By: Adam Severson, Chief Marketing Officer at Baker Donelson & Kate Pearch, Chief Strategy Officer at Morris, Manning & Martin, LLP
Excellent client service is a common promise in the legal world, featured on nearly every law firm website and pitch deck. But delivering on that promise takes more than marketing language: it takes intentionality, consistency, and culture.
We all know the fundamentals: be responsive, understand the client’s business, communicate clearly, and deliver value. But under the daily pressure of legal work, the how of client experience often gets lost. What feels like common sense can easily be missed, leading to inconsistent – and sometimes disappointing – client interactions. This is why closing the say-do gap is critical.
Exceptional client experience is rarely about grand gestures. It’s the small, thoughtful habits that compound over time. The problem is these habits are rarely written down, taught, or modeled consistently. They’re often assumed, which means they’re often forgotten.
Several simple “everyday” actions can quickly and positively transform client experience, and legal marketing and business development teams are in a unique position to make these actions explicit expectations instead of unspoken ideals.
1. Responsiveness Isn’t Optional—It’s the Bare Minimum
Responsiveness is the number one complaint highlighted in client feedback, and it’s the easiest to improve. Responding within the same business day should be the default, even if it’s just to acknowledge a message and set a timeline for a more substantive reply. Waiting until a client follows up means you've already missed the mark.
Creating clear systems to track client inquiries, clarify ownership, and set expectations can make responsiveness become second nature in a law firm. Marketing and business development teams can design simple client intake tools or onboarding forms that help capture communication preferences early in the relationship. They can also track trends in client feedback and complaints, providing attorneys with data to refine their approach to responsiveness firmwide.
2. Communication Is a Team Sport
Even when the lead relationship partner is an excellent communicator, breakdowns often occur when handing a matter off to another colleague in a different office or practice. As such, relationship partners need to provide answers to the questions below:
• Which communication type does the client prefer: calls, emails, or texts?
• What’s their expected turnaround time for replies?
• Who should be copied on communications?
• How formal or informal should our tone be? Bullet points, or chapter and verse?
And if the relationship partner doesn’t provide it, the marketing and business development team needs to ask. Documenting these preferences upfront and sharing them across the team helps ensure consistency and avoids the all too common “who’s on first” moments.
Business development professionals are often among the first to interact with a client during pitches, and they can play a central role in capturing these preferences through client feedback programs and documenting them in client profiles or CRM systems. Marketing teams can also develop client persona templates or communication “playbooks” to standardize this knowledge across teams.
3. The Bill Tells a Story, So Make Sure It’s a Good One
Invoices and bills are often a client’s most detailed view of their law firm’s work and can be an opportunity to show the collaboration and cohesiveness of the team. However, when narratives on bills are inconsistent due to multiple team members using different terminology or ignoring outside counsel guidelines, it erodes trust. In some cases, it can make the invoice the last marketing communication that a client receives.
Firms need to train all timekeepers to approach billing as an extension of the client experience. That means aligning on vocabulary, avoiding block billing, and proofreading entries for clarity. For example, one client shared they received a “$25,000 memo” on an issue they thought would be approximately $1,500. Clearly, this client and partner had a misalignment on expectations and work product, and this strain on the relationship could have been prevented by asking a few questions at the beginning of the matter.
While they’re not involved directly in billing, business development can partner with finance to identify client billing pain points, particularly for key clients. They can also help develop client service standards and tools, such as billing glossaries or review checklists, to promote consistency. These insights can then be used to train partners and senior associates on how to clearly communicate with clients and set expectations.
4. Client Feedback: Don’t Just Ask, Ask Better
It’s not enough to send a generic satisfaction survey. To really improve, firms need to ask focused, practical questions about common friction points in client interviews so they can improve critical experiences, such as:
• Are our handoffs smooth?
• Are our bills easy to understand?
• Do you feel informed about your matter’s status?
Client feedback interviews are essential to ensuring the firm is meeting expectations, but they are just the starting point. To build a truly leading client experience program, a more comprehensive internal audit is key. Interviewing a broad range of internal stakeholders—including partners, associates, business services leaders, assistants, paralegals, billing specialists, office managers, and business development professionals—can reveal both areas for improvement and successful practices to build upon. These conversations often uncover simple, high-impact changes that can significantly enhance the client experience.
This is a natural domain for marketing and business development leaders. They can lead the design and delivery of external and internal feedback programs, conduct client interviews, and synthesize results into firmwide recommendations. Importantly, they can also help attorneys close the loop, acknowledging feedback and sharing how the firm will improve. If an attorney isn’t willing to act on client feedback, they shouldn’t ask for it in the first place. Ignoring feedback will cause more harm than not asking at all.
5. Everyone Owns the Experience
Great service isn’t just the responsibility of the relationship partner. It’s a team sport that includes lawyers, paralegals, assistants, business professionals, and even receptionists. One weak link can unravel the entire experience.
Make client service a shared standard in every department and role. Celebrate wins, debrief misses, and create visibility into what "excellent" looks like at each level of the organization.
Marketing and business development teams can help to create this culture of excellence by sharing client service success stories, building internal case studies, and recognizing contributors who go above and beyond through internal communications and in meetings. They also help train and coach attorneys, particularly younger lawyers, on how to build strong, client-first practices, creating exceptional client service standards at every level of the organization.
Final Thought: Culture is the Strategy
You can’t simply tell lawyers and professionals to deliver great client service; you must model it, reward it, and design systems that make it the norm. When expectations around client experience are clear and consistent, they shape behaviors, reinforce values, and ultimately create a firm-wide culture of service and excellence.
Marketing and business development teams are essential in bringing this culture to life. By defining, promoting, and operationalizing client experience across touchpoints, they help ensure it’s not just an abstract aspiration but a strategic advantage.
Client experience isn’t just a philosophy, it’s a practice. When it’s intentionally built into your culture and integrated into everyone’s daily practices, it becomes one of your firm’s most powerful differentiators.
About the Authors
Adam Severson is the Chief Marketing Officer at Baker Donelson, where he is responsible for the strategic direction and execution of the Firm's business development, client experience, and marketing initiatives, and collaborates with the Firm's lawyers and professional staff to maintain a client focus, increase marketplace awareness and facilitate cross-office and cross-practice collaboration. Adam is a Past President of the Legal Marketing Association and a member of its Hall of Fame. He is a Fellow in the College of Law Practice Management and was recognized by the Nashville Business Journal as CMO of the Year for all industries.
Kate Pearch is the Chief Strategy Officer at Morris, Manning & Martin, LLP, where she focuses on MMM’s unique client service to strengthen its brand and position in the marketplace. Her responsibilities include strategic development, practice growth, client feedback, and leadership succession programs, as well as communications, public relations, and marketing and business development. She also leads the Marketing & Business Development Department and serves on the firm’s Management Committee.