Setting Expectations

In this post on his Ripples weblog, David St. Lawrence writes:

Hindsight is so humbling. It took me 45 years of professional life to arrive at the following conclusion: Setting expectations correctly is far more important than the actual work that you do.

I hate voicemail. However, I have heard of a consultant who has voicemail that says, "Leave a message and I'll return your call in 90 minutes." He always returns the call in sixty minutes or less -- or has an assistant do it. He sets a client's expectations and then exceeds them. If we lawyers were able to consistenly do the same thing, we wouldn't be the butt of so many jokes.

Comments

[David]

Thanks for visiting my site.

Setting expectations as a lawyer is probably more important than in any other profession because you are taking responsibility for the person's life when you take the case.

The expectation need not be that you are going to win the case. The client might feel satisfied if he had certainty that you were going to do everything possible to get him a fair deal.

That has been the case with two of the lawyers I have hired over the years. The rest never approached the matter of expectations. There is a big difference in how I remember the two groups.