It's About Adding Value

• Author: Adam Newhouse
• Pages: 55-64

55

CHAPTER 7

It’s About Adding Value

Starting in my new legal position, I felt insecure. My previous legal

experience was vastly different and my confidence low. Then, a friend

gave me advice that would guide me in the future: “Be sure to always

add value.” As time passed, this cryptic command finally came to

life. My outlook on relationships took on a rich new perspective: my

mission became to contribute, share and make things better.155

In addition to putting clients’ interests first, we must reverse the story

born of the Great Recession and now well entrenched among the busi-

ness community that we lawyers are but hangers-on to be shunned if at

all possible. True or not, we must confront this problem head on. If we

cannot figure out that our mission is to enhance value for clients, we

better look for another occupation.

What Business Are We Really In?

The Entrepreneurial Perspective sees the business as a system for

producing outside results—for the customer—resulting in profits.

The Technician’s Perspective sees the business as a place in which

people work to produce inside results—for The Technician—producing

income.156

—Michael E. Gerber

The “end of lawyers” arguments popular in the days of the Great Reces-

sion assume that clients buy legal services for what they are. In fact,

most lawyers now scrambling to shore up their practices would likely

agree. They probably never think to ask themselves, “What do clients

really buy from us?” But as Peter Drucker reminds us, “Every econom-

ics book points out that customers do not buy a ‘product,’ but what

155. Original with the author (based on a personal experience).

156. Gerber (cited in 128) at 71.

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