10. It’s Incredibly Easy to Lose the Trust of Clients - How to Avoid the Pitfalls

Taking assignments from clients is literally the opposite of taking candy from a baby. They are smart, savvy, connected and most of all, skeptical. This is why it’s incredibly easy to lose the trust of clients.

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Our series on trust started with a lesson called “Trust: Hard to Win, Easy to Lose, Impossible to Recover.” That was focused on on how to build trust, and so now we turn to how to lose it, and the pitfalls to avoid. Taking assignments from clients is literally the opposite of taking candy from a baby. They are smart, savvy, connected and most of all, skeptical. This is why it’s incredibly easy to lose the trust of clients. The first problem is that they are not naturally trustful or forgiving. GCs and other in-house clients are conditioned by experience to be wary of outside counsel. They all have horror stories, which they share liberally among themselves. Couple that with the fact that they have an ever-growing supply of alternative vendors and solutions.

It’s helpful to look at this through the client lens. From the client standpoint, the trust issues which outside counsel have to navigate are around technical knowledge, judgement and operational skills. Each hurdle is harder to jump then the one before. Technical knowledge is often a given, and this is rarely where trust is lost. Even so, if you claim expertise outside your technical skill set, or sell what you have rather than what’s needed, don’t be surprised if the client loses trust. Judgment is bigger challenge. Clients are not only wary of counsel who make a bad call or a reach a judgement based on bad or incomplete information, but also those who sit on the fence for fear of error.

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