Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Avvo Corporate Counsel, Esther Sirotnik.
Good morning everybody.
Thank you for getting up.
This has been a great couple of days.
Hope most of you made it to... last night, what a fun, great party.
Lawyernomics is kind of like flying Vegas or flying Virgin to Vegas.
Lights, music, free drinks, it's good.
Many of you asked me last night about what I was going to talk about and why I should
be talking to you about trust.
I'm talking to you today about building client trust, what that means and why it matters.
As counsel for Avvo, I deal with trust every day from many angles.
This is something that I'm always thinking about.
My company trusts me to counsel them.
They trust me to stand up here and talk to you.
Earning their trust is the key to my being successful and my job.
In working with the regulators that we work with all the time.
In working with attorneys like you and the clients, the consumers that we serve that
are your clients.
So I think about this a lot.
One of the great things about being a lawyer for a company about lawyers is that I'm on
the ground every day with the research we do, the data we gather.
And we do this, as you've heard over the last few days, we do this all the time.
We're not making this stuff up.
We're gathering data, we're doing research and we're listening to you and we're listening
to consumers who are ultimately going to be your clients.
So what does trust building mean in gaining clients and serving them?
Like you to put on a filter, we talk a lot about marketing, we talk a lot about, all
angles of marketing our practice, marketing our business.
But I'd like you to put on a filter of relationship building and trust building and thinking about
this consumer that you're working with and what they expect.
The attorney client relationship embodies a level of trust.
But this is more than the veil of privilege, this is more than the obligation of confidentiality
that you bring to your relationship with a client.
This is about providing information and transparency to consumers so that they become your clients.
And it's about the relationship you build with them once they are your clients.
And then it's about taking that relationship and continuing to foster it and leverage it
moving forward.
So I've broken this down into five things because we like things.
But I want you to think of this as more of a roadmap, and again, at Avvo, we love roadmaps,
they tell us a lot.
You look at the journey, you find out what works along the way, you adjust and you have
a path to success.
This is how it works.
So I've broken it down to five things and these are simple things.
And if you're in this room, chances are you're doing many of the things that I'm going to
talk about.
But I want you to think of them through this filter and to think of them from the relationship
standpoint of you and your client.
Think of them, you know, not so much as a checklist but a journey.
So meet expectations for information.
Be responsive.
Establish transparency at intake.
We're going to talk about all of these.
Communicate efficiently and predictably and close the loop.
What do these mean?
Why do we care?
How do we do them?
Let's get into it.
Meet expectations for information.
What do consumers, and we are going to call them consumers, expect from you when they
are looking for a lawyer?
I mean, Mark said it, you know, we all at some point talk about how lawyers are really
bad.
We suck at giving consumers information.
And increasingly, information is the landscape in which consumers engage in shopping.
They expect it.
We live in a new world, a bio or a profile without rich information about who you are
just doesn't cut it.
A consumer looking for a lawyer is going to check seven sources at least of information
about you.
How many do you have?
If you don't have a breadth of information for them, they can't get an idea of who you
are and how you practice.
And in order to trust you and have the confidence to even reach out to you, this is before they
even reach out to you, they need to feel like they understand who you are and how you practice.
So tell them.
These are the people with the legal need and the money to hire a lawyer.
They're engaged and they're fearless.
How much information do you get when you buy a cup of coffee?
How much information do you get when you stand like I did last week at the Crosswalk, thinking
about how it was going to be hot out in Seattle, which was very unusual and I wanted to buy
a fan and looked at my phone and thought, okay, I'm going to look at, here's five customer
reviews.
Wow, I'm going to buy this one before I cross the street.
You buy coffee at Starbucks, you know the origin of the bean and how many calories are
in it, all these things about your coffee.
Think about a considered purchase.
What if you're building a house?
What are you going to do?
Go find a contractor.
How many of you will just hire a contractor to build your house with only the years that
they were licensed as a contractor and their geographical location as the information that
you have before you sign a contract?
You might know how much they charge per hour, that's good to know.
But hey, bill me.
Let me know when my house is done, whenever that is, and what it costs.
I don't know about the style of the house, I mean, whatever you think, contractor, you
just do it.
You build me this house, you let me know.
This isn't how it works.
Unless you have some sort of unusually large recreational experimental budget, this is
not how we do things.
And legal services are in the same camp.
There used to be a world where lawyers, just by the very nature of being a lawyer, were
trusted to just do what they do.
That's not how it works anymore.
So you need to give consumers information.
This is a considered purchase.
The things to do are simple.
Mark talked about cul-de-sacs yesterday and how Google, the ABC Alphabet, whatever they
are, but how Google is now doing this.
Think about ways that you can get out of the cul-de-sac and create an online presence for
yourself that consumers can see easily.
They are looking at you.
There's information across so many sources that they can find.
Have a social media presence.
I know this is something that attorneys shy away from.
How do I do that?
That's not comfortable.
This is not something that lawyers do.
Yes it is.
Think about how you can create your own social media presence, whatever that is.
Is it Twitter?
Is it your firm has a Facebook page?
Because this is the way consumers gather and digest information.
This is what they're used to.
Get out of the cul-de-sac and get in front of them on their mobile, on their Twitter.
Have a good website, and by good I mean professionally designed and informationally substantive and
you are not a website developer most likely and a lawyer.
You're a lawyer.
But guess what, we do that.
There's people, we do that for you.
Take advantage of these tools and do these things.
It's so important.
This one, you know, you're all familiar with, make your directory profile rich.
Go in there and take the time to add the information to it.
Get a professional headshot.
This is a simple thing but think about it.
The first thing a consumer sees is your picture.
We have a booth out there.
If you haven't been to that booth, you should go.
They're going to make you look good.
Like you are someone that is professional and that can be trusted.
Tell them who you are and what you do.
If you do that and you do it in enough ways, you've opened the door and the consumer has
the the confidence they need to contact you.
So what happens next on this roadmap, this journey?
This is one that we repeat over and over again.
Be Responsive, be responsive, be responsive.
Responsiveness breeds trust.
This is your first chance to tell consumers that you will be there for them.
That you are there, that you will be available to help them through whatever their legal
need is.
We're not talking about later today or tomorrow or I'll get to answering my emails.
We're not talking about that.
We're talking about within the first hour.
If you were here yesterday, you saw the data, we love data.
You saw the data responding right away, exponentially.
We're talking factors, increases your chance of bringing business in.
We've done studies on this.
We see that your response rate correlates directly to a consumer's decision to hire
you.
That likelihood plummets.
Plummets.
So you need to respond right away.
How do you do this?
You're already serving your current clients.
Again, there's tools.
We live in this new world.
It's not that new anymore, but it's a world of technology and the tools are being developed
constantly and they're available to you.
Figure out which ones work and use them.
This is so awesome.
You don't have to answer the phone.
You just have to be responsive.
So think about responsiveness as a different exercise.
It's an exercise of efficiency and predictability and channels.
I work everyday at Avvo using many channels, one of my favorite words is asynchronous,
which means that I can do two things at once.
I can do my work and I can let my clients, many of whom are in this room, the business
people at Avvo know that I heard their request and I am going to take care of it.
Just that alone, just letting them know that hey gotcha, gives them the confidence to know
that they can trust me to take care of it.
So this is your chance.
Be Responsive.
Figure out your tools.
Virtual receptionists are great.
Email responders are great.
You can use live chat on your website.
Consumers love chat.
Nobody wants to talk to anybody anymore.
Makes them uncomfortable.
They want to chat with you though.
If you give them this tool, it gives them a way to do that.
It also gives them a way to do it maybe during a day where they don't have the time to have
a phone call or the privacy to have a phone call.
There's this channel that a consumer can connect with you on asynchronously in their life too.
Yesterday we told you about this new leads manager, I love this product, this is awesome.
Isn't it cool?
You can manage your leads and responsiveness comprehensively on your mobile.
That's fantastic.
This is the kind of stuff, the innovation that is going to change the way that you do
business.
Build trust with consumers and allow you to grow your practice.
These are simple things but they're things that we think about every day and that make
a huge difference in how you interact with consumers and clients.
Do those things.
Figure out what your tools are.
Don't do this.
If you want to do this, there is a casino down the hall.
Take your money there.
Don't do that.
Use the tools.
They're there for you.
They matter.
Okay.
So you've done all these things.
Maybe you're already doing them, like this is old news to me.
Hopefully you're thinking about doing them but you've done these things, let's say you've
done these things and you're here.
It's time to intake this client.
Establish transparency at intake.
What does transparency mean?
Transparency means communication of information in a way that consumers understand.
And there's really two places, there's two places at intake that I think about and talk
to attorneys about that we work with.
There's transparency in pricing and transparency in your engagement letter.
And at Avvo, we actually have studied and looked at both of these things and looked
at package legal services and the idea of transparency and pricing and how pricing is
a blocker to so many consumers.
They want to know what something is going to cost them.
Consumers are more likely to trust you if they can understand you.
So if you hand over something really complicated to them, whether it's a fee agreement or a
really complex engagement letter, that's putting up a roadblock.
If your practice is the kind of practice that affords it, you can put together unbundled
or packaged or whatever you call them, where you are legal services.
There are a lot of things we do that don't require hourly billing.
We know the time it will take.
You can put a scope around this.
If something's out of bounds, you can clearly account for that.
Do an addendum to your engagement letter that says, this is what's included.
This is not included but this is what it costs.
If it goes beyond that, then there's this.
But you can do this.
And your engagement letter should be dead simple.
We like to use templates and forms and I think I know that many of these are passed along
through the generations of practicing law, which you know, go back 100 years.
Mark put up the pictures from 100 years ago and then yesterday and they look the same.
Your engagement letter needs to be simple and plain English terms so that consumers
understand what you're putting in front of them.
A lot of jurisdictions require dense legalese.
Fine.
Make a cover letter.
Use bullets as few as possible, but use them and tell the consumer what they are signing
up for.
We're lawyers.
It's our job to take complex legal terms and translate them into regular concepts.
Do that for your clients.
Interpret the terms, tell them what they're agreeing to and they'll continue to trust
you.
You'll be continuing that communication with them.
And do these things efficiently.
You don't need to reinvent the wheel every time.
There's tools, so many tools.
You can use templates for your engagement letter.
You can do all of this, administer this through email.
Electronic signature is your friend.
And now they're your client and what happens next?
Great.
Now, done with that communication business.
Now I can go be a technician of law.
Nope.
Consumers expect communication and they expect it throughout their relationship with you.
This is no longer a world where we turn our matter over to counsel and just wait for the
outcome.
Tell me what kind of house you build when you're done, it doesn't happen.
Or if it does, it doesn't work for consumers.
I keep a close eye on all types of ethics issues out there and guess what?
Guess what is the number one cause of disciplinary actions?
Not stealing money or fee splitting.
It's non-responsiveness, lack of communication.
My lawyer didn't communicate with me.
They didn't tell me what was happening.
They left me out here.
You need to keep them in the loop.
Don't make them wait for you.
You can build communicating with your clients into your process.
Again, there's tools.
This isn't about customizing or being on the phone all the time.
Just figure out what your tools are and make them predictable and efficient and a process.
And then they're happening asynchronously with you practicing.
And your client is getting the communication that they need to trust you.
And they're not reporting you to the bar.
This builds a better relationship with them.
What about when they really aren't happy?
Think about the things that can happen with an unhappy consumer.
All those channels that we talked about earlier are out there and consumers are empowered
to share their opinion about what it's like to use a product, a service, a lawyer.
Give them a channel.
Tell them I'm going to be responsive to you.
If you ever feel like you aren't getting what you need, I want to hear about it.
This isn't just about proactive communication and keeping them in the loop.
It's about listening to them.
If you tell them this upfront, whether it's a dedicated phone number or an email address
that they can use, if they are not getting the service or the experience that they expect,
you're telling them that you're there and you care and you will listen to them.
This is so valuable and so important, and a big piece of being the type of attorney
that consumers want and expect.
This will build your relationship from the outset.
And then, if something does go wrong, a few things happen.
They don't go on Twitter and every other social channel and talk about it or write you terrible
client reviews on your profile page.
They talk to you.
And you in your roadmap have this piece of data now.
The same way that we do this, we collect data along our road maps and tweak the things that
aren't working and make the journey smooth, you have this information so you're getting
market feedback, you're getting your own research, your own market research out of the deal too.
Think about it like that.
And now we're here at the end and we need to close the loop and what does close the
loop mean?
Why are we even talking about this?
The case is over, but you're not done.
Close the loop doesn't mean tie it off.
It really means bring it all together.
It's all part of a cycle that comes back to the beginning.
This trust that you've earned with your client is something that you now have as an opportunity
moving forward to leverage.
This is a relationship that you can maintain.
Think of it as a relationship.
And you've worked so hard with each client.
Even if you're not really working hard because you're using tools and you're doing this efficiently
and predictably, you've worked hard to put these things in place and you're thinking
about it.
The file doesn't close.
The case closes but it's not over.
This is your opportunity.
You need to request reviews.
We're like a broken record on this one, but that's because we've done the research.
We have the data.
Reviews are so important.
This should be a standard part of closing your file.
An automatic email that goes out requesting client review.
Consumers expect to be able to read reviews and they also expect to give them so ask for
them.
Use the templates.
We have templates.
We make this easy for.
You should be doing this every time.
We have attorneys that shy away from reviews because they're afraid of turning that control
over to consumers.
What if I get a negative review?
What if you do?
Our research shows actually that a negative client review, if you're doing your job, this
is going to sit somewhere with other reviews that are not negative.
A negative review or two does not hurt you.
In fact, it helps you.
It helps you build legitimacy because it's an opportunity to speak to that, to speak
to that consumer publicly, all the other people are going to read your response, in a way
that's taking the high road and explaining how you practice and what your clients can
expect from you.
You don't get into an argument or defensive, he said, she said.
This is not what we do when we respond to reviews.
You use it as an opportunity.
And take that feedback, thank you for the feedback should always be the first sentence
in a response to a negative review.
Thank you.
Thank them.
Show the next client how you handle that.
So this helps you.
It builds legitimacy.
Five star reviews down the line don't have the same level of authenticity.
You're a real person.
It's okay to have a negative review.
95% of consumers not only say reviews matter, but they use them as part of their decision
in hiring a lawyer.
We share the stats with you about the numbers now that we are part of the Martindale-Nolo
Network.
This is a big family.
There's 23 million combined users a month.
What's 95% of 23 million?
It's a big number.
These are all consumers that are engaging with information in the ways that I'm talking
about today and they expect client reviews.
So give it to them.
Make sure you do this, it's a consistent part of closing your file every time.
Use surveys.
Surveys are a different way of saying the same thing to consumers, to clients.
You're telling them that you care what they think.
But you're doing it in a directed way.
Please answer these three questions, five questions, put a smiley face next to the following
things or a frowny face or however you want to do it.
But there's tools out there to do this.
I was at the dentist, a new dentist, hate the dentist, recently.
By the time I got back to the office after this appointment, I had a survey in my inbox.
I thought, wow, this is awesome.
We talk about this at Avvo.
I called them up and I said, hey, you know, you guys did this.
What's your process her, I'm curious.
Because I work with our product team, our marketing team.
I work with all the teams and I hear about all of these different tools and so what's
your process dentist?
Because in my mind, dentistry is similar to practicing law.
Nobody likes really to have to do it but you do it.
As far as being a client, it's a difficult thing perhaps that you're dealing with when
you hire a lawyer.
It's uncomfortable maybe.
They said, we know it's a difficult thing to come to the dentist and it matters to us
for our patients to have a good experience when they're here, to the extent that we're
able to that we make this comfortable for them.
So we asked them these questions and every week we meet and we talk about their answers.
This is a dentist office that's making a roadmap and looking at inflection points and changing
how they do things in order to meet the needs of their patients.
You can do the same thing, use the tools.
Send out surveys, it's easy.
Talk about the feedback you get, think about it, use it, it's free market research.
And you have all of this information now and this relationship and this trust that you've
built with your client.
You can re-market.
Remarketing is a simple thing.
What you do is up to you, but you can send out newsletters.
Don't be obnoxious, but every so often.
Or reminders, hey, it's time for your estate planning checkup.
Or let your clients know that you offer bite sized services.
Things that are more accessible to them.
They might not realize that, hey, you review contracts or do these other things in bite
sized pieces that if they need something else done you're top of mind, you're there.
You are the lawyer that they think of for their needs or if they're referring an attorney
to someone they know.
So stay top of mind.
These are great ways to keep the wheels turning and be in front of your former clients, leverage
that relationship that you've worked so hard to build.
Don't just put it away and move on to the next one.
And remember, that that relationship comes back together to the very beginning because
it's the foundation on which your next consumer will stand when they look at whether or not
to hire you.
So we've taken the journey.
We did this.
It's easy.
These are easy things.
Look at them.
Put your relationship building, trust building filter on and look at these things.
Meet expectations for information.
Be responsive.
Establish transparency at intake.
Communicate efficiently and predictably.
Use all of that comprehensively.
Close the loop.
Move forward in a way that helps you build your practice and maintain those relationships.
If you gain consumer's trust, you gain their business.
You tap into a much richer level of how you serve them.
They're getting a better experience there.
They're receiving better service from you.
And in turn that serves you and how you practice.
Thank you.
It's been great to have the opportunity to talk with all of you.
I've met many of you over the last few days and happy to talk in person.
If you have questions, please feel free to email me, esirotnik@avvo.com.
It's been great, great to be here.
Next up is Josh King.
He's former general counsel and chief legal officer.
For more infomation >> One (Simple) Hack to Get More Website Traffic FAST - Duration: 3:43. 
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