How to be the lawyer your clients need now

You need to be the trusted legal advisor … for everything

Often lawyers are in a position that requires them to provide legal guidance in a variety of areas, but may only be an expert in a few areas of law. Previously, your clients may have come to you with wills to draft, divorces to negotiate, and real estate agreements to finalise. Today, some of your clients’ new concerns may not be in your usual wheelhouse for example, bankruptcy or foreclosure questions and concerns. While you never want to turn clients away, keeping clients is especially crucial now. To meet clients’ changing needs, you need to expand your practice, your knowledge, and your resources.

Collaboration looks different

Not so long ago, when one of your regular clients brought you work that was outside of your expertise, you could walk down the hall and ask a colleague for input. They may be more familiar with the matter; know the right person to ask; or know just the right way to do research and get the best results.

Now, with many lawyers working from home, those casual encounters are less frequent, if they happen at all. Those quick and easy in-person conversations with colleagues have turned into scheduling a time to chat over the phone, chat functions, or video. It’s certainly possible, but the convenience of being in proximity to colleagues has diminished. While you are still part of a firm, you are also learning how to manage as a semi-solo lawyer. During COVID-19, when many lawyers are still working remotely, it’s vital to have everything you need at your fingertips.

Explore and develop your digital skills set

Clients have always depended on your depth and breadth of knowledge, your resourcefulness, and your insight. Now clients need to know that you can do everything you did in an office, from your home. The expectation of running a fully functional law firm from your home office may very well be the new long-term way of working.

Those new requirements necessitate the need for digital agility. Your ability to use research tools to do things you previously relied on others to do for or with you — preliminary research, analysing legal documents, or simply picking a colleague’s brain over coffee — are now things you need to be able to do ‘on your own’ with the help of technology.

Find the right legal technology

In the last few months, your life and way of practicing law has dramatically changed, and your client’s expectations may have increased. As their circumstances continue to evolve due to COVID-19 and Brexit, what they need and demand from you will shift. The only way to provide the same great client service they have come to expect is to lean on legal research technology.

Tools such as Practical Law, for example, give you access to the knowledge of hundreds of other lawyers whose job is to keep you updated on the ever-changing legal landscape. When you need to venture outside of your usual practice areas, Practical Law provides access to up-to-date information, easy checklists, links to primary law, and other content to give you the confidence to take on any case that comes your way. It is as though you have all the knowledge you formerly gleaned from your colleagues, available instantaneously.

Practical Law will help you answer questions like: How do I take on an unfamiliar matter or how do I keep up when things are changing so quickly? Armed with the knowledge and confidence of those answers, ultimately, you will have the solution to your most important question: How can I be the lawyer my client needs now?