General counsel may fancy a client satisfaction survey, but will they carry it out?

Corp. Counsel, Dec. 2011 at 76, reports on a survey of 107 senior in-house lawyers that was conducted late last year. Many of the respondents complained that clients perceive the legal department to be reactive at best and a roadblock to be avoided at worst. To overcome the negative perceptions, the respondents plan to meet more with heads of business units. “And 27 percent said they would conduct regular surveys of the businesses to find out their level of satisfaction with the legal department.”

Dream on. I do not think that anything like one-quarter of U.S. law departments survey their clients each year regarding opinions they hold of the department. A few years back I published a book on client satisfaction for law department managers and didn’t estimate the frequency anywhere near that. It is easy to say you will do something; in the morning, resolve flags.

Having done one metapost on client satisfaction back in 2008, here is an update (See my post of Jan. 21, 2009: three ways to measure client satisfaction; March 25, 2009: assessing penetration of client areas; July 29, 2009: organizational capital and satisfaction of clients as an element; Sept. 24, 2010: comparisons to benchmark surveys; Aug. 6, 2010: Cronbach’s alpha to test questions; Oct. 3, 2010: free, online software to conduct surveys; March 18, 2011: client satisfaction may rise with seniority of clients and distort company-wide impressions; April 5, 2011: quota system for in-house lawyers to obtain client satisfaction e-feedback forms; March 27, 2011: badgering clients for matter reviews; and Nov. 4, 2011: a quantification of RHIP.).