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Editor's Note: This story is adapted from ALM's Mid-Market Report. For more business of law coverage exclusively geared toward midsize firms, sign up for a free trial subscription to ALM's new weekly newsletter, The Mid-Market Report.

Novel job titles like “chief value officer” and “client relationship manager” have increasingly become part of the Big Law lexicon, but it would be a mistake to assume only large firms are pouring more resources into managing client relationships, according to consultants and law firm professionals.

“I see this as almost a movement right now in the sense that firms of all sizes have opportunities to build their business with existing clients,” said Mary K Young, a Maryland-based partner at consultancy Zeughauser Group, explaining that strategic law firms are trying to capitalize on those opportunities by assigning professionals to focus heavily on maintaining and strengthening existing client relationships.

And that movement includes midsize firms, where—as has often been the case recently in Big Law—many of these client-centric C-suite roles evolved out of positions that were originally focused on strategic pricing, legal project management, marketing or business development.

“They may not be changing the titles, but [midsize firms] are as likely as anybody to have those folks focusing on clients,” Young said.

While Young acknowledged that firms of any size can run into resistance from attorneys reluctant to loop others into their client relationships, she said lawyers she meets with, including at midsize firms, are increasingly expressing a desire for “more proactive marketing.”

In other words, Young said, they want help getting more business, which is one of the reasons more firms are looking to professionals whose full-time job is to figure out what clients want and how to deliver it to them.

“You've heard a lot of talk about firms refocusing their efforts away from branding visibility and toward business development,” she said. “What that really means is client-centric programs.”

But firms don't hire professional client relationship managers so that their attorneys can outsource their people skills. These professionals are supposed to be there to enhance, not hijack, attorneys' client relationships. And that dynamic works only if both the business professionals and the attorneys are collaborative, Young said.

“The lawyers in the firm benefit from having a highly sophisticated professional who can help them build stronger relationships and a deeper understanding of their clients, and can take some of that work off their plate,” Young said. “The caveat to that is the business professionals really need to be very savvy about the clients as well.”  

Dawn Sheiker, who became director of client relations for Morris James in Delaware in March 2018, said much of her role involves meeting with clients and getting feedback that she can then use to formulate a plan of action with the attorneys at the firm.

“The idea with creating this new position was certainly to have a business developer in-house, but really focusing in on the client experience,” Sheiker said.

Doing that effectively means turning the old adage that “clients hire lawyers, not law firms” on its ear.

Sheiker said Morris James' leadership is as invested in key client relationships as the actual relationship partners are.

“There is a message being handed down [to the attorneys] that yes, these are your relationships, but you are part of this firm and we need to make sure the firm is supporting that relationship,” Sheiker said. “The client doesn't just have you, the client has the whole firm.” 

Chris Flaherty, chief business development officer at Nossaman in Los Angeles, said the firm prioritizes initiatives aimed at client retention and engagement, including conducting formal client interviews—something many law firms have long shied away from doing, or kicked to outside consultants to handle.

“That initiative regularly has George Joseph, our managing partner, our client relations manager, or me, sitting with clients to learn as much as possible about their experience working with Nossaman,” Flaherty said in an email. “These interviews, and the resulting feedback, are enormously helpful in learning how to better partner with individual clients and their personnel and, as an added benefit, the client interview feedback helps to direct our internal professional development efforts.”

As has been made clear by the huge number of lateral moves occurring at firms of all sizes in the decade since the recession, books of business are more portable than ever.

Which is why, according to Young, client retention is ”a very good reason” for firms to devote more resources and personnel to strengthening client relationships and improving client service.

“We know from data that if a client is using the firm for multiple services, they're less likely to walk when a big rainmaker leaves,” Young said, explaining that firms should be identifying their most important clients and prospects, with the most growth potential, and then focusing on value-adds for those clients, such as having them serve on advisory panels.

“These programs allow the firm or help the firm to develop a deeper understanding of the client,” she said. “It wraps the firm around the client's needs and moves beyond a transactional relationship into a much more comprehensive relationship.”

Perhaps most importantly, clients are pushing for that type of relationship.

Bree Johnson, chief strategy, pricing, and legal project management officer at Robins Kaplan in Minneapolis, said she's noticed more lawyers at her firm embracing the client value function, particularly when they see how the clients respond.

“The client's eyes light up … the attorney at that point gets it,” Johnson said.

The next step, she said, is attorneys seeking out her resources before the client asks for it.

Indeed, Amanda Brady, managing partner and global practice leader of law firm management at Major Lindsey & Africa, said that even in Big Law there's a disconnect between the number of firms that have client-focused professional roles and the number that actually utilize them.

“Even today, there are few firms that require lawyers to utilize their pricing and client value teams, so these professionals have had to find lawyers and practice groups willing to 'beta test' these ideas, and then sell the successes across the firm, so actual adoption has been slower than some firm's marketing materials would have you believe,” Brady said in an email.

Brady said she's noticed more midsize firms ramping up formal efforts to improve client value and believes they can learn from the larger firms that have made similar moves both what and what not to do.

“There is a good chance that the smaller firms adopting client value initiatives and investing in client value chiefs and directors will experience a faster adoption with their lawyers,” Brady said. ”The benefit they have is less bureaucracy to slog through in the adoption process and the fact that Big Law has paved the way in how to implement these initiatives effectively. Sometimes being a bit of a laggard can be an advantage. As I recall, the tortoise won the race.”

Lizzy McLellan contributed to this report.