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Lawyers must master the art of building strong client relationships.
Clients seek out legal advice during stressful, perhaps even scary times. On top of that unease, they are required to share personal, highly sensitive information, often with many near-strangers. That’s part of why the best lawyers are those who put clients at ease from day 1 by proving themselves reliable, knowledgeable and always accessible. These traits play a key role in building a smooth relationship — one based on trust and clear communication.
Likewise, if you fail to build smooth client relationships, the likelihood of achieving a positive outcome plummets. Without immediately establishing a trusting bond, communication becomes clouded and sporadic, and clients may withhold key information.
Fortunately, building a smooth relationship with your clients isn’t as difficult as it might appear. Let’s outline the three key areas that lawyers must focus on to effortlessly build strong long-term relationships with their clients.
1. Crystal clear, confidential communication
What separates the best lawyers from the rest? The way they communicate with clients.
They’re easily accessible on a wide variety of channels: email, SMS, phone or in-person. When clients get in touch, the lawyer is up to speed with their matter. They clearly explain any relevant updates and walk clients through the relevant next steps. Most importantly, clients know anything they say — and any documents they share — will be kept entirely confidential.
Strong, secure communication is built right into the fabric of Smokeball, thanks to Smokeball Communicate.
Our secure portal acts as an all-in-one client communication hub for your entire firm, taking the place of SMS text messages. Reach out to clients ahead of a deadline, and respond to questions when it’s most convenient for you. Every message and document shared in Communicate is searchable and stored to the relevant matter, meaning you’ll maintain a complete record. And because Communicate comes with two-factor authentication and data encryption, you’ll never worry about a breach of lawyer-client confidentiality.
2. Masterful matter management
Juggling multiple matters shouldn’t feel like a literal juggling act. But how can lawyers stay on top of critical details in every matter at a moment’s notice?
With Smokeball, every piece of every legal matter — files, emails, billing information, clients’ details and more — is tagged to the related matter. Your staff will never again have to dig for the right document in the wrong place. And because Smokeball is both installed locally to your computer and cloud-based, this information is accessible at all times, from all places.
3. Document automation done right
Creating, updating, and filling out documents has traditionally been a tiresome and time-consuming process. However, it’s also an important process to get right.
Mistakes could be costly — both to your firm and your client relationships. When creating documents manually, human error often creeps in. A typo here or there might not seem like the end of the world, but with legally binding contracts that put an lawyer's reputation on the line, attention to detail is non-negotiable.
As a result, lawyers painstakingly review all documents to ensure they are completely error-free. This diligent approach might be for the best, but clients generally don’t appreciate waiting weeks to see a key document that moves their matter forward.
With Smokeball, there’s no reason your firm should manually create documents from scratch. Our extensive library of automated forms and our legal document software pull from hundreds specific matter types, making the process of drafting, editing and finalising key documents as quick and seamless as possible. Automatic paragraph inclusion even suggests relevant content based on the rest of your document and the parties involved.
Strengthen your client relationships, today
Lawyers can build strong client relationships by mastering their communication, matter management and document creation capabilities. To learn more about how Smokeball helps strengthen your client relationships, book a free personalised demo today.
