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The Effective Lawyer teaches ambitious trial lawyers how to grow their skills and create a prosperous law firm. Using lessons learned by accomplished attorneys from around the country, we discuss lessons learned through their trials and tribulations. Our discussions cover a vast range of topics sought out by attorneys looking for advice, from depositions to how to market your law firm.
The show is hosted by Jack Zinda, Founder and Senior Trial Lawyer at Zinda Law Group. In less than 15 years, Jack and his team have grown Zinda Law Group from 3 attorneys to over 30, spanning several states and handling a variety of personal injury cases from gas explosions to truck accidents.
Jack and his guests share their knowledge and skills that they’ve acquired through the process of building one of the most successful plaintiff’s law firms in the country.
In each show we cover a new topic that an ambitious attorney would want to better understand, while providing practical skills to improve their legal practice.
For more information, visit https://www.zdfirm.com/the-effective-lawyer
00:06
Jack Zinda
Welcome to the Effective Lawyer, a podcast for ambitious attorneys who want to improve their practice. My name is Jack Zinda and I'll be your host. Hey, everyone, Jack Zinda here. Today, I want to talk about a simple tool you can use that can help get you to a 95% client satisfaction rate almost overnight, maybe if you do it well and you do good legal work. Okay, so let's talk about this. What is this simple tool? What is this thing you can use that can implement. Well, a little bit about my firm. We've been practicing for 15 years. We have never had a bar complaint. Sustained. We've had a couple crazy people file bar complaints that weren't based in anything. And we've recovered over 300 million for our clients. And we have a 95.3% client satisfaction rate over the lifetime of our firm.
00:57
Jack Zinda
And I know that is an actual client satisfaction rate because some of the techniques we do that I'll talk about a little bit, make sure I actually know what is going on with my clients and in their head.
01:07
Speaker 3
Okay?
01:08
Jack Zinda
So first, when you meet with the client, you want to make sure that you talk about how you're going to communicate with them. You want to put that in the contract itself.
01:21
Speaker 3
Okay?
01:21
Jack Zinda
One thing you'll notice when it comes to client satisfaction, communication is key. Don't worry. I'm going to get to the tool in a second. But I want to start at the beginning on the baseline of things you have to do.
01:30
Speaker 3
Okay?
01:32
Jack Zinda
So you need to explain to the client what their expectations are on communication. And you want to explain how the process of whatever type of law you practice is going to work. Now, I'm giving you kind of vague generality like, oh, yeah, of course I would do that. Well, I don't think most attorneys do.
01:49
Speaker 3
Okay.
01:50
Jack Zinda
I don't think most attorneys explain the process and explain what's going to happen in their case. And I think that's why they have unhappy clients. People are not satisfied when expectations do not meet outcomes.
02:02
Speaker 3
Okay?
02:03
Jack Zinda
And so if your client isn't happy, their outcome did not meet their expectation. Now, you may have done an incredible job. You killed it.
02:11
Speaker 3
I've had cases.
02:12
Jack Zinda
Let's say you have this case where, you know, you got all of the money, you got the liens reduced, the client's going to walk away with a ton. You come into that meeting with them, they're going to sign the closing statement, you're pumped, you're ready for a high five, and you're like, this is all I'm getting. This is your fee. You didn't do anything in your head. You're thinking, I worked so hard on this case, I gave up nights and weekends. I didn't go on vacation with my family over Labor Day to get this case done. You know, my hourly rate is way lower than would be if I did this on a retainer basis. Of course, you don't say any of those things. And the client reluctantly signs the closing statement or the release to give you to get you paid.
02:51
Jack Zinda
They leave you a two star review on Google and you did an amazing job. They kind of kicked you in the pants on the way out and will never recommend you to anyone that they know again. Okay, you want to avoid that. You want the opposite. You want them high fiving, you want them shaking your hands, you want them telling the whole world about how great you are. Okay, so let's talk about how to do that. The first is at every stage of the case, you want to go through where they're at in the case. And I do that with every time when I do a client contact update, I'm going to reset and say, okay.
03:28
Jack Zinda
As you recall, when you hired our firm, we talked about there would be stage A, the investigation, then treatment, then there would be a demand, then there'd be an offer, then we might go to litigation, there'd be depositions and there'd be jury trial. Actually have a much longer way I explain it. But what I'm doing is I'm bringing the client along with me on the journey.
03:47
Speaker 3
Okay.
03:48
Jack Zinda
And I'll go into another episode, a bunch of other ways you can set expectations on values and things like that. But I'm going to get into the tools you can use or this particular tool to make sure that you know if a client's upset and how to fix it and solve it as the case goes along. We set up a little part in our client on our practice management software called Slate, where if a client is bothered or upset or not cooperative, everyone on the team, from the receptionist to the partners to the intake, is required to update the status of the client. We call it client cooperation. And the first is the client is happy, satisfied, and they're glad things are happening the way are and they're really happy with how our firm is helping them.
04:28
Speaker 3
Okay.
04:29
Jack Zinda
That's generally where we want to put everyone at now. But if a client is not cooperating or is not happy or satisfied, everybody in the firm is required to update this button to one of four settings. One is they are slightly uncooperative. The other is they're very uncooperative. The fourth is they're somewhat unhappy. And the third is they're very unhappy or dissatisfied. Okay, Those, they could be a combination of those. And let me tell you why we picked those terms.
05:02
Speaker 3
Okay?
05:03
Jack Zinda
So if a client is refusing to, or let's say the client has missed two appointments with you, that's somewhat uncooperative.
05:10
Speaker 3
Okay?
05:10
Jack Zinda
Now if the client's saying, I am not going to meet with you ever again, that's very uncooperative. And we have a little visual little red dot that tells us the, you know, what type of mood they're in or what the issue is. And we can run a report to see that. Now, obviously, that can be tough to implement. Why? Let's talk about why. No one wants to be the bearer of bad news. No one wants to say, hey, you know, boss or partner, I've got this client. My job is to keep them happy, and they're not happy. So you have to celebrate when people do that and thank them for doing that. Use as an example, when those things are brought up.
05:47
Jack Zinda
And then on the flip side, if someone doesn't do it, you have to have very serious consequences because you want to know before it becomes a bar complaint, before people get upset. In my experience, when things go really south with a client, it's because no one talked to them. They were mad for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 months. The paralegal knew. They never told anyone. And then at the time you're trying to settle, they refuse to sign the release and those things. So it puts that message in. Then based on who the team member's working for, it'll send an alert to a partner supervising paralegal that is helping that person with the case. And then the team member that noticed it put in a note, what the person's issue is and how they think we should solve it.
06:31
Jack Zinda
And then the attorney jumps in to help. And if they can't fix it goes to a partner. If they can't fix it actually goes to our leadership team. And we look at any client that is unhappy or not satisfied or not cooperating with the case. Okay, so that's one way you got to know the information. You have to be alert of what the issue is. You have to make sure everybody's on board for doing it the right way. You have to have a report that tells you how this is done. Now, you can do this on your own. You could do a. You could do a spreadsheet like a shared Google Doc that everyone has access has all the client names jumping the firm.
07:02
Jack Zinda
Hey, if someone's upset, go into our shared Google spreadsheet, hit this button and then just look at it every day. It's that simple, that easy. And you can. And then once the client's happy again, you change it back from, you know, yellow, red back to green. The next tool we use actually I said one tool. We have more tools. I'll go in that another episode, but I think this is enough for to get you started. I want to give in bite sized pieces so you have this homework, you can come back and work on something else and some more tools get you that 95 client satisfaction rate. Okay, so to recap some of the tactics and tips here I talked about. One is make sure you go over client communication in your contract.
07:42
Jack Zinda
Two, make sure you explain where they're at in the case every single time you give them a client update. I actually have a whole process for this and it feels redundant, it feels a little tedious. But remember, this is the only case they're going to ever have, so you have to do that because knowledge is what avoids them being upset about something. And then third, our client satisfaction alert system, train the team on to use it. If you don't have software, you don't have something you can use for this. Set up a Google sheet or an Excel spreadsheet that's shared. And anytime a client's upset or has an issue, train your team to update that status, what they're upset about, and review that on a regular basis.
08:19
Jack Zinda
I promise you if you make this part of your practice and delegate someone, you will see a much higher client satisfaction rate and the odds of you getting a bar complaint or malpractice suit will go down significantly. I hope you found this helpful. Happy to share any information we have on that or any templates or SOPs. Hope everyone's having a great day. Great time. Until next time, thanks.
08:45
Speaker 4
That wraps up another episode of the Effective Lawyer. Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you've got a minute, a quick rating or review goes a long way. Want more tips, insights and stories from the field? Head over to zindalaw.io to learn more. Thanks for listening. Until next time.