Ensure your value
How can you be certain that you will receive as much value as possible from your partnership with your attorney? Communication, of course — the seemingly simple center of every conversation and great relationship remains the top priority. If you do not talk regularly with your attorney or if you rarely, if ever, ask questions or send recent documents and forms, you need to communicate more.
Most attorneys say they like to talk with clients at least once per month, just a casual meeting for breakfast, lunch or coffee to sit down and talk about you and your company, especially if they work with you more as an adviser than as an auditor — though every relationship is different.
“We take a more proactive approach, we call and make sure everything is all right, we offer to take them out to breakfast just to chat off the clock and find out what’s going on,” Krajewski says. “And what we’ve found out over the last couple of years is that clients who are using the very large firms are coming to us now and exploring working with us because of things like that.”
And if you are not pleased with the quality or the nature of the relationship you have with your attorney, for any number of reasons, the time to consider a move might be now. Rates are historically low, and this is perhaps the best buyer’s market of any of our lifetimes.
“If you’re unhappy with either the service or the costs, now would be a perfect time to explore, to sit down face to face and meet with an advisory team of qualified and experienced lawyers, and explore what they have to offer, see if there’s a match, see if there’s synergy there, see if it makes sense,” Krajewski says.
You might want to consider a change if you have just outgrown your firm and need a firm with a larger regional, national or international footprint.
You might also consider asking your attorney about any changes in rules and regulations for 2011 and beyond. Asking whether the firm offers any corporate education that you and your employees might be able to put to use would also be a good idea. And asking for a review of your corporate structure, especially for possible inefficiencies, would not be a bad use of time or money. What are your employees earning? What are your executives earning? What else are you paying for? And is it really worth the cost?
“A good law firm ought to be in a position to review and make recommendations concerning whether the client is structured and operated, as a business, in a manner that promotes positive fiscal performance,” Balmert says. “It should be in a position to advise on important legal requirements, and compliance with those requirements, and to inform the client about opportunities that might be available.
“We want to provide the best possible legal product efficiently, promptly and at a fair cost. If a client feels they’re not receiving that, it’s important to communicate any concerns — because whether it has to do with the quality of the product, the promptness of delivery, the price, any of those things, it’s all about communication, it’s all about the relationship. That trust is built on communication.”
Because in a world and an industry filled with so much change during the last couple of years, you always need to talk with your attorney. Something needs to stay the same.