Total Quality Management, customer satisfaction index, zero defects, client service - all are
buzzwords of management in the 1990s. Yet what is all this about anyway? After all, lawyers and
law firms successfully made it through the '80s without all the commotion about quality and service.
Why all the fuss now? Is this just another fad, some passing fancy that will come and go like
Hula-Hoops, disco dancing or designer jeans? Hardly. While the jargon may change over the
balance of the decade, a fundamental change is taking place in client service, and the attorneys who
realize this and change with it will be the attorneys who will be successful in the '90s and beyond.
All structures are built upon a foundation. A high-rise is built upon a foundation of concrete and steel.
The taller the building, the deeper and stronger the foundation required to support it. Similarly, a legal
practice is built upon a foundation, specifically upon the foundation of relationships with people. Like
the high-rise, the greater the intended accomplishment and productivity of the firm, the deeper and
stronger these bedrock relationships must be. In fact, the limits of accomplishment, productivity and
satisfaction within the firm are all a function of the nature and quality of the relationships the members
of the firm have developed with the firm's clients.
Jimmy Johnson, the only coach in football history to win both the National Collegiate Championship
and the Super Bowl, understood the critical importance of personal relationships when he grabbed
the reins of the Dallas Cowboys' franchise. In just three years, he took the league's worst team to the
pinnacle of professional success. In the locker room following the team's stunning Super Bowl
victory, Johnson poignantly told his team that, more than anything else about the day, they would
remember the love they had for each other. The team's success was built upon a fo...