Technology

Book Review: A Manual On Becoming A Client-Centered Firm, From Clio CEO Jack Newton

Becoming client-centered is not about simply adopting some flashy idea that makes a big splash.

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Before there was ever an Amazon, you could buy books. Before there was ever a Starbucks, you could buy coffee. Before there was ever an Uber, you could hire a car. Before there was ever a Netflix, you could watch movies.

What drove these companies’ success was not that they introduced new products. It was that they changed the experience of how you consume products that already existed. They made it so you can get what you want, quickly and easily and in a way that you understand.

As Jack Newton, cofounder and CEO of the practice management company Clio, writes in his new book, The Client-Centered Law Firm: How to Succeed in an Experience-Driven World, “You didn’t get value solely from the product you were buying; you got value from your experience buying the product as well.”

We all get this when it comes to buying new headphones on Amazon or booking a rental on Airbnb. But for some reason, many legal professionals still do not get that this applies to them, as well — to the services they deliver and to the experience they provide in delivering those services.

That is the message Newton convincingly conveys in this book, which is being released Jan. 28 and is available for pre-order now through Amazon or Clio’s website — that there is enormous opportunity for firms to thrive by melding the legal services they already offer with a better client experience. And for firms that want to pursue that opportunity, the book provides a roadmap.

“Companies like Netflix, Airbnb, and Uber aren’t only changing expectations in their respective industries: they’re changing expectations in all industries,” Newton writes. “If you’re used to seeing exactly what you’ll get and what you’ll pay up-front when booking a vacation rental, why would you expect any less when working with a law firm?”

Yet many lawyers are still taxi drivers in an age of rideshare. They stubbornly cling to old ways of doing things and protest when innovators challenge their turf.

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This has created an anomalous gap: Clients are not happy with the experience they get from lawyers, and many avoid even using a lawyer for their legal issues, while lawyers spend a lot of time trying to get more clients and are concerned about not having enough.

The solution, Newton argues, is simple and lies in proving a better client experience.

“If lawyers focused on giving clients the simplified experience they wanted, their clients would be happier, more likely to engage with a lawyer, and more likely to encourage others to do so as well,” he writes. “All of this would mean better reviews and more referrals for law firms, improving bottom lines. Law firms need to change their business models to match an environment where experience is king.”

Of course, providing a better client experience is easier said than done. It is one thing for a firm to want to change. It is quite another to figure out how to change and make that change endure.

That is the goal of this book. As Newton describes it, “This book is both a rallying call for a tectonic shift in the legal industry and a handbook for becoming a client-centered law firm.”

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The book is organized in three parts:

  • Part 1 is that rallying cry — an overview of how and why the legal market is changing and why it matters for firms to adopt a client-centered approach.
  • Part 2 is definitional — discussing what it means for a firm to be client-centered and how a firm cultivates a client-centered mindset.
  • Part 3 is the blueprint — a manual for designing processes, shifting culture, getting internal buy-in, and measuring success.

For firms that become client-centered, the opportunity is enormous, Newton argues. While estimates put the size of the U.S. legal market at $437 billion, that does not take into account the estimated 77% of people in the U.S. who, according to estimates from the World Justice Project, did not get help for their legal issues in 2018. While the causes of this are many and complex, it is at least partly due to poor product-market fit.

“If innovative legal practitioners can create a better product-market fit between the services lawyers offer and how consumers want (or need) to buy them — for example, by making services more efficient and affordable — they’ll gain more clients and grow their firms like never before,” Newton argues.

Who is Jack Newton and what qualifies him to write a book such as this? As cofounder and CEO of Clio over the past dozen years, he has built an enormously successful practice management company, one that last year raised a jaw-dropping $250 million funding round — one of the largest investments ever for a legal technology company.

Clio is also home to the annual Legal Trends Report, a data-driven analysis of what fuels law firm growth and success, how clients find lawyers, and how legal services are delivered. In this book, Newton regularly taps into this rich resource to substantiate his arguments.

On top of all that, he is someone who has come to know the legal profession well and many lawyers and firms on a first-hand basis. Throughout this book, he is able to provide real stories of real firms that illustrate his points. He cites, for example, the Tacoma, Wash., firm Palace Law’s creation of a chatbot to help assess worker-compensation claims.

The most significant lesson of this book is that becoming client-centered is not about simply adopting some flashy idea that makes a big splash. It is about embracing change as a constant and ongoing state, about what Newton describes as setting in motion a flywheel within your firm that generates a perpetual process of growth.

“If you commit to staying open to change, and keep putting effort in to iterate on the way your firm operates, your flywheel will only spin faster and faster, and you’ll succeed in the modern era of law firms,” Newton writes.

Becoming client-centered is a state of mind, as much as anything – how you think about your clients, your services, your firm, and yourself – and one that is crucial, he argues, to avoiding becoming a dinosaur.

“Provide a better experience by paying attention to what your legal clients truly need, and you’ll generate more revenue, outperform your competitors, and earn more positive referrals,” Newton says. “Ignore what your clients want, and your firm may go the way of Blockbuster.”

Robert Ambrogi is a Massachusetts lawyer and journalist who has been covering legal technology and the web for more than 20 years, primarily through his blog LawSites.com. Former editor-in-chief of several legal newspapers, he is a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and an inaugural Fastcase 50 honoree. He can be reached by email at ambrogi@gmail.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@BobAmbrogi).

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