Surveys…But, in Law?
[Image by Amy Lloyd]
For those in private practice, sending a survey to your client about how much they liked your service would be like shooting yourself directly in the foot. If you were unsuccessful or the client didn’t get the result they were hoping to achieve, there’s a high likelihood that the survey will reflect poorly on your services. If you were slow to reply or provided realistic advice about the client’s minimal chances of success (which they didn’t want to hear), or if the client received a ‘high bill,’ the sticker shock alone could lead to poor survey results. In the world of in-house, despite how available you make yourself to the business, they may still see you as a cost centre or see you as the ‘red tape’ to getting work done. In both cases (private practice or in-house), the idea of providing a survey to your clients is a scary proposition because no one wants to hear negative news, and lawyers tend to be perfectionists by nature. Why would we survey our clients with all the potential for negative feedback?
Implementing Legal Design is a user-centric approach that involves conducting human-centered research. Margaret Hagan, a pioneer of Legal Design, suggests that understanding the legal needs of the client or the user provides better opportunities to improve the legal service. In discussing legal reform, she suggests that surveys that focus on the legal needs of the client can, “begin to categorize areas of justiciable events that people have and to offer some understanding of patterns, clusters, and people’s behavior in response to these legal problems. They reveal large-scale trends that can guide more micro-level design research.”[1] While Hagan’s comments apply to revamping the justice systems, we can apply the theory and concepts to a legal practice as well. Obtaining observational, qualitative feedback from clients can help enhance providing legal services.
Law is a service after all. Instead of consuming a tangible product, people enter into relationships with professional service providers. In providing a service, “we need to think in terms of designing for relationships and experiences that evolve and change over time, rather than just in terms of short moments of consumption or usage.”[2] Ultimately, if you want to provide a better, more efficient service to your clients, ask them for feedback. Make sure that you’re getting the feedback just after you’ve completed the project or litigated the matter to conclusion, because a fresh perspective will provide a better sense of how the client is feeling at that moment.
People like being asked for their thoughts. Think of yourself. You likely derive satisfaction when giving those pants a neutral smiley face or completing a telephone survey when you’ve had an unsatisfactory experience with a call-center employee. Clients will openly tell you what they want and expect. For example, you may feel the need to provide monthly updates, but your client may prefer to receive updates Quarterly, before Board Reporting time. Clients have the best insight into what they like, expect and they will likely be more than happy to tell you. Additionally, asking a client’s opinion on your service may strengthen your relationship.
A survey should be brief but carefully considered. Brevity increases your chances of participation. Questions should not be leading so that you get the response you want to see. You want the client to tell you how they feel. An unbiased approach to asking questions is a great way to get honest feedback. Getting feedback can be done in several ways: through yes/no questions, on a scale from 1 to 5, or even through emojis. Despite their simplicity, smiley face surveys (emoticons), are interesting and fun to complete and can increase response rates. Each approach can be a great way for customers to tell you how they feel. It’s also a good idea to give people the opportunity to provide feedback in their own words, if they choose.
Regardless, any type of feedback or response to a survey should be taken seriously. Spend your time reviewing the feedback and identify the things that you’re doing right as well as what could be improved upon. Look for trends and compare them to other surveys to determine patterns of similar behaviour. It helps to create a workflow of your processes and then when feedback is provided, you can readily identify where your practices need tightening or improvement. Sometimes the client will never be happy, and the feedback is unhelpful, but that’s just the reality of surveys.
When receiving survey results, consider the client’s emotional reactions and their behaviours and use their responses as an opportunity to learn, improve and adjust your practices. If you look at a survey not as bad or positive feedback, but as a learning and growth opportunity that helps foster stronger solicitor-client relationships, then the idea of a survey isn’t so crazy after all.
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[1] Margaret Hagan, “Legal Design as a Thing: A Theory of Change and a Set of Methods to Craft a Human-Centered Legal System” (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, DesignIssues: Volume 36, Number 3, Summer 2020) at p. 8.
[2] Andy Polaine, Lavrans Lovlie, and Ben Reason, Service Design – From Insight to Implementation (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Rosenfeld Media, LLC, 2013) at p. 36.
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