"Where Do You Meet With Clients"?

Of late I keep getting emails from lawyers and law students about my home-based law practice that ask this question in this and in other ways.  One comment, I liked, broached it by asking, "Is it a problem when your house smells like lasagna"?

Well, to answer the last question first, I love to eat.  I love home cooking.  And, I love it when the house smells like lasagna.  Just call me Garfield.  In fact, being able to eat comfortably at home, especially at lunch, while watching something banal on TV like Family Feud or Matlock or Murder She Wrote is one of the prime reasons to work at home.  It is less costly, it is more enjoyable, it is less time consuming, you do not have to commute to lunch or deal with office problems, and home cooking is much better for you. 

So where do I meet with clients?

Not at my house. I am very lucky or blessed in this regard. Since most of my clients are referred by other attorneys that continue to represent the client as well, I often do not meet with them other than over the telephone. When I have to meet with them otherwise, this is usually as a result of discovery or trial. In the case of discovery it almost always is done at the other lawyer's office and trial we meet at the courthouse.  It is one of the benefits of having a referral practice.  Clients are already more trusting of you and secure when referred as opposed to responding to marketing.

In this day and age, I think that personally meeting with clients can be overrated, especially after the initial interview or consult.  I think everybody underestimates what can be done over the phone and by email. I get asked all of the time how I can not meet with clients face to face?  Really they do not want to meet with me in person and I do not want to waste my time when I know the task at hand. If you close real estate transactions or something, you might have to have a closing office, but even here I know attorneys that perform closings all over town and not in their own office.

I know attorneys that meet clients all over the place. There is a chain of coffee shops in California, called the Legal Grind, where attorneys meet their clients.  Even without this chain, I know many attorneys that meet their clients at Starbucks.  David Musslewhite, and attorney in Dallas, Texas opened his own coffee shop to facilitate meeting with clients. In fact, it might be joked that Starbucks is the largest law firm in the country.  Many attorneys meet at the Courthouse. Many courthouses and bar organizations maintain meeting rooms to meet with clients.  Some have use of a conference room at another law office or other business. Some meet at the office of the one referring. Many real estate closing attorneys are mobile and travel to where the client is located. I have met or communicated with more than a few that use the local libraries. Many libraries have small meeting rooms you can reserve with just a library card.

I knew a very successful lawyer in East Texas that met clients from Texarkana to Hosuton on will contest and other matters.  That is a large swatch of real estate to cover. Most meeting were in small towns because much of the area is overwhelming rural. He always made arrangements to meet at the local McDonald's . He got there first, found a table, and bought the clients a drink when they arrived.  He was the first to show me that this works despite most people's reservations about it. 

One day he and I had to be in Court in Beaumont, Texas. We decided to drive together in that it was about a 6 hour round trip. We went to Beaumont and got our court appearances out of the way. On the way back we passed through Lufkin, Texas. He told me he had to stop and meet some prospects. I was a little miffed because I wanted to get home and, besides, I thought meeting at McDonalds was beneath any professional. It would not work. I got to cool my heals for over an hour while he met with the clients (sitting next to the McDonald's playground, as I recall). After we got started back on our trip home again, I told him that could not be effective. What client is going to pay money after meeting a lawyer the first time in a McDonald's? What client would trust him. He just smiled and then showed me the check the family wrote him for $10,000.00 for his retainer for a will contest.

Overwhelmingly I have learned the barriers to meeting with clients are in our own minds.  There are solutions, and many of these solutions are free or very inexpensive.  The mental barriers are wedged in the Second Wave, the industrial age, in which nearly everything was face-to-face and expensive.  That does not need to be true today, and it is not in my case.

(Picture is of a lawyer meeting with clients at the Legal Grind coffee shop).

Comments

[PerGynt]

You're funny, and very insightful.

[Zale]

Thanks.

As I've planned on practicing from home, the thoughts of having to meet a client from time to time have haunted my thoughts. I like Grant Griffith's coffee house / restaurant approach, but I have also considered whether or not it is necessary to meet every client face to face. This puts me at ease about not necessarily needing to meet them all, although, I may still want to meet them from time to time to make sure and get the initial contract signed. (The salesman in me shouts "Close! Close! Always be closing!")

Zale