Your resident journalist tries to unveil the secrets of your job, passing through the shell of humility displayed by recently awarded lawyers, whose special talents won't be revealed easily...
As an outsider, it never ceases to astonish me how lawyers are humble. When Hans Jonckhout (EJ Netherlands) received an award for his work, he didn't advise me directly... It was another EJ member, from another country, who tipped me : « You know, our president got an award for his work... » Really ? I must contact him then, I thought. But he politely avoided it : « Our whole firm got the award, not just me. May I ask you to contact my partner Alexander Steenaert about this ? » Mr Steenaert himself was quick to diminish the glory : « You know, it's not like winning an Oscar or a Nobel Prize, there are so many of these awards ! » ... But still, someone, somewhere, gave you a prize, so why did they give it to you and not to someone else ? I wanted to know what talent, or at least what special trick, was being hailed with this award.
I had to look into it : the award came from Acquisition International, a magazine, who decided the firm of Hans and Alexander was the best Dutch mid-market law firm. And the winner of the prize was decided through an online poll : this firm was elected by readers. To me, it seemed like quite an acclaim, so I asked Mr Steenaert again : did you celebrate it ? « Well, we celebrated it humbly, we just had an extra drink on Friday night ! » ... I was definitely having a hard time breaking their shell of humility !
I decided to be more precise : why did readers elect them as the best firm ? « I think it is because we work in small teams. We doubled our workforce over the last few years but we still work in teams of two or three lawyers. We always ask our customers about their experience working with us. We are reachable, and creative... » Here we go : now I was learning about how they do their work ! I pushed further : what makes you more reachable ? « Well, we just pick up the phone. It sounds easy but apparently not everyone does it ! The biggest complaint you hear about lawyers today is that you can't reach them, they're always in a meeting or in court. You know, when customers try to phone you, it means they have a problem, so you must answer them, and we train our young lawyers in this direction : answer as soon as you can, call back as fast as you can. Another thing : we don't take too many clients. There's only 24 hours in a day, and this way I can give my cell phone to every client so they can reach me ».
Now I was getting interesting insights, so I asked once more : what makes you more creative ? « Experience does. We remember past experiences. And we're not afraid of taking an entrepreneurial view of the case : we don't only have a legal outlook on things, but also a financial one, etc ». So in the end, why did these readers vote for you ? « Okay, okay, it's because we're good at it ! » concluded Mr Steenaert with a laugh. So in the end they had to admit they were doing a good job after all...
