Our series on trust started with a lesson called "Trust: Hard to Win, Easy to Lose, Impossible to Recover." That was focused on on how to build trust, and so now we turn to how to lose it, and the pitfalls to avoid. Taking assignments from clients is literally the opposite of taking candy from a baby. They are smart, savvy, connected and most of all, skeptical. This is why it's incredibly easy to lose the trust of clients. The first problem is that they are not naturally trustful or forgiving. GCs and other in-house clients are conditioned by experience to be wary of outside counsel. They all have horror stories, which they share liberally among themselves. Couple that with the fact that they have an ever-growing supply of alternative vendors and solutions.

It's helpful to look at this through the client lens. From the client standpoint, the trust issues which outside counsel have to navigate are around technical knowledge, judgement and operational skills. Each hurdle is harder to jump then the one before. Technical knowledge is often a given, and this is rarely where trust is lost. Even so, if you claim expertise outside your technical skill set, or sell what you have rather than what's needed, don't be surprised if the client loses trust. Judgment is bigger challenge. Clients are not only wary of counsel who make a bad call or a reach a judgement based on bad or incomplete information, but also those who sit on the fence for fear of error.

Then comes the biggest hurdle of all: operational skills. This is about our legal processes and how reliably we deliver the work. 'Legal Ops' is a credibility graveyard for outside counsel, so let's look at some of the pitfalls. As we've said, never take the wrong assignments, however much you need the hours. Then comes failure to understand and collaborate with the client at the get-go. If you don't agree to parameters and deliverables, you're in danger of over promising. This is big trust eradicator, not least because the GC is likely to convey your promise to the business and become shamed. Which leads neatly to the next pitfall. In everything you do, every day, for every client remember this; never embarrass the client. If you can navigate all those traps, the rest is down to efficient, effective and transparent lawyering. Our shorthand for this is 'lean' and you can avoid these traps and others by applying methods and tools from the Lean Law Program.