As a partner with a small personal injury firm in Philadelphia, client satisfaction and retention are always top of mind. My firm prides itself on our client services by ensuring clients know we are truly on their side and will do everything in our power to help them receive the justice they're entitled to. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it also helps us maintain a good relationship with our clients who, if satisfied, are more likely to recommend us to their friends and family. Furthermore, regular communication with clients helps us stay on top of their files when new information arises, and avoids the all too common complaint that clients never hear from their lawyer. This commitment to excellent client communication has especially paid off since the start of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, as most of our new business in the last month has come in the form of referrals from past clients. There are a few practices we have put in place to be certain our client care is consistently and continuously top-notch.

Due to effective marketing techniques as well as the nature of our practice, we regularly get inundated with calls from potential new clients. Interestingly, these calls are often from individuals that have already signed with other attorneys. Our firm is under the explicit practice of not accepting these types of cases. However, we still instruct our staff to take the time to listen and understand each new lead's issues before gently turning them down. Despite the fact that we have a policy to not sign the individual for that particular case, we certainly don't want to leave a bad taste in their mouth, being that it's possible they may call us about another case in the future.

One of the most common reasons these potential clients give for calling us is they signed with an attorney who has not been communicating with them as frequently as they would like, if at all. Whether or not those claims are true could be up for debate. What's not up for debate, however, is that these types of gripes can cause a firm to lose potential new clients, lose existing business, and expose themselves to ethical complaints and possibly even malpractice claims.

To avoid this, we make a very deliberate point to maintain frequent and consistent contact with existing clients. We have put systems in place to ensure we hold up to this standard, including the creation of a regular contact schedule for current clients. In this process, our case managers call clients at prescribed times depending on what stage of the case they're in. If they do not pick up the call, our staff leaves a voicemail and sends both a text and an email, for which we have created easy-to-use templates. If the client still doesn't respond, we print a letter utilizing a similar template and send it to them in the mail.

This process achieves multiple objectives for our practice. First, it gives us the chance to touch base with our clients and quickly update files with any changes, to ensure we stay on top of their cases. Second, our comprehensive and detailed documentation helps us avoid that pesky "my lawyer never calls me" complaint, along with any ethical concerns that may arise from that. Finally, and possibly most crucially, it allows us to stay fresh in our clients' minds. Oftentimes, the cases we litigate take years to finalize as clients are progressively treating and we are compiling medical reports. By staying in regular contact with our clients, we not only get opportunities to assist them, but the possibility to also help their friends and family with any legal issues that may arise.

This system has worked so well for us that our Chief Operating Officer, my brother, has developed a SalesForce application that will allow other businesses to automate this process like we did, as long as they are using SalesForce as their customer relationship management platform.

Using the SalesForce OEM, Litify, as client management software has also especially assisted us in working from home during this pandemic, as it enables us to collaborate with each other as if nothing has changed. The software permits our teams to track case activity, ensure that clients' cases are moving along appropriately, and that we are checking in with them regularly.

Besides the incredible benefit of increased client satisfaction, our thorough process of documenting our communications also gives us an advantage if any clients try to say we have not made appropriate attempts to communicate with them. In one of these past instances, a client denied that he had agreed over the phone to his case settlement, despite the fact that both my partner and I were participating in the conversation via conference call. His claim necessitated that we testify in court during a motion-to-enforce settlement hearing filed by the defendant (an insurance company). We presented the judge with our communication log, which detailed every phone call, text message, and email correspondence between our firm and the client during the pendency of the case; including settlement discussions. After our testimony and communication audit, the judge rightfully ruled that the client had agreed to take the proposed settlement, and that his argument of never having spoken to us was not valid.

Since the beginning of the global coronavirus health crisis, there are a number of extremely helpful communication practices we have adopted, allowing us to continue providing the high quality of service our clients are accustomed to. Video conferencing technology makes events such as depositions and arbitrations more accessible to all involved. This is especially advantageous to the multitude of our injured clients who have  extreme difficulty traveling. Additionally, this practice saves the countless minutes normally spent sitting and waiting in a courtroom, ultimately freeing up valuable time to spend actually working with clients.

We have switched out our old fax machine for a fax-to-email solution, enabling our team members to continue using that as a fundamental channel. The ability to fax documents is essential for most injury firms, as many insurance companies, health insurance organizations, courts, and other attorneys we deal with on a regular basis communicate using fax machines and/or carbon copy paper. Now, incoming faxes get delivered straight into our inbox as an emailed PDF that can be filed directly into the client's virtual file. This has been particularly helpful for our communication with a certain health organization. Their fax line is frequently busy, requiring us to resend faxes to them multiple times before we receive a successful fax confirmation. This new fax solution makes this common situation much less aggravating, allowing staff to simply click a button to repeat the action, rather than having to walk to the fax machine over and over. Email faxing also allows us to provide pertinent information to clients in a better time frame, reassuring them that action is being taken in their cases.

In the past year, we've transitioned the practice to voice over IP phone technology, enabling every member of the firm to work using virtual softphones on their computers. Wireless headsets keep everyone from feeling "tied to their computer," comfortable while doing our best to serve our clients, and allow us to communicate with insurance companies without missing a beat.

Before the pandemic, we were comfortable and almost cocky about the processes we had developed for client communication. However, we clearly had opportunities for improvement, proving there is always room for growth. Now is a great time to dive into your firm's processes in order to help increase and improve client retention, whether these processes are  communication strategies or document generation, and find ways to improve. For us, the initial shock felt in the first few weeks of this crisis has turned into excitement about the opportunity to address problems and improve systems at our firm. When this ends, we hope to be better positioned than ever to give our clients the justice and outstanding customer service that they deserve.

David Kwartler is a partner with Kwartler Manus in Philadelphia. He dedicates his practice to representing clients who have been injured by someone else's negligent actions.