I think that lawyers should know who they are and what type of clients they want (and the answer is not “any client with a pulse.”)
Here is a great example from Maureen Mckay’s website (www.mckaylegal.com):
McKay Legal® has a select clientele.
You are the right type of client for McKay Legal® if you:
I like eating out, but I don’t always like what is on the menu. I have been known to explain to the server that I consider a menu to be merely an indication of which ingredients the Chef has in the kitchen, together with samples of some of the ways that they can be assembled. With that information, I often request that they be assembled differently. Lose the beets from the beet salad; lose the feta cheese and replace it with goat cheese; add the spicy pecans from another salad, and so on.
I like to eat a bespoke lunch, and I expect that it may cost me a bespoke price.
I suppose that the initial reaction of a law firm client to the question of how they can be a great client may be, “Why should I care?” I certainly met my fair share of clients who could not possibly have cared less about whether their lawyer thought that they were a great client.
My father had a rocky start to his career. There were many years at the outset of his working life when he did not make much money and struggled to pay his bills. When creditors would call, he would explain to them about the payment hat. He would tell them that once a month he turned his fedora upside down and put all of his monthly bills in the hat. He described how he would then mix the bills up and pull them out and pay them until the money ran out.
Finally, he would warn the creditors that if they kept calling him and annoying him, their invoices were not going into the hat.