You can be a good bankruptcy lawyer, filing cases and getting your clients a discharge.  Cure the mortgage arrears, save the car, wipe out the unsecured debt – that’s all good.  Very good, from your perspective.

But what do your clients think?

Do you ask them?  Do you take the time to listen when they tell you?

Can you handle bad news when your clients give it to you?

Some years ago I ran across Jed Berliner, a Massachusetts bankruptcy lawyer with whom I had never spoken.  Didn’t know him from a hole in the wall, in fact.  But I read an article in the ABA Journal talking about this lawyer who sent out surveys to each of his clients after their case was completed.

Brilliant! I thought to myself.  But what would this survey look like?  What would it ask for?  And would my clients take the time to send it back?

So I got in touch with Jed – now one of my closest friends and an excellent lawyer on many levels.  Asked him for the survey.  He gave it up willingly.

This was, sadly the first step in a long number of them.  For months the file sat on my hard drive unused.  I was too busy to do anything with it, didn’t want to waste my time sending it out.

Then one day I had a few hours, and dropped 50 of them in the mail to clients who had finished their bankruptcy cases.  Just a test, no expectations.  I sent along a self-addressed, stamped envelope for good measure and figured it was a waste of a few bucks and some spare time.

Uh oh.  I should have put on my hard hat.

At the time, I’d been practicing for about five years at the time (this was in 2000, mind you) so I was definitely not a newbie.  I knew my stuff, practiced ethically, and was well-organized.  My staff was friendly, I was thoughtful in my approach to client matters.  In sum, I was a good lawyer.

My clients, on the other hand, had other bones to pick with me.  A skeleton’s worth, in fact.

I didn’t return calls immediately.

I was often unavailable.

My staff wasn’t as helpful as they could be.

My office hours were inconvenient.

My fees were too high.

The list went on and on.  I was so bloody and bruised after reading about a dozen that I had to take a walk around the block.  Four times.

I could have dismissed the criticisms as the gripes of crabby clients.  I could have kept on keepin’ on.  I could have stopped sending the surveys.

I did none of those things.  Instead I asked myself what would have resolved those problems and made the clients happy.  And over time, I tinkered with my practice and my staffers until those complaints went away.  I let clients know when I would be available to take calls, and set down a policy for returning messages.  I published those items to my clients and let them know when they met with me for the first time.  I changed my sales practices, emphasizing what I would and would not do for them.  I added value in a million little ways.

And I still got some bad reviews.  So I changed a few more things.

The bad reviews are the ones you want, not the good ones.  You need those to make you a GREAT lawyer in the eyes of your clients.  You need them so you can constantly ask yourself what you could do better – and to force you to do those things.

Because YOU are not the arbiter of whether you are a great lawyer – your clients are.  YOU do not create good buzz about you practice and get friends and family members to refer people to you – your clients do.  And YOU do not determine whether a good review of your law firm shows up on Avvo, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, a blog or any other online resource – your clients do.