Asked and Answered By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC Q. Our insurance defense law firm is considering doing a client survey. What type of responses might we expect? A. We recently completed telephone interview surveys for several insurance defense firms. Here is an illustration of some of the qualitative responses:

• The firm generally does fine work. I don’t use them as often as some other firms because their bills run higher, primarily because of associate activity. Research takes a long time.
• Attorneys need to be more aggressive and pro-active.
• Primary problem is responsiveness, consistent failure to follow-up on questions, promised information. The firm seems strong in Workers Comp, weak in other areas.
• Our office has had great difficulty in receiving return calls from several attorneys and, when approached, have been advised by those attorneys, "Sorry but we’ve been extremely busy," then they promise to get info and call and they don’t call again. For these reasons, we’ve begun using other firms. Also review of our file materials needs to be reviewed closer. Info requested sometimes has been included already.
• We want to work with firms that aren’t afraid to try cases.
• Sometimes it appears that claims are handled very routine while more imagination and new approaches should be explored.

John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC, is a past chair and member of the ISBA Standing Committee on Law Office Management and Economics. For more information on law office management please direct questions to the ISBA General ListServ, which John and other committee members review, or view archived copies of The Bottom Line Newsletters. Contact John at jolmstead@olmsteadassoc.com.