How To Build Immediate Rapport between lawyer and client

In today’s economy it is even more important for lawyers to make a great first impression with prospective clients, or to build their relationships with existing clients. At RTPLegal we are often asked to provide ‘Fee Negotiation’ and ‘Commercial Management of Client Relationships’ programmes, and whilst tools and techniques can make a real difference to fee income and profitability, they both require good levels of rapport to exist between lawyer and client.

Rapport is at the core of a lot of the work that lawyers engage in and is central to their ability to influence effectively.  Rapport can turn a telephone call into a meeting. It can make the difference between having a ‘prospect’ and creating a client. It can help develop a relationship that creates barriers to competitive entry. At a more tactical level it can help you use a follow-up letter or e-mail to deepen the connection with your client.

Often this rapport occurs naturally.  But lawyers, as highly trained technical experts, can slip into ‘digital language’ based on the words used within the law.  Whilst this helps them communicate quickly and easily with each other, it may not be the case when the lawyer needs to engage with a prospective client.

So how does a lawyer establish a connection of rapport with a prospect who may not be a technical expert?  The experience below proves the value of a single, powerful question used correctly.  And a lawyer can easily utilize the same approach in a variety of contexts to quickly build rapport.

The Story

A colleague took a call one day from the managing director of a medical healthcare manufacturer.  He was looking for some development work for his top team and was approaching four potential suppliers for proposals. He had no relationship in place with any of the suppliers.

Before listening to the brief, my colleague asked the killer question: “What’s important to you about any work that is delivered to your top team?” After a few seconds of silence, the prospect said one word: “Rigour”.  It turned out that all of the team had academic backgrounds and so any work delivered needed to be grounded in academic research and rigour.  After taking the brief, we wrote the proposal in which we used the word ‘rigour’ twice.  We got through to the next stage and met with the prospect.  He had our proposal in front of him and had highlighted the word ‘rigour’.  We won the work and when asked what had made the difference the client honestly said: “You simply seem to speak the same language as us”.

So how does this apply to the legal market? Your client or a prospect calls regarding a new piece of work. You need to show them quickly that you are listening to them and understand what is important to them for them to give you a valuable and important piece of work.  How can you ‘stack the cards’ in your favour:

The Lessons

• Ask the right question early in the conversation – it’s a real opportunity to differentiate and build rapport, and sets you up from the beginning as taking a consultative, value-add approach.
• Asking ‘What’s important to you about …?” gets the other person’s values around whatever it is you are talking about.  When you understand the values on which they will make a decision this enables you to focus on the right things for that specific client or prospect, and to leverage this in any follow-up communication.  In the legal context you could ask: “What’s important to you about your choice of law firm?’ or ‘What’s important to you about how we would work together?’  Many other law firms won’t be doing this. It will give you an edge.
• If you do ask the “What’s important to you?” question, make sure that you note down their response in their words and do not ‘translate’ them into words that mean something to you. Words have importance. In my example, the word was ‘rigour’ and not ‘rigid’ or ‘precise’.
• When you send a follow-up letter or e-mail use the words that they have used to you.  This helps to build rapport before you even meet them!

Remember, this could be ‘the difference that makes the difference’.