Monday, August 9, 2010

A couple resolutions for the future

I have been having several very frustrating interactions with outside counsel for the company with which I am working this summer.  What can I say, I was very spoiled when I working in-house at the Consulting Firm That Shall Not Be Named.  Such interactions, however, have led me to the following resolutions. If (or when) I become a practicing attorney, I hereby resolve to do the following to the best of my ability:

1.) To respond to emails within 24-48 hours and not to leave clients hanging for days on end without at least an acknowledgement of their message. If I cannot answer a question immediately, I will at least let the client know that I am working on it and when they may be able to expect a full response;

2.) To make sure I spell a client's name correctly and that I do not, in fact, misspell their name incorrectly in two different ways in the course of a 4-line email;

3.) To make sure that I remove one client's name and other information from "template" documents that I send to another client;

4.) To avoid misstating information previously provided by my client and uncessarily muddling the very clear questions that he/she asked;

5.) To provide information requested as succinctly as possible, and to provide all the information requested, rather than requiring my client to send me repeated emails asking the same thing, thereby enabling me to continue to bill said client for .1 hours of my time for each single email I read and then proceed to ignore;

5.) To avoid assuming that my client(s) don't know what they are talking about or that they have no legal experience whatsoever; and

6.) To appreciate my paralegals, because they generally have the important information committed to memory, with the applicable templates readily available.

I expect people to hold me to these rolutions.

1 comment:

  1. OMG- I seriously am in love with you for #6. Especially after the day I had today.

    ReplyDelete