Its More Than Results

Developing the Next Generation of Rainmakers It’s More than Results Last year, I did a presentation at an associate retreat. The night before the retreat, my associate host and I met with Tyler, a former associate of mine who was now an in-house lawyer. While having a beer, Bart asked Tyler what he knows now that he wished he had known when he was a young associate. Tyler responded that the big thing he knows is that clients are never happy with litigators even when they get great results. Clients simply hate paying for litigation. I share this idea to put the story that follows in context. Jonathan Cole is a litigation partner I coached a couple of years ago. Recently he sent me an email with an attached voicemail the managing partner of Jonathan’s firm had received from the in-house counsel of one of Jonathan’s largest clients. The general counsel did not even know the managing partner so he had clearly taken time to figure out who was the managing partner and then he called him. In the call, he said he wanted to pass on his extreme gratitude and thanks for the work Jonathan and his team had done over the last four years. The general counsel described Jonathan as the best lawyer working for his company and that he wished he could clone Jonathan to work on his company’s other cases across the country. The General Counsel never mentioned the results Jonathan had gotten for the company, but I am confident he would not have lavished praise if Jonathan had been getting bad results. I knew there had to be more, so I asked Jonathan to tell me his secret. Here is wh at he told me: Jonathan seems to make two main points. First, after getting good results, take time to get to know your client contacts and build your relationship with them. As I used to say: “I want my friends to be my clients and my clients to be my friends.” Second, you can’t do it by yourself. You have to build a team of your colleagues and staff. Let each member of your team know they are important. I practiced law for 37 years developing a national construction law practice representing some of the top highway and transportation construction contractors in the US.