whole, it should be useful to maintain a primary contact for each individual matter. While your primary contact should be able to help resolve issues for you on any particular matter, a primary matter contact will be more familiar with the nature and status of the particular piece of relevant work. Thus, a primary matter contact can provide updates more frequently and in greater detail. And the primary contact for a particular matter can also serve as a contact for your lawyer.

Be Careful What You Ask For. In making requests to your lawyer, you will probably want to consider the surrounding business context of your request as it relates to what you ask the attorney to do. For example, what if you receive a lengthy contract from a large telecom provider for a small, inexpensive service, and you understand that the contract is essentially a form agreement that, given its size, is unlikely to be amended (or even seriously discussed) by the provider? And what if you have serious concerns about a single, stand-alone provision in the agreement? If you ask an attorney to review the agreement, without even providing context, you are placing the attorney in a situation where he or she, without understanding the business context, may spend many hours thoroughly and thoughtfully reviewing the document, perhaps providing extensive comments. And the accompanying fees are likely to be significant given the size of the agreement. While this may frustrate you, resulting perhaps in a negative experience with your lawyer, it would not necessarily be the lawyers fault. By providing the attorney with the business context of the situation and educating the attorney about what issues are of particular concern to you, you will provide guidance and business context, leading to a more efficient result.

Explain the Assignment Clearly. When you give an assignment to your lawyer, try to explain the assignment clearly and in detail. Complaints about lawyers who seem to float around sometimes center on the lawyers inability to understand and act on what the client wants. It is unfair to the attorney, however, to expect him or her to have either a thorough understanding of a given matter or clear direction about the deliverable if the client has not provided adequate preparatory information. This explanation really falls into two areas: the background of the assignment and the assignment itself.

First, you should try to help your lawyer understand the background of the assignment. Remember, your lawyer does not shadow you all day every day, so he or she will not know all the background facts to the matter you are assigning. Additionally, the lawyer may not know what you are trying to achieve. You may be glad in the long run if you take the time and make the effort to provide your lawyer with a greater understanding of what is going on from a business perspective.

Second, ensure that the lawyer understands what you want delivered. Everyone has heard cautionary tales on this front: The client requests an answer to a seemingly simple question and 10 days later receives a 10-page

memo on some esoteric choice of law issue. Lawyers are in the client service business, and most attorneys want to provide good client service just like any other professional services provider would, so when there is a major disconnect and failure in delivery, the client should recognize that the deliverables may not be clearly defined. Clients who take the time to clearly explain what they expect the lawyer to deliver will have a better chance of receiving the deliverable they want, even if the answer to a question is not the answer they hoped to receive, and receive fewer surprises.

Ask Questions. It sounds obvious, but it is nevertheless worth mentioning because it often emerges as a source of dissatisfaction with legal services providers. Legal matters can sometimes be difficult to deal with, especially for busy professionals who have other important matters on their mind. For example, you may not be sure how the lawyer expects the relationship and process to function. Or you may not understand the nature of the matter being addressed. Additionally, sometimes clients are hesitant to display what they may fear is a lack of sophistication about legal matters. Thus, they avoid questions they think may be perceived as dumb, perhaps assuming things are covered, and instead move their attention to something else.

If you do not understand what is happening, ask questions. You should take the time to understand the details of the legal relationship. Again, the majority of lawyers, like most other professional services providers, want to provide quality service. And most lawyers understand that it is valuable for his or her client to ask questions up front instead of learning about things at a later date. Thus, you may be well served to ask any questions you may have concerning issues ranging from operational matters such as billing, which lawyers will be working on the matter, and any number of other issues, many of which are covered in this chapter, to legal matters, such as, for example, what the clients options are on a given matter or the benefits and risks of a particular course of action.

Provide Clear Expectations about Cost. A final suggestion to help promote a solid understanding between you and your lawyer is in the area of cost. Too often we hear stories of people who are surprised (and disappointed) by the amount they are being billed by their lawyers. Most service clients would not allow another professional services provider, for example an IT consulting firm working on a software development project, to begin without first establishing some understanding about cost. The same principle should apply to legal services. Thus, before your lawyer begins work, establish an understanding about cost. Specifically, no work should be started before it is clearly defined and you have a clear cost estimate. One of two things should happen: The attorney will agree and you will have a mutual understanding that benefits both you and the attorney, or the attorney will inform you that your expectation is too low, in which case you will need to rethink your estimate, persuade the attorney to work at a lower rate, or

consider other options. Regardless of the path you ultimately pursue, both you and the lawyer will likely be glad you recognized this disconnect up front instead of discovering an unwelcome surprise once the work was finished.

Monitoring the Work

Your relationship management activities should not end when your lawyer begins work. Even if you have done well in selecting a lawyer and defining the scope of the lawyers work, you should benefit from diligently monitoring the work. In this section, we touch on a few ideas you may want to consider to help keep your legal matters on the right track.

First, try to understand your lawyers knowledge and capabilities. Different lawyers have different strengths and areas for improvement. To know how to advance a given relationship and how to assign legal projects, you will be well served to understand what your lawyer is capable of.

Second, try to understand what your lawyer is doing. This may sound obvious, but it is not as easy as it seems without diligent monitoring. Some legal projects are large and complex, and often may involve issues unfamiliar to the firm management. You may want to spend some time understanding what your lawyer is doing to complete a project. It is inevitable that from time to time a lawyer or law firm may begin to drift off course (hence, the choice of law example earlier). If you understand what your lawyer is doing, you will probably be more capable of providing value-added suggestions or steering a drifting lawyer back onto the right track.

Another issue that can arise, especially when working with a large law firm, is that you may not know who is doing the work until you receive a memo or phone call from someone you do not know or, probably worse, see an unfamiliar name on your bill. There are at least two situations where this seems to come up: (1) matters requiring an attorney with expertise in a highly specialized area (e.g., an ERISA attorney) and (2) matters where junior attorneys are working on a less complex matter-something that can be concerning if you perceive that the junior lawyer is learning on your dime. You can avoid this sort of thing by requesting to be notified as to who will be working on a given matter and what he or she will be doing.

Finally, review each bill carefully. By doing so, you improve the chance of catching any problematic trends early. You should be comfortable speaking with your attorney if the work description is insufficient to provide you with an acceptable understanding of what is going on.

Summary

Good legal advice is a must have for the professional services firm. From firm inception to daily operations, legal requirements affect the organization, employees, clients, and management of the professional services firm.