The simple answer is, absolutely.
However, the truth is that the importance of in-person meetings is greatly exaggerated.
As much as we’d like to meet ALL of our clients, more often than not, meetings:
- Waste time. In our firm’s experience, we’ve have noticed that a lot more time is devoted to “small talk” during in-person meetings, versus phone meetings. That’s not to say that we don’t love small talk, as it certainly helps to build rapport, among other benefits. Yet, when you compare the value of time vs. small talk, we believe that time value wins most of the time – save for large accounts or clients.
- Are not required. As consumers, there is value in “kicking the tires” in order to gauge trust-worthiness. However, in today’s world, there is plenty of credibility that can be established without having to meet. More importantly, the trusted advisor and client should honestly ask themselves whether there is a practical benefit from meeting in-person. Most often, the answer is no.
- Produce more questions than answers. Most clients come to meetings with a list of questions, which we most certainly answer diligently. However, a good meeting will generally result in new questions, so does that mean that there should continue to be meetings to address more questions? In our opinion, no. Rather, it’s best to have short-burst conversations with our clients, on an on-going basis,
- Waste money. Although your trusted advisor may not be directly charging you for a meeting, you better believe that the meeting time is somehow embedded in the fee you’re paying.
Throughout many years in practice, our law firm realized that, instead of always offering a traditional face-to-face meeting, we can learn a lot more about our clients by providing on-going phone, email & video chat before, during and after the representation. We are able to do this with our low-cost Membership Plans, which our clients love.