David Freeman, former lawyer from New York with an international consulting firm, speaks with Richard Levick, chairman of Levick, in this transcribed installment of the In House Warrior Podcast series.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Corporate Counsel Business Journal's daily podcast, In House Warrior with host Richard Levick, Chairman of LEVICK, a global crisis and litigation communications firm.
Levick: Good day. This is Richard Levick for the In House Warrior, the daily podcast for the Corporate Counsel Business Journal and our exploration into courageous leadership. Today with us is David Freeman, a former lawyer from New York who has an international consulting firm. He's an award-winning consultant. He's got two books out that made the bestsellers list and multiple other books as well. He's worked with over 200 law firms and helping their lawyers form stronger relationships with their clients. David, welcome to the show.
Freeman: Thank you for having me.
Levick: It's great to have you here. And we always like to begin the show with a personal story, and I know that at one point you were an aspiring tennis player at the professional level. Do you want to share some of the lessons you learned from that?
Freeman: Yeah. Well, one is train harder and earlier.
Levick: It's never enough, is it?
Freeman: Never enough. I think the lessons that I've taken from that, there are so many high-performance lessons. One is at their level and one is always seeking how can you figure out ways to hit your next level? What is that next level of performance? And I find that that's what I bring to my work when I'm working with lawyers is they're fantastic as lawyers, but their performance is not as strong when it comes to building relationships with their clients. And so I try to help them in that area.
Levick: And I think what you're also saying for people like me at 62, it's probably a little late if I want to be a professional tennis player.
Freeman: You know what, there's an age level up there. There's the sixties and above. There is hope.
Levick: Yeah. I'll start lowering my expectations right away. We were talking before we went on the show about how you think this is a perfect time for general councils to audition new firms and deepen relationships with their existing law firms. Can you talk a little bit about that and why?
Freeman: Well, I think needless to say with the crisis that we're in right now, there were a lot of clients that are being faced with new questions. There's no shortage of a need to have a lot of smart people around them. The law firms that have their specialists, this is a great time for them to show up, to be able to be as helpful as possible. And if you look at the old days, when you looked at the business card of a lawyer, it said two things on it. It said lawyer and counselor at law.
And now is the time for that trusted advisor counselor at law to come rising up. Because at the end of the day, there's one major measure that's going to come out of this. And in my mind it's, a year from now, how are these lawyers going to be viewed by in house counsel? Did you show up for me? Did you go the extra mile when we were hurting and things were really tough? We get remembered by how we show up. This I think is a golden opportunity for outside lawyers to be able to show up for their inside counterparts.
Levick: Leadership is so much easier in the up markets, but it's only remembered for what we do during the down markets.
Freeman: Absolutely. We remember those who were there during crisis.
Levick: Yeah. Terrific. You talk about a toolkit, some things, and I don't want to oversimplify, but almost a checklist of things that the general councils can do. And for those outside lawyers who are listening, what they can volunteer to do to deepen the relationships.
David Freeman: Absolutely. And it's interesting, I've coached literally thousands of lawyers in my career. And I often find that there's a mindset of, going back to fifth or sixth grade, you're the shy kid in the corner, and you're hoping for somebody to come over to say hello to you instead of you going to them. While lawyers have this tremendous toolkit of things that they could reach out to in house counsel for, they're often shy about it. There's a laundry list of things that could be done right now. So I'll give you some examples. One, an individual lawyer, no less than the entire firm has an incredible network of people that could be helpful for an in house counsel, both personally in their own life, as well as professionally for their organization. So to put people together, that could be a measure of success in today's market.
Another thing to look at is, let's be real, there's some capacity out there right now. The law firms are slowing down in certain practices. One of the things that could be a way to audition a law firm is to say, "We've always wanted to try a practice of yours. Would you be willing to give us," I'll make up a number, "five hours or $5,000 worth or whatever of time to try out your labor and employment department, your regulatory department." On the flip side, those folks should be thrilled to get an audition in front of you that way. The offer of free services is there. Another one that I think is one of my favorites right now is internally inside your organizations, needless to say, you are having your standup meetings to talk about how to address the crisis. One way or another, either you're cranking along very heavily because you're on the good side of the crisis or things are very challenging.
Why don't you ask your law firm if they would have a lawyer virtually sit in on those meetings? Maybe it's a labor and employment lawyer for those issues. Maybe it's a litigation if you're having some things going on there, and the law firms should be thrilled to offer to have somebody sit in on these meetings. This could be a good time to get feedback. People have some time on their hands perhaps. It could be a good time to say, look, let's check in on how we've been doing over the last year so we can learn from each other.
Levick: Always the frightening question to ask.
Freeman: And that's a whole finesse game. I actually have a two hour training I do with law firms on how to actually do that in a way that makes the lawyer comfortable to ask and in house counsel comfortable to give that information. Another thing is office hours. I've seen some firms saying to clients, "We're happy to set up two hours where you could have anybody get online. We'll have an open Zoom meeting and anybody can come on in and ask any question you want." Or another variation is, "We'll set up 30 minutes slots and we will allow anybody in your organization to talk to anybody in our organization about any topic you want for 30 minutes." It's a beautiful way to get value from your law firm, meet more people and again, from the law firm side, they want to meet more of you. It's a win-win on everybody's side.
Another thing just as another quick example, co-authoring or co-presenting. They're doing a lot of webinars and podcasts. You may want to get visibility out there in the marketplace to co-author an article or co-present on something. There's a lot of different tools in the toolkit that folks can use to be able to deepen this relationship or reach out to new law firms, to be able to test them out in this time period.
Levick: David, all great advice. In the 30 seconds we have left, what's the one inspirational thought you'd like to leave our general counsel audience with today.
Freeman: It's such an interesting time right now. Needless to say there's a lot of concern, there's a lot of fear, but you listen to the people who are optimistic about these things and there is a silver lining in everything. What is the silver lining inside of your organization? What is the silver lining for deepening a relationship or building a new relationship with an outside firm? There are new approaches being used. We're using technology in ways that we've never. I mean, literally three weeks ago, there's technology that our law firms especially, never would have thought of using three weeks ago that are now routine today. There's a crack in the universe. There's an ability to do things differently. People need to be proactive to see what that looks like and to try to make it an institutional change.
Levick: David, I know the first thing I'm going to do with this new technology as soon as this show is over, I'm going to look up the Zoom thing. I've never heard of it, and of course we're all spending all of our time on Zoom these days. David, thank you so much. Great to see you. I'm Richard Levick for In House Warrior, the daily podcast of the Corporate Counsel Business Journal. Thanks so much. We'll see you tomorrow.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to the Corporate Counsel Business Journal's In House Warrior with host Richard Levick.
Published September 14, 2020.
