Fail Safe Tips: Closing a File is Golden Marketing Opportunity

This week we are going to continue to talk about "fail-safe tips" for law office administrations. You will remember we have eighteen of these "fail-safe" systems for operating your law office.

This week's "fail-safe tip" is the use of closure letters to clients at the conclusion of a matter and thank you letters to referring parties at the conclusion of each client's matter. Remember, each of these "fail-safe tips" are part of an overall system of marketing, management and economics that will make your law firm thrive.

The fifteen "fail-safe tips" that we have discussed so far are as follows:
1. Phone message system;
2. Prospective New Matter Reports;
3. Non-engagement letters;
4. New Matter Reports;
5. Two people signing off on each New Matter Report;
6. A new file for each client matter;
7. A separate billing file for each matter for each client;
8. "Thank you for referral" letters;
9. Tickler cards (blue cards) as a condition precedent for opening a file;
10. "Out of sight, out of mind" cards properly dated as a condition precedent for opening a file;
11. "For your information" copies of all incoming and outgoing mail to clients;
12. "For your information" copies of all incoming and outgoing mail to the responsible lawyer, assigned lawyer and the assigned legal assistant;
13. Automatic time keeping system for everything that comes in and goes out of your office on each matter;
14. Tickler card and due date system for distribution on reminder dates and due dates and a system for posting such information on a prominent bulletin board; and
15. Copies of every outgoing piece of correspondence in an individual lawyer's "reading file."
I keep reiterating all of these "fail-safe tips" and reminding you how they fit into an overall system because this system works incredibly well.

An example of that is that I am actually dictating this article while I am in a hospital in Kansas City. I had an automobile accident in October, and had to have a back operation as a result of the accident. While lying here in the hospital I have great confidence that the systems I have set up in my office are continuing to work on a day-to-day basis, and each of the items I have put in place will be handled when the appropriate time comes to do the task in question. Each of these systems have been set up in such a way that you cannot go onto the next task until you have completed the first task.

This week's tip about closure letters to clients and to people who refer matters to you is a classic example of one of these "fail-safe tips." The file simply cannot be closed.

You cannot make room in the file cabinet for new files until such time as you have written a closure letter to the client and a letter to the referring party, so that the bookkeeper can in turn see that these two letters are in the file and the file can then properly be closed.

We try to make it a habit of not having too many files in our office for open files because quite frankly, space for file cabinets is very expensive when it is simply just holding a bunch of paper for clients.

If you are adding more file cabinets, you are probably not properly closing your files. We will be talking about a system for closing files next week, but it seemed only appropriate to have a conversation about closure letters to clients and thank you for referral letters to referring parties at the time that the matter is closed before we actually get into the closing file system itself.

Remember, each of these "fail-safe" systems are interlinked in order to achieve the best results for your firm from a marketing, management and economics point of view.

The letter to the client should try to summarize what it was the client hired you to do, the results you were able to achieve for the client, and the cost involved. Don't be shy about telling your client that what you told them in the very beginning is exactly what happened in their case. If it did not happen the way you said it would, explain why.

Also, remind them of why the result was not only a good result from a legal point of view, but it was probably a good result from an economic point of view, a practical point of view and a business point of view as well.

You may remember in one of my early articles, I made the comment about one of the things you need to do regarding "getting your candle out from underneath a bushel basket" is to burn the bushel basket and put a tank of oxygen up next to the flame and turn the oxygen on high. This closure letter to your client is a perfect opportunity to burn your bushel basket and to put the oxygen next to the flame.

Making this comment in there is throwing out a "luck line." You will remember that earlier we discussed "luck lines." Hardly anybody is born lucky. Most people make their luck. Remember the phrase, "the harder I work, the luckier I get."

The letter to the party who referred you the matter thanking them for referral of the case, can obviously not, in any way, shape or form, breach any client confidentiality.

The watchword here is "be careful!" Often times just a quick note indicating that you have successfully completed the matter on behalf of so and so that was referred to you and not referring to the particulate matter with any specificity is perfectly acceptable. Don't forget to mention in the letter to the party who referred you the matter in the first place that they should not hesitate to contact you.

Closing a file is a golden opportunity to take the time to let your client know how much you have enjoyed representing them and to let the person know who referred you the matter how much you enjoyed the referral of the client.

To coin a phrase, these are what should be known as "marketing moments." Why is it important to think about closing a file in terms of a "marketing moment?"

You know you are going to close the file, you know you are going to try to get it out of your active file system, you know that you are going to try to put it into some sort of a dead file system, you know that eventually you are going to try to destroy the file, you know you told your client in your engagement letter you are going to do all these things, you know you would like to get some additional legal business from the client if possible, you also know you are going to thank someone for referring the legal business in the first place, and hopefully they will continue to refer you business in the future.

If you simply just close the file and don't do anything to it other than just simply getting it out of your active file system, you have missed these golden opportunities, again that I have referred to as "marketing moments."

In dealing with legal matters, the wrap up phase involves thanking the referral, an engagement letter from the client as well as all the other administrative tasks that I have set out in these "fail-safe tips."

The implementation phase is self explanatory and will be handled in the "debriefing or wind down" stage, the file needs to be closed but you also need to ask yourself the question, who needs to be told what we did, who needs to be thanked, and also how you need to involve the staff in understanding how they may be able to handle this matter better in the future if another opportunity presents itself.

The closure letter to the client and the thank you letter to the referring party are only one part of the system, albeit, a very important part of the system.

I hope that my emphasis on closure letters to clients and thank-you letters to referring parties as part of a "fail-safe" system of administration, points out that it is not merely enough to have such a system in place, it is important that it be part of an overall system of administration in your law firm that makes it impossible to close a file until such time as these letters are done.

Often times, these letters can be done by staff members and the lawyer can edit the letter and finalize it to see that it is appropriately sent to the client and the referring party.

Next week we are going to talk about the second to the last system in the area of "fail-safe tips" for law office management. Next week's tip is to have a system for closing files and removing them from active client file storage.

I think you will find this system very simple and I think you will also find it very efficient and economical. If you put such a system in place, you will find that after awhile, you really do get files out of your active file system into your closed file system and ultimately you will get it to storage.

The bottom line of this file system with regard to it being "fail-safe" is that you need to set it up to make things happen automatically.

We will discuss more of this in detail next week, but I want to leave you with this thought, don't ever pay premium rent square footage for file storage when you can put a profit center in that same space! I think you will find some of the "fail-safe tips" with regard to closing files very helpful to you in your practice.

We are almost done with these "fail-safe tips," two more to go and we can then finish up this area of administration.

Jim Wirken is a civil trial attorney and the Chairman of the Board of The Wirken Law Group in Kansas City.