Ken Grady of Seytlines posts an excellent analysis of how lawyers who need to be good at everything are prevented from serving their clients well. Being good at only what the client needs most and mediocre at everything else is what clients expect from their lawyers.
Check out: http://bit.ly/1LiJl3z
Among many great points, Ken notes:
Check out: http://bit.ly/1LiJl3z
Among many great points, Ken notes:
Legal services delivery has been trapped in a one-size-fits-all-this-is-the-only-way-we-do-it phase since the early 1900s. As competition has increased, lawyer’s have responded by trying to maintain the fiction that they can do all aspects of legal services delivery exceptionally well. Of course, that fiction has butted heads with reality. Lawyers, the same as anyone else, cannot provide excellence in all aspects of legal services delivery. More to the point, those who try to do so, though they may not recognize it, end up being mediocre.
Lawyers' fear of being bad at anything (or the dreaded "F" word - failure) prevents them from being the best at the few things their clients hire them for.
Ken continues:
Ken continues:
The trick in services, it turns out, is to start with what your client values. Lawyers often don’t know what their clients value. For some clients, it may be timeliness, for others cost, and yet others may value a comprehensive scope. Whatever the client values, that is where the lawyer should seek to excel in her services. To do so, the lawyer must accept that she will need to be bad in some other aspect of services. Note, I didn’t say that the lawyer should accept average, mediocre, or fair-to-middling in areas the client doesn’t value; I said bad
The simple truth is that without understanding the problem the client is trying to solve, lawyers can't be of much service at all.
Let's learn to embrace the apparent oxymoron: To be really good, I must be really bad.
Let's learn to embrace the apparent oxymoron: To be really good, I must be really bad.