22 Jan Utilizing Goal Setting to Improve the Attorney-Client Experience
The attorney-client relationship requires an attentive outlook that emphasizes a transparent and consistent dialogue between the two parties. As an attorney, it behooves you to make your client as satisfied as possible.
Ensuring that satisfaction requires assessing the situation that the client is facing and setting goals for yourself, in order to ensure that you are doing everything that you can to make this legal process as painless as possible.
No client wishes to be involved in a legal dispute requiring the assistance of an attorney. Therefore, you have to be the one who reassures them throughout the process that you will utilize your legal expertise to handle situations that may arise during the course of this case.
While you should never make promises that specific outcomes will occur, there are helpful ways of monitoring the legal experience from your perspective that can improve the attorney-client relationship, including:
- Establishing realistic goals
- Managing time efficiently
- Listening to your client’s concerns
- Tempering expectations
- Remaining organized
- Preparing for the ups and downs of a case
Setting goals and metrics
Your choice in legal case management software should have the necessary capabilities of streamlining daily tasks. It should be able to foster a more beneficial attorney-client relationship that assists in both the scheduling process and the matter management process.
The legal software that your law firm utilizes also should be integrated into your legal billing and accounting capabilities, offering payment history and invoice-sending capabilities.
For law firms already using legal case management software, it is a necessary part of an annual review to analyze the effectiveness and efficiency of your current choice. This requires understanding the market more thoroughly and not being married to your current choice.
Your choice in legal software needs to reflect the best option for your law firm, and that can mean making a necessary change.
For law firms that currently do not utilize the comprehensive assistance of a legal case management software, an investment in legal technology is an investment in the future of your law firm. By utilizing its features to streamline processes and assist clients, you are creating a pathway to a better legal experience for all parties involved.
Staying organized and realistic
By keeping such an organized set of documents and notes, you will be able to set additional goals, dependent on the desires of the client. For example, if the client informs you that they wish to reach arbitration in their case, then you can set that goal, based on the client’s desires.
Goals like this are dependent on the facts and realistic expectations of the case. They are goals based on steps within the legal experience, and depending on the case, having additional hearings or having settlement offers, can be possible goals to set.
Focusing on the client
The attorney-client relationship can have its ups and downs within those steps, and while the outcomes of each step can affect how positive or negative the relationship ends up, that does not mean that you should not work to better the dynamic along the way.
If you understand your client’s thoughts and feelings regarding how the case is going, you can better prepare for the ups and downs of the legal experience. For example, if your client is going into the experience determined to acquire a specific settlement number and as time passes, the settlement number realistically may be less than the original amount, it is necessary to approach your client differently than you did during your initial consultation.
Setting personal goals like that allows you to remain accountable for your actions and demeanor. It also can assist you in establishing your reputation as an attorney. Over time, you will be able to gauge your ability to achieve these goals throughout cases and make the necessary improvements to become a more dedicated attorney.