Most lawyers I know are more concerned about the air temperature than the client temperature. That’s a great, big, giant mistake of focus.

If it’s cold outside, you’ll wear a coat. If it’s hot, you won’t. The weather doesn’t make all that much difference most days, but many of us check the weather on TV, in the paper, or on our phones daily like it’s really important.

The temperature of our clients, however, makes a huge difference. Are they hot, cold, or neutral? Is that client happy, unhappy, or indifferent? That’s what I want to know. What’s their temperature?

How to Take Your Clients’ Temperature

In our firm, we take our clients’ temperature once a month. Our managing attorney calls them up and asks how things are going. She takes the result of that call and codes the client as Red, Yellow, or Green.

• Red clients are angry, upset, irate, and usually in a state of total meltdown. I know you know what I mean.
• Yellow clients are distressed about something in particular. They’re waiting longer than they expected for a return call. They’re feeling neglected and alone. They’re beginning to wonder whether their lawyer is on their side. If they’re willing to articulate any upset issues, then we code them as Yellow. We want to catch our Yellows before they turn Red.
• The rest are Green. These are the happy clients. They’re feeling pretty good about things, and they aren’t expressing any dissatisfaction. In fact, many of them are on their way to becoming raving fans. These are often the folks who give us 10s on our end-of-case survey and write happy reviews on ratings websites.

Don’t Let Your Clients Become Fair-Weather Friends

In our firm, the color-coding information is immediately transmitted to the team involved in the case. We want our attorneys to know when one of their clients isn’t feeling good about the direction of the representation. An early warning system enables us to get our clients back on track. We work to turn our Reds back to Greens.

Any practice can and should implement a color-coding system. Taking client temperatures—in whatever way you choose—is far more important than checking the weather. You don’t need a managing attorney to make these check-in calls. You can do it yourself, or you can delegate it to an assistant. One way or another, you need to check their temperatures and take action to recover when things turn red.

Like the weather, client temperatures can change unexpectedly, be affected by events, and prove difficult to predict. The only way you’ll really know how your clients are doing is to ask. The first thing required to fix an unhappy client situation is awareness of your clients’ distress.

Spend more time checking the temperature of your clients and less time checking the weather. The information you gather on your clients is something you can act on to grow your practice. The weather outside is going to do whatever it pleases, and there’s nothing for you to do.