Giving better client service than the firm down the street is like being the most beautiful maiden in a leper colony.
In a couple of years, your clients won’t care, and it may even backfire. Don’t get me wrong. Those two 28-year-old ex-Supreme Court clerks your firm just hired at $165,000 a year along with your eight other fine new associates are treasures. Cherish and develop them. Still tell your clients and the world, as you have for years, that you only hire the “smartest” people. Keep hiring them and keep telling the clients. But the chance that even one out of those ten hires–even assuming that all ten stay at your firm and make partner–will ever “get” clients and minimally master client service is about zilch. Talent and solid legal work are both critical–but they aren’t enough.
In the 1994 book Built To Last, authors Jim Collins and Jerry Porras discuss how enduring world-class companies often have developed “cult-like cultures” in which they view themselves as truly unique, superior and and frankly better-than-you in the production, marketing,