No Business Like Slow Business

The online world has compounded the need for speed. Just ask companies like Apple and Amazon who do business faster than the blink of an eye.  They respond to customer complaints, provide provide top notch customer service, and put the right products in front of you. And you don’t even have to ask. But there are still some companies that don’t do that. Especially in the legal industry.

In the legal industry, things don’t happen at quite the same speed. In fact, at times it’s the exact opposite. They don’t respond to emails as quickly. They don’t provide the same timelines. And law firms are more reactive than prospective.

I’ve heard it put this way: Lawyers don’t tend to pay attention to such things when they’re deciding how to manage their firms. That’s because law firms have a “profession” instead of a business.

From experience, I’ve seen that many law schools spend hardly any time teaching business topics. And I don’t just mean accounting and M&A but I also mean typical things like client management. Things that nearly every MBA picked up before business school and still refined while a grad student.

In some ways, one firm we are using has given us this same experience. Even though the firm that was very enthusiastic about working on our new startup, it has been a lot less responsive not just to our timing but also business demands. I suppose they’re probably attending to a higher paying client, which in some ways makes sense. But in other ways, if our startup gets big, I can tell you that we may just take our business elsewhere.

I bet companies like Apple would not be operating the same way.

Wednesday, March 21st, 2012 Careers

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Jeremy C Wilson is a JD-MBA alumni using his site to share information on education, the social enterprise revolution, entrepreneurship, and doing things differently. Feel free to send along questions or comments as you read.

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The contents of this blog are mine personally and do not reflect the views or position of Kellogg, Northwestern Law, the JD-MBA program, or any firm that I work for. I only offer my own perspective on all issues.
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