Smith and Jones, solicitors

John Smith and David Jones are lawyers and first met when they had been employed in a large firm of solicitors in London. They both felt that London held few attractions for them and that they would prefer their o~ mall cQ!.lntry pra tice. Six years ago they moved to offices just off the main street in a large market town in the w~ of ngland and set up in competition with four ther firms of solicitors. It was a slow sta but both partners were now ~ bu~ and had a secretarial staff of five

Case Exercise
.pleasantl b a partner, never by a junior cle . We see ourselves as a small, local, convenient and friendly firm based on a good, personal and caring image. When we first came here we obviously had no local work, but we relied upon a few commercial accounts that we brought with us from London. We now work for about en comptinies, though longer for any that are based in London. ome of our commercial work has I come abou hrough providing a good service j to a personal client. Usually, however, companies have their own favourite firm of solicitors. Sometimes they do give small jobs to other firms just to try them out, so we often get speculative phone calls from potential clients. I ~ reckon sometimes when they ring up they have Yellow Pa~es in their hands and if you can't help them e and thea tbey..wilLQ,.o on to the next firm on the list. Sometimes we get commercial clients through rec mmendati ns from other companies or thi . s like accountants who have heard that we give a good service. We need to expand our business in this area by giving a good and fast response to our clients. Now that the firm was well established, John Smith seemed keen not to stand still. He explained: On local, personal business, solicitors tend to think that if you just sit back, business will just come in and you don't need to make any spectacular effort to keep it. As a result clients are frequently abused. Some solicitors think nothing of telling customers who arrive on the doorstep to go away and come back when they have made an appointment. I think that solicitors have a cond~scendin.{ ap;:;;oa;;h to business. / believe tharweJJjJile a lot of /es-

There is the personal client who is the local individual with a small legal problem, like a house purchase or a ~dary dispute, and there is the co mercial cli'ent who is a com/Jany, a few of which are local but most are based in nearby cities. The personal client comes through the door when he or she has a problem. There used to be a lot of loyalty to the solicitors that the client or his or her family had used in the past, but this is declining. We don't do anyadvertising - indeed, it is only allowed in a very limited form. Most of our clients come either because they want a change from the solicitors they have used before or through recommendations from friends. We have worked hard to build up our local personal clients. I like to try to break down the stuffy image of the law and deal at 8Sfmple and straightforward level: witb. the client. This personal a roach seems to work very well. You see, many ordinary people in the street are very apprehensive about comin to see a solicitor. To them, I suppose, we are a bit like a dentist, only they extract teet ana we extract money! We always make sure mat c1Je"nts are dealt with promp1!y and

sons.!E.'earn from the mod.em...ilge and that we can do a lot more hrustifJ.9! I am sure there is a lot a 'Scope I CfOr1'tbelieve that everyoneis entire y happ 'ith their soJicit~ John f It that the time was right for his firm to e ~d, and, although these views were less than enthusiastically shared by his partner, John was determined: It's time the business grew. We are as estabIisned as all the other firms in the area, and although we hold on to a share of clients, it never seems to incr~espite a fair gro!!!l!1. in the tow's "population over the last fe years, During that time our costs have been increasing. Our overheads on the property and w@t have to pay to keep good staff--ana le~ quipment is considerably greater than what it was even two years ago. It is npt easy just t put up a.,iJrfees to cover these increases. I know you"""ttrmfrwe pluck figures out of the air, but most of our clients use us several times and they' remember how much ~We charged the last tim~. As a result our m gins have been getting tighter. However. to expand the business we need another solicitor, but it's going to be difficult to attract someone into the office when they see what their share of the spoils mi ht be. Both David and I would also have to take a cut in our slice of the raeidly declining cake. If we are going to expand and bring someone else in, we WIll need to put a lot of time and effort into generating more work. I!!!.... also conce!..ned about the role the building societies and banks may play in the tutuie. Government seems determined to give away our bread-and-butter business. If we lost conveyancing there wouldn't be enough work for even the two of us.

has done. We could distribute these to potential clients and also fa our current clients to 'maintain our name in their minds and inform them of our other services.

You might think that jo ing Rot<i!Y.or a a dub would be a good idea but I h~ joined them for two reasons. First because they are full of solicit touting for tf, e. And, second, I can't play -901f. You see, you can't afford to run the risk of being a 'bad egg': u7iiess you are a 'good' Rotarian or golf la er you f1J.ay tend to lose credibility. I prefer to play croquet and there is only one other solicitor in he club. I'm also not too ba ...JJ.LDavid Jones has some good ideas for getting business clients. He is making contacts with trade organlsations and associations like local \' chambers of co merce. This could provide a lot of'goJ)d contacts and also give us a feel for loca neeas. Tl!e problem is that some of the jobs for {2Ysonal clients are not very profitable. Indeed, rT1f!rgins in this type of work g~;-;;;-e sf11.all. ut it is an important part of our busiB ness: it accounts for about 85 per ce of our income. The rest of our income comes from a handful of commercial clients. This may at first seem small scale but this work does ';:;;;;-d high margins. The jobs are . es relatively simple, like arrang(ffg-;;fsuranc~s. Our fees are based on a perc~ JLoFII ~ takes one or two large transac 10nsIO gentfl;te a substantial amount of income.

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Johnexplained his ideas for getting more business: With personal work, I think we need to become more visible. We don't make any efforts to sell our servi are currently thinking about puttmg broctnu. together listing our services, fike a ur competitors

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Because the commercial jobs command higher margins I want to see us make substantial increases in this area. I tb;nk that un ess we improve our income from commer-

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cial work to :r~= per ce'nt of our to~ turnovertn-tf71 or fhree years, we will haVe done badly. I don't think our location a one. We have some big cities quite c ose b and we have good connections in Bristol

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laptcp~ e-meit, and we even have our own website, thanksJO David. [must admit that, although I think there are lots of good po 1ities, I am not really sure what more I can do. ,

Question
Develop a new service strategy for Smith and Jones.

e have a good location wit ood sJaff and the latest equipment - photocopiers, fax, pes,