Guest Chapter 18

Name: Jason M. Lynch

Current Position: General Counsel and Chief Operating Officer, Foundry Group, a venture capital firm

Former Post-Law School Positions: Partner, Davis Graham & Stubbs (Denver); Associate, Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz (New York); law clerk to the Hon.

Practice Area: Today, general counsel. In private practice, I was a trial lawyer and litigator.

Law School/Year: Columbia, 2002

Time between undergrad and law school: Four years

No matter your practice area, it's a safe bet that there are many lawyers in your market who do the same legal work as you. Litigation, corporate, securities, M&A, employment, trust & estates, criminal defense, personal injury, intellectual property, real estate—it doesn't matter. Clients can choose among any number of lawyers to obtain the service you provide. Why would they pick you?

As you have read in this book, we believe that empathy is a core capability of a successful lawyer. This is true because more than anything else, the key to landing and keeping clients is how you make them feel. And empathy is a key to understanding what your clients are feeling. For clients, legal matters are often complicated, esoteric, overwhelming and can be episodes in their life or business where much is at stake but they have little control. The feeling you want clients to have is: “I feel confidence that this lawyer will take care of me and this problem or project I have. I don't have to worry about it.” How can you make someone feel this way?

Let me tell you a story.

It is the summer of 1995, and I graduated from college a year ago. My girlfriend, Sarah (now my wife), and I are living in a little apartment in New York City on Amsterdam Avenue and 108th Street, combining the wages from our entry-level jobs to make ends meet.

One day I arrive at work to the announcement that associates are being paid a mid-year bonus. The firm hands me a check that afternoon for $1,500. Fifteen hundred dollars! It was more money than I had ever had at one time. I show the check to Sarah when I get home that night and we stare at it gobsmacked. When we come to our senses, we know we should celebrate, and we decide to have dinner at a fabulous New York restaurant we ordinarily could never afford. A friend working as an editorial assistant at a leading New York restaurant guide tells us we should go to Union Square Cafe, the flagship for up-and-coming restauranteur Danny Meyer, which has been named best restaurant in New York several years running. We make a reservation.

We arrive that summer night in 1995 wide-eyed and intimidated. We haven't done much fine dining in the city during our college years there; we are not making enough money to eat out often. When we enter Union Square Cafe, the bar, which runs from the front door back into the heart of the restaurant, is filled two-deep with well-heeled Manhattanites: lawyers, socialites, bankers, corporate executives, and media types. A convivial buzz emanates from the dining rooms where, as we are led to our table, it appears we are the youngest people in the place by at least 15 years.

What is most striking is what happens next. A waiter welcomes us as we sit down and takes our drink order. Moments after opening our menus, water is poured and bread arrives at our table. We have a warm, friendly conversation about the menu with the waiter and place our order. The courses are perfectly spaced, and the staff checks in to see how we are doing at precisely the right intervals: not so often that we feel pestered, and just often enough to feel cared for.

I don't remember what we ate or drank that night. But what I do remember more than 25 years later is how we felt: eager to celebrate a small victory but outside of our comfort zone, we were welcomed, we were cared for, we belonged. Because of how the staff at Union Square Cafe made us feel that night, we became devoted fans of Danny Meyer's restaurants, ate at them every chance we got, and told everyone we knew about our experience. It created a lasting devotion.

Years later I learned that our experience at Union Square Cafe was not happenstance. It occurred by design. Danny Meyer is an evangelist for the art of hospitality. He built his restaurants around it and a business consulting firm to teach it. I strongly recommend you read his book Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business.

Treat existing and prospective clients with true hospitality—with true professional service—and you will make them feel cared for. Taken care of. And that feeling is why they will pick you when they can choose from a hundred other lawyers in your market who perform the same legal work that you do. That is the power of hospitality and exceptional customer service, which is really a form of empathy in practice.

So, I challenge you to think about how you can bring this approach to service into your legal practice. You could:

· Do things to show your client she is more than a billing input in a law firm's factory delivery of legal services. Law firm practices often create this feeling by clients. Find ways to overcome that. A mentor of mine, the General Counsel of a prominent company, once said, “It amazes me that law firms where I spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in legal fees don't have a picture of me at the front desk when I come to the firm so the receptionist can greet me with ‘Hello, Mr.

· Learn the idiosyncrasies of your client's work environment to discover ways to make their lives easier. For example, at Foundry Group, the most common legal activity we engage in is completing early-stage investments in technology companies. There are a standard suite of documents that memorialize every deal. But once a deal closes, our internal finance and audit teams need to be able to extract specific information from the legal documents. Lawyers who took the time to inquire about and understand how their work fits into our overall business process would know that organizing the set of closing documents a certain way would make our process meaningfully more efficient for us. An adjustment like that in service delivery can generate substantial goodwill from your clients because, even with small things, it shows you are paying attention to their experience of working with you and trying to make their jobs easier.

· Refuse to settle for delivering mediocre service in the everyday things. Meet client deadlines every time. Better yet, deliver work product early. Don't send documents saying, “Here is a draft which is still under review.” Complete the review beforehand and deliver only what you feel is a final product, even if the client is expecting a draft. Be impeccable in how you deliver your work, even the things that are standard and expected.

As a new lawyer, you may not be in a position yet to direct how service is delivered to a client. But you can certainly employ these practices as an associate inside a law firm to establish a devoted following among partners. Just replace “partner” for “client” in this discussion above to prompt ideas for how to deliver exceptional service inside your firm. Knowing the idiosyncrasies of the partners you work for is as important and valuable as knowing the idiosyncrasies of your clients. And refusing to settle for mediocre in your regular dealings with partners will go a long way to cementing your reputation as an exceptional lawyer in your firm.

It should go without saying that empathy is not enough to win and retain clients or ensure advancement within a law firm. You must, of course, be knowledgeable and skilled in your practice area. You must be, and cultivate a reputation as being, an expert at what you do. Yet those attributes are the obvious things expected of a lawyer and are not enough on their own to cement your success. If you also embrace the importance of empathy, and use that as a foundation from which to deliver outstanding and hospitable service to your partners and clients, then you will truly distinguish yourself from the mass of lawyers competing with you. Trust me, very few lawyers approach their practice this way. If you do, you will win the devotion of partners and clients and a thriving and sustainable practice.