A new client will decide within about five minutes of your first meeting whether or not he will instruct you. He bases this decision on two factors: your technical competence and whether he likes you. The good news is that a client will assume that you are technically sound, as long as you appear reasonably confident. So how do you get him to like you?
The key to this lies in making him feel that you are similar to him. People like other people if they can relate to them. In the lawyer-client relationship this can be interpreted as understanding the client’s needs. One way to do this quickly is to find out about your client and their approach to life. There is no shortcut to this – it involves talking to them. Idle conversation can tell you a lot about their attitude to client service, whether they are a big picture or details person and their attitude to risk. If you want your client to relate to you, you should also give feedback, so that the client feels that you are their sort of person – this may mean re-inventing yourself for each client. Because most of us cannot do this beyond a limited range, you may decide that it would be more appropriate for another person in the firm to run the relationship, even if only as a ‘front man’.
