"In my experience, the best law firm relationships have been those where the law firm has taken a genuine interest in understanding our company and our law department.  Inevitably, they understood our law department's goals and objectives and as result, they were able to provide deeply informed advice with a strategic perspective." — José Gonzalez, EVP& General Counsel, CNA, USA

Due to the pandemic lockdowns, we're not visiting clients in person. And with that is lost one of the more valuable aspects of those visits — the client cafeteria. You know how this goes: you spend the morning on client premises in meetings and as it gets to be lunchtime, someone will say "come and get lunch with us, we're heading to the cafe." If you're in the business of specializing in your clients, then client cafeterias are where you eat. They are special places. This is where client personnel feel secure, comfortable and chatty. I've had some of my greatest insights, warnings and even admonishments in client cafeterias — the feedback can be priceless.

With client cafeteria chat is not an option for input, we have to create others for the listening component to ensure we get something to listen to. We can't assume that clients will give us considered feedback, in fact we can probably assume they won't, at least until something goes wrong. There are a couple of methods to provoke comment. First are 'Stakeholder Interviews' and then, ultimately, these findings get folded into 'Wrap-Up Meetings'.