News: Satisfaction Guaranteed

By Nicholas Varchaver

A commitment to clients or a marketing ploy? It may be a little of both. At the end of May Chicago's 82-lawyer Coffield Ungaretti & Harris began guaranteeing its clients' satisfaction in writing “even if it means reducing your legal fees.”

Most firms will mark down bills for dissatisfied clients. But this is different, asserts Richard Ungaretti, the chairman of the firm's executive committee: “I don't think anybody else stands up and says in writing, up front, that we're willing to do this.” (Consultant David Maister, who once proposed the concept of a guarantee in an article in this magazine, and Joel Henning of the Chicago office of Hildebrandt, Inc., both say they cannot think of any other firm that has a written service guarantee.)

According to Ross Fishman, the firm's client service and marketing partner, the guarantee will create an incentive for communication, which he describes as the biggest stumbling block to good relations between lawyer and client. More important, the firm's market research indicated that 60 percent of business people at companies with revenue of $1 billion or more would be more likely to hire a firm if it provided a guarantee.

The firm is touting the pledge as the first of its kind and plans to spread the word with an aggressive ad campaign that will include ads in the Chicago Tribune, Crain's Chicago Business, the Chicago edition of The Wall Street Journal, and The American Lawyer's Corporate Counsel Magazine. Fishman says he's confident that clients will not try to take advantage of the guarantee and seek wholesale markdowns. Quite the opposite, he asserts: “We think that the write-downs in bills will be reduced overall because we're finding out what the client wants us to know.”

One potential client seems lukewarm on the idea. Thomas Hester, the executive vice-president and general counsel of Chicago's Ameritech Corporation, describes the guarantee as “probably not a significant factor,” given his company's strong relationships with other firms. But, he adds, “to introduce yourself to a client for the first time, maybe it might have some appeal.” And, he asserts, the idea may attract smaller clients, who have less clout with their firms.

“It is good to state what an unsophisticated user should expect,” agrees Gerald Giese, a vice-president in the trust department of The First National Bank of Chicago. Giese, who refers clients to firms including Coffield Ungaretti, asserts that his estates clients will perceive themselves as having “more power in the relationship” with the firm.

“We think this is a good thing for our clients,” Coffield's Fishman says. “And there are tremendous marketing possibilities."

Nicholas Varchaver is a Senior Reporter at The American Lawyer. This article is reprinted with permission from the June 1995 issue of The American Lawyer. © 1995 The American Lawyer.