Patent litigators travel frequently. I addressed the topic back in early March. Travel can be tiring, or fun, or a combination of the two. And travel episodes are sometimes good for a laugh afterwards. Sometimes, you can even learn a business lesson or two from a travel experience. On a recent trip, I was reminded that trying to save some money can be costly in other ways. And while it is nice to be running a firm that is a cheaper alternative to Biglaw, there is no excuse for letting that price differential compromise the quality of our services. We don’t, and never will, but reminders of that principle do not hurt either.
A few months ago, Zach and I needed to make a trip to meet with a client and separately deal with an issue in one of our cases. When I was in Biglaw, both of the firms I worked for had in-house travel agents, and because of the nature of my practice, I got to know the actual agents pretty well. If I had a business trip, all it took was an email or phone call, and everything would be arranged based on my travel profile and preferences. The occasional “can you get me an earlier flight” or “flight cancelled, get me home” situation was often handled seamlessly as well. And while I was never in the “client is paying for it, so it’s first class for me” camp, I also never hesitated while at Biglaw to incur additional travel cost when there was a compelling business reason for it.
So if it cost a bit more to take a flight at a certain time of day, so be it — especially if flying at those times would make me more productive, i.e., capable of generating billable hours. Or if an upgrade that would allow me to get some much-needed rest was available for a moderate cost, I would take it. But I could not stomach employing some well-worn Biglaw travel tricks, such as always booking refundable full-fare tickets in coach to pretty much guarantee an upgrade. As the years went by, of course, increased client focus on expenses cut out some of the marginally abusive practices. It is hard to worry about securing an upgrade — when you are trying to get the client to pay for the trip in the first place.
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Things are different now that I have my own boutique firm….
At our new firm, I am the de facto travel agent. Which is fine, since I am comfortable with both booking travel and finding ways to use points or status to minimize out-of-pocket costs. The latter comes in handy, particularly when it comes to business development travel that can’t be charged to a client. So for the trip mentioned above, I had put myself to work getting us flights, hotel, and a rental car. Since the primary purpose of the trip was business development, I tried to minimize the costs as much as possible. For the flights and hotel, that worked out fine, since I was able to use a combination of cash and points to get us decent flights and a normal hotel. The rental car? A different story, and a lesson learned.
Because I keep kosher, I got used to renting cars, rather than relying on taxis or public transport when traveling — partly for cost reasons, and partly because I often needed some flexibility to find a supermarket or restaurant where I could pick up my meals. This depended on the city, of course, but a lot of times having a rental car was a more economical and convenient option. So I rented cars pretty often. (One of the underutilized perks of Biglaw is that in-house travel agents tend to have the ability to get “elite status” for firm lawyers, even the ones who don’t travel enough to earn it under the regular rules.) So when I booked cars while at Biglaw, I always had status with a few of the big car rental brands. The biggest convenience was being able to go right off the plane to a car, without an intermediate stop at the rental counter.
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So that’s what I was used to while in Biglaw. And to be honest I still have status with two of the big chains when it comes to car rentals. But because I have a tendency to “try things,” I decided for this particular trip that the premium I would have needed to pay (a whole 40 bucks!) was not worth it. So I would save the firm some money, and secure a vehicle for the day from one of the more budget-minded purveyors of poor-selling econoboxes for rent. Bad idea. Costly, too, at least in terms of time and aggravation.
What did my forty dollars in savings get us? For one, we got to wait on a smoggy terminal curbside for an extra twenty minutes, as the shuttle buses for my usual choices drove by, taunting us with their regularity and cleanliness. Our turn finally came, and what our shuttle lacked in punctuality was compensated for by a nice layer of grime and a suspension that doubled as a chiropractic adjustment tool. The fun continued at the rental counter, where we waited for even longer as the nice couple before us required twenty minutes of coaxing to drop their request — for a discount of $3.47 or so — in exchange for a promise to bring the car back an hour early. When it was our turn at the counter? We needed every ounce of our litigation skills to avoid being “upsold” to a redundant and expensive insurance “package” to guarantee our “peace of mind.” Needless to say, our car was of the “castoff from the rental car agency we should have rented from” quality. A new KSK maxim was born that day: “As with men’s shoes, quality matters, and trying to save money with respect to rental cars is an invitation for aggravation that should be avoided. Always.”
The entire episode was a productive reminder that service providers can and do skimp. And while there is nothing wrong with offering budget, cut-rate options for those who want them, there is nothing worse than promising a quality experience and failing to deliver. While I have seen a tremendous variety of quality when it comes to legal services in my career, I know very well what our firm’s ambitions are, and the standard we try to meet and exceed. So our clients may get a deal, especially relative to even our own Biglaw hourly rates from just a year ago, but it won’t come at the expense of a quality engagement experience. Even if it means picking clients up from the airport myself.
Please feel free to send comments or questions to me at [email protected] or via Twitter: @gkroub. Any topic suggestions or thoughts are most welcome.
Earlier: Beyond Biglaw: Traveling Time, Again
Gaston Kroub lives in Brooklyn and is a founding partner of Kroub, Silbersher & Kolmykov PLLC, an intellectual property litigation boutique. The firm’s practice focuses on intellectual property litigation and related counseling, with a strong focus on patent matters. You can reach him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter: @gkroub.