Legal Commentary

Optics Count

By Patrick J. Lamb

My first memory of the importance of optics in law was the time I was standing with an in-house lawyer for a large waste company outside a waste transfer station in Brooklyn, New York.  We were going to be meeting with a senior partner from a large New York firm.  He arrived in a limousine, stepped out wearing a very expensive suit and tie (I'm sure the tie cost more than any suit I owned--I know for sure the shoes did!).  You could see him sniffing the air, he asked "What is THAT smell?"  The immediate reply from the in-house lawyer was "Money."  The odor was, of course, eau de waste.  Needless to say, the really rich senior partner was way out of place in a waste transfer station and clearly was not enjoying himself.  When the time for lunch arrived, he proposed taking his limousine to his club in Manhattan.  The in-house lawyer was thinking sandwiches in the office kitchen.  The partner made his excuses and left.  I had sandwiches and howled with laughter at the in-house lawyers impersonations of the rich partner.  Lesson learned--optics count.

Flash forward to November 2008 when the CEOs of the Big 3 Automakers flew their corporate jets to Washington to ask for a federal handout.  I authored a post on the auto chiefs being tone deaf, suggesting that firms asking to raise rates in the current economic environment were being equally tone deaf.

Let me plead guilty to mixing my metaphors.  But whether you are visual or auditory by nature, the point remains the same.  Now let me take it one step further.  If your invoices show limousine charges, hotel charges at The Peninsula instead of a Marriott, staying at an expensive hotel remote from your client's office rather than the more modestly priced hotel right across the street (a story told by a GC at a recent conference), hundred dollar per person dinners, flying first class and so on, you are, in your own way, acting like the Big 3 CEOs.  You are ignoring your audience. 

There was a sentenced used to describe the legendary George Halas of the Chicago Bears by those who negotiated player contracts with him: "he through nickels around like they were manhole covers."  Now that is a description we should all aspire to hear from our clients.

Full post as published by In Search of Perfect Client Service on February 04, 2009 (boomark / email).