tell them how much you value their business and assure them that the departing partner will not cause a ripple in their pond. You don't want to look like you are dumping on the departing partner because that will only detract from the client's assessment of your firm (i.e., they will think "Well, why are you telling me this now?")

4.    Assure the client that the firm will absorb the cost of getting the new service team up to speed on the client's work.

5.    Present an action plan for keeping the client's work moving forward and then follow up regularly after that to demonstrate progress and confirm that you are meeting the client's expectations.

6.    For those clients who are going to leave, and those that you decide not to pursue, treat them with dignity and respect. Let them know how much you have valued their past business and that they are always welcome to come back to you. If they find out the grass is not greener on the other side of the hill, you may see them coming back in six months to a year. If you lose them, calendar a follow up call in a year to ask them how they are doing.

7.    Provide an incentive for your new service teams to continue wooing these clients that are on your keepers list and to keep them loyal to the firm. You have to get everyone into the game if you want to keep the client.  

Once you have done all this, accept the reality that the relationship is all about individuals and not the firm. If the clients have truly bonded to the departing partner, you are not going to keep them. The best you can do is let them know they are welcome to come back to you in the future and hope for a referral or some other good will.

In our case, we had a lawyer leave who had essentially taken over responsibility for handling the needs of several clients who had originally come to me. I followed the plan described above and was able to keep the relationship with all the major clients although some are now splitting their work between us and the other lawyer. We have been able to retain the more important work and are confident that, over time, we will shore up that relationship and win back the rest of it. On the other hand, if the smaller cases go to the other lawyer, that just leaves us with the ones that have better profit potential. I'm not going to complain about that.

We are also doing better about broadening relationships within the firm. New clients are introduced to several people in the firm, including the client services director, so that we have a second and third string ready to go if one member of the team leaves. It's not a perfect solution because it does require some unbillable time as part of our investment in the relationship but I'm looking at the long term in making these decisions.    

P. Douglas Folk
Folk & Associates, P.C.    
www.folklaw.com
Phoenix, AZ
602-222-4400 

From: Angela Jean Spall
aspall@LIONELSAWYER.COM

Stacy, I had this situation when I was Director of Marketing for a large Florida firm.  This partner had moved around a lot and found a home with us for less than a year.  He brought some healthcare clients with him.  One was a large healthcare client and we had some of our young associates doing work for the client.  I recommended that these associates (not the partners) call their contacts in the client entity and just say, "gee, XXX is leaving the firm as you know, we loved working with you and hopefully you liked working with us. We understand that you're likely to go with XXX but if you have any work you'd like us to do for you, please call." 

It worked.  The client liked our associates' work and found them to be responsive.  They kept giving work to the XXX partner but also gave work to our associates and a key partner in our West Palm Beach office.  Eventually the client gave all the work back to us. 

It really depends on the client and how large an entity it is and whether other people had a chance to work on the files.   I can tell you that the partners were not too happy with my recommendation that the associates step in to save the client.  However, as we all know, people talent and marketing skills are often innate and these young, smart people savvy associates listened exactly to what I told them to do and they performed brilliantly. 

The strategy was to look at the whole picture.  You want to be ethical and there are definitely ethical restrictions on what you can do when it comes to clients BUT you also have to protect the investment your firm has made in that client.  We're in relationship marketing and we used the closest relationships we had in that client to save it.

Angela Spall
Director of Marketing
Lionel Sawyer & Collins
Las Vegas, Reno, Carson City, NV  and Washington, D.C.
702-383-8858
aspall@lionelsawyer.com

From:         Larry Bodine

Business Development Advisor

"Review all the affected clients and prioritize your list of keepers" -- Excellent advice Doug.

I also recommend reading the following:

"Monitor your Most Valuable Clients -- or the Competition Will," By Marshall Fletcher, at http://www.lawmarketing.com/publications/news/pub393.cfm

"Bulletproofing your clients," By Gerald Riskin, at http://www.lawmarketing.com/publications/news/pub364.cfm  

Larry Bodine
LawMarketing Portal
www.LawMarketing.com
Tel: 630.942.0977
E-mail: www.larrybodine.com