Foreign clients do not always purchase legal services in the same way that local clients do. As a result, one of the most common mistakes that law firms make when marketing to foreign clients is that they try to sell benefits and values that are unimportant to the client. In other words, they try to sell the client the wrong things. These "things" are almost always in the area of service quality, rather than substantive legal knowledge or expertise.
Foreign clients, like local ones, look for two basic deliverables when they instruct a law firm. First, they want an expert professional service or product. Second, they want
quality in the way by which the firm delivers that service or product. Most law firms do an excellent job of promoting their professional expertise. However, they sometimes fail to sell that second deliverable of service quality. This is because they do not understand the specific factors by which foreign clients define quality in legal services.
Click here to download Selling the Wrong Things, by Norman Clark and Lisa M. Walker Johnson, originally published in the January 2011 issue of LegalTimes of Korea.
Norman Clark
