< PreviousMay 13 – Cooking with Sarah Rogers & Friends May 14 - You Are Not Done with Bar Service Yet—the DBA Needs You! Speakers: Jonathan Childers, Justin Gobert, Chelsea Hilliard, Krisi Kastl, Ruth Mitchell, Javier Perez, Sarah Rogers, Andrew Spaniol, KoiEles Spurlock, Saba Syed, and Robert Tobey, moderator ZOOM on the TOWN Dallas Bar Association Meetings 10 ATTORNEY AT LAW MAGAZINE · DALLAS· VOL. 7 NO. 2May 14 – An Entertaining, Informative and Helpful Look into the Importance of Attorney Wellness Speakers: Terry Bentley Hill, John McShane, Kelly Rentzel, David Williams, and TLAP Director Chris Ritter May 19 – Probate Summer School Speakers: Rosey Caballero, Dallas County Clerk’s Office, Probate/Mental Health Manager; LaNasha Houze, Dallas County Court Investigator’s Office, Director of Operations; Judge Margaret Jones-Johnson, County Probate Court #3; Judge Lincoln Monroe, Dallas County Probate Court #2, Associate Judge; Judge Brenda Hull Thompson, The Probate Court of Dallas County, Presiding Judge; Judge Ingrid Warren, Dallas County Probate Court #2, Presiding Judge; and Jeff Wolff, Wolff Law, PC., Moderator AttorneyAtLawMagazine.com 11May 21 – DBA Board Meeting via Zoom ATTORNEY AT LAW MAGAZINE · DALLAS· VOL. 7 NO. 2 12law firm The A Nationwide Practice Dedicated to Vehicle Safety 221144--332244--99000000 We Didn’t Invent the Word; We DEFINED it. CCRRAASSHHWWOORRTTHHIINNEESSSS:: Every vehicle accident case you handle has the potential to be on one of the 235 racks at our Forensic Research facility where we continually study vehicle safety through the use of engineering, biomechanics, physics and innovation. If you have any questions about a potential case, please call us. There may be vehicle safety system defects that caused your client’s catastrophic injury or death.Leaders of the corporate world have advanced their global orga- nizations by leaps and bounds by ushering in the era of Client Experience. Client Experience is the regular practice of bringing the client’s voice to the table, and structuring operations and services that meet (or exceed) their expectations. Think of it as doing every- thing you can to anticipate and understand what your clients’ value, and then structuring your business accordingly to foster loyalty within your relationships. If it sounds challenging, you’re right. But that doesn’t mean it’s im- possible. Some companies operate solely from internal perspectives and po- tential tunnel-vision of leadership. Client Experience-evolved compa- nies, however, discovered the one voice missing from the boardroom table: the client. Engaging in conversations and hearing directly from your clientele will help you not only meet but exceed expectations – and in turn take your firm to the next level of growth. In the past, it may not have been easy to gather information from clients. Today, however, feedback and input are readily accessible and attainable, and thus, the practice of Client Experience can more regularly play a role within the legal industry. Multi-national global Fortune 500 companies hire Customer Expe- rience Officers to help bring their client expectations to reality. In the law firm community, it is most often the legal marketing and business development representative or team that spearheads efforts to bring its clients’ voices to the table. APPLY THE PROCESS TO YOUR LAW FIRM Begin by implementing a consistent client feedback program. This can be as simple as having scheduled, honest conference calls with clients, led by a non-biased lawyer or a client development professional. The key is to use a standard set of non-leading questions that are used consistently so you are able to identify trends. Keep in mind that the feedback likely will be more candid and valuable if the clients speak with someone who is not their main contact. Semi-annual or even quarterly conversations are ideal depending on the volume and frequency of the clients’ needs. Lawyers are naturally busy professionals and may not always be able to make time for client conversations. If this is the case for you, other great opportunities for input can also simply be attending general counsel panels or other outside-the-office events. Informal feedback channels are an important complement to more formalized conversations. Engaging in brief off-the-cuff discussions with clients in order to become famil- iar with their challenges and opportunities can be extremely informative and help to ingratiate your firm as a true and trusted business partner. Once a routine for feedback has been established, seek out opportu- nities for your firm to act upon the knowledge acquired. You can, and should, take what you learn and apply it to all areas of your work. For instance, when participating in multi-group meetings that may also include recruiting, professional development, and marketing staff, you should willingly discuss and apply information gleaned from these cli- ent feedback discussions into all functions of the firm, including your strategic planning. Client Experience: The Link Between Legal Counsel and Business Advisor BY JILL HUSE AND KERRY PRICE ATTORNEY AT LAW MAGAZINE · DALLAS· VOL. 7 NO. 2 14© 2018, Angels of Blue Protective Services, PLLC. All Rights Reserved. Congratulations, Eric Pinker on your professional success and your contributions in helping lead the firm to such prestigious status. Being recognized as a top 5 commercial litigation firm in Texas is a great honor and well deserved. 2100 Ross Avenue, Suite 830 Dallas, Texas 75201 (214) 999-1300 www.dallaspinnacle.com This kind of holistic thinking moves you even fur- ther down the process – from hearing the voice of the client to looking at your business through the lens of the client. Here you become more responsive to client needs and enter the realm of becoming business advi- sors in addition to legal counsel – another area where the legal marketing and business development team can be of service to lawyers. Legal marketers can bring their business skills to meetings by helping lawyers, whose primary role it is to go deep on the legal aspects of a client’s work, consider alternative ways of thinking and structuring processes that will mutually benefit all parties. 5 ACTIONS STEPS TO ENHANCE YOUR FIRM’S CLIENT EXPERIENCE 1. Provide skills training to all departments and em- ployees who may have some occasional contact with clients such as administration, IT, and accounting. Remember, everyone plays a role in how a client ex- periences your firm. 2. Invite marketing or business development staff into strategic planning meetings to add their perspec- tives on client needs. (Firms without marketing or business development professionals likely have a staff member with those skills. Invite them, encour- age those skills and put them to use!) 3. Initiate a client feedback program – start small if necessary to gain buy-in. 4. Consider sending a marketing or business develop- ment team member (or a staff member) to a Client Experience conference. 5. Reinforce to the entire firm that they should always put themselves in your clients’ shoes and make deci- sions from that perspective. Perhaps more important than collecting client feed- back is acting upon it. It’s important to address issues or “surprises” immediately. Handling feedback in a pro- ductive and proactive way also can help build stronger relationships with your clients – precisely the point of this strategic practice. Through smart and collabora- tive problem solving, you can edge closer to achieving trusted advisor status with your clients. JILL HUSE IS PRESIDENT OF THE LEGAL MARKETING ASSOCIA- TION AND PARTNER AT SOCIETY 54, A CONSULTING PRACTICE FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICE FIRMS. KERRY PRICE IS CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER AT BASS, BERRY & SIMS, A FULL-SERVICE NATIONAL LAW FIRM.A TT ORNEY OF THE MONTH HA TLEY S TUDIO S “Cycling teaches a lot of lessons – focus, discipline and commitment. No matter how hard you try you can’t win the race in the first five minutes and you can’t get to the top of the mountain in the first ten minutes. The litigations that I handle are the same. You’re not going to win a large, compli- cated business case the first day it shows up on your desk. It takes planning, strategy and a commitment to the process,” says Eric Pinker, managing partner at Lynn Pinker Hurst & Schwegmann. The firm represents a broad variety of clients in complex commercial litigations involving appeals, arbitrations, business disputes, pro- fessional liability matters, bankruptcy litiga- tion, class actions, energy, insurance coverage, patents and other intellectual property, non- competition agreements, securities, and trusts and estates matters. Pinker is board certified in civil trial advocacy by the National Board of Trial Advocacy. FROM BLACK BELT TO BLACK TOP, BACK ROADS AND BIG WINS “Biking, especially mountain biking, re- ally fits my personality. You go big or you go home. I love the challenge, the excitement and the competition of it. I have always been a competitive person and that fits my passion for the law, too. I like being hired and trusted to solve my clients’ problems. That’s what law- yers do, and particularly trial lawyers. Com- ERIC PINKER Cycling Enthusiast Rides to Leadership Position BY DAN BALDWINing out of law school, I was excited by that prospect, and I still am,” Pinker says. Pinker literally fell into biking. He practiced martial arts and while tak- ing his Black Belt test, he tore his ACL. After reconstructive surgery, bi- cycling proved to be great rehabilita- tion, especially when he tore the same ACL 10 years later. His personal drive and level of commitment gave Pinker the edge needed to handle the “cul- ture shock” of moving from a small New Jersey town near New York City to Dallas. Along with his parents and two siblings, they were the first of his family to ever leave the greater New York area. “I handled the change in environ- ments, physical and cultural, the way I handle everything else. I threw myself 100 percent into the activities that in- terested me.” He became a competitive swim- mer, winning third place in the state high school championship for the 100 meter butterfly. And his high school relay team won first place and set a state record. He also became involved in the BBYO Jewish high school or- ganization, eventually becoming the president of his chapter. Staying around to build a career in Texas wasn’t an early goal. “At every stage in my life I thought I would go back to the Northeast, but ultimately I decided to stay here. As much as I liked the idea of going away, I discovered I was comfortable in Dal- las. The city has great people, a great ERIC PINKER deal of excitement, and a real pro- business environment. It’s the kind of place where people can succeed through their individual abilities and hard work. Dallas has always been very warm and embracing.” The same drive to cycle to the “top of the mountain” drives Pinker to the top of his profession. “I’m a big believer in commitment. When you commit, come hell or high water, you leave it all on the field and finish strong,” he says. CYCLING UP THE ROAD TO SUCCESS Pinker finds that rising to the top of one’s chosen profession isn’t a race so much as an ongoing process of com- mitment to a client, a firm and an ideal. His real journey began when as a fourth-year lawyer he chose to leave the relative comfort of a large, multi- office national firm. That firm’s previ- ous downsizing and layoffs 18 months earlier, along with similar actions by other firms during those years, had a profound effect on how he viewed the practice of law. “I saw that in a very large law firm attorneys were viewed as being more fungible, the work I was doing was considered more of a business, and the overall feeling was not really a partnership as I understood that con- cept. I knew I would serve myself and my clients better using a different ap- proach,” he says. A year and a half later he left the firm on good terms and sought out a firm more suited to his personality, skill set, and long-term goals, joining the firm that had been started only a few months earlier by his long-time partner Mike Lynn. Pinker says it was the best decision of his life, and something that has giv- en him the opportunity to do what he wanted – to help build a law firm and create something new. “That’s been an exciting process for me and probably the defining part of my professional career. In founding the firm we really focused on creating a collegial environment, a place where people enjoy being together, a place where we have a group of attorneys with similar practice areas, clients, stresses, goals and challenges, and probably most important, a feeling of shared commitment to each other. I think that’s missing from a lot of big firms today.” OUT OF THE BOX THINKING FOR OUT OF THE BOX SUCCESS Pinker says, “Every case we take on is different. We don’t do cookie cut- ter cases. We handle lots of one-off, unique cases that require a lot of cre- ativity and brain power to map out a course to victory.” One of their most ‘out of the box’ cases was the Starlink Litigation. This was a totally novel legal situation in- volving a genetically modified corn product, which had been approved for non-human only consumption by the FDA. That product found its way into the food supply and eventually into the product of one of the largest fast-food chains in the United States. The case made the national news and that restaurant chain’s sales dropped more than 30 percent. The franchise system engaged the firm to litigate claims against the manufacturer, the licensor, and the distributor of that genetically modi- fied product. They filed in multiple jurisdictions on behalf of different franchisees and, after a year of in- tensive litigation, settled the case for more than $100 million. “There was no blueprint for that case. Literally, it was a unique prod- uct sold under unique circumstances that had never happened before and has never been repeated since,” Pinker says. And while that case was certainly unique, Pinker takes pride in apply- ing that fresh thinking to more tradi- tional types of business litigation. “As someone who handles a wide variety of business disputes, I avoid the pitfalls of traditional thinking and actively look for ways to identify and press advantages based on the distinct facts of each case.” KEEPING A BALANCE Pinker, who became managing partner in 2000, says “My goal as managing partner has been to create an environment that maximizes the ability of our attorneys to succeed. We hire great people, ensure that those people have the resources available to AttorneyAtLawMagazine.com 17Lynn Pinker Hurst & Schwegmann 2100 Ross Ave., Suite 2700 Dallas, TX 75201 (214) 981-3800 www.lynnllp.com EDUCATION Juris Doctor, cum laude, University of Texas at Austin Bachelor of Arts, Plan II, cum laude, University of Texas at Austin HONORS AND AWARDS Texas Super Lawyer, Thomson Reuters 2003-2020 Top 100 Lawyers in Texas and Top 100 Lawyers in DFW, Texas Super Lawyer, 2008-2020 Litigation Star by Benchmark Litigation, 2015-2019 Recognized by Chambers & Partners USA, 2013-2020 Best Lawyers in America, 2009-2019 Best Lawyers in Dallas, D Magazine, 2015-2020 500 Leading Lawyers in America by Lawdragon, 2007 Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff ‘s Lawyers in America, 2006 Inaugural Class of The Defenders, The Dallas Business Journal, 2006 Best Lawyers Under 40, D Magazine, 2002, 2004 Ten Rising Stars by Texas Lawyer, 2000 COMMUNITY The Honorable Barbara M.G. Lynn American Inn of Court, Founding Master, Founding-Present Dallas Bar Association’s Trial Skill Section, Board Member, 2003-2013 Patrick Higginbotham Inn of Court, Barrister, 2003-2007 Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas, Board Member and Vice-Chair American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Dallas Executive Committee and National Leadership Council do what they want, provide them with the freedom to develop as they want, and incentivize them to grow their practice, reputation and abil- ities. We give our attorneys a lot of freedom and latitude. Part of my job is to create those incentives and ensure that freedom, while at the same time making sure there are enough safeguards in place to pro- vide assistance and support if things go off the rails. Fundamentally, I work to ensure our people have everything they need to be successful, and that clients get the best possible result when they engage our firm.” Pinker and his wife have been married 27 years. They have two daughters. They enjoy traveling together. They ski in Colorado a cou- ple of weeks each year. All four are also certified scuba divers, and have enjoyed diving throughout most of the Caribbean and also in Israel and other sites. “We really love the outdoors,” he says. “We had one of the girls on skis at age three and the other by age four.” Creating the proper balance between business success and success as a husband and father is for Pinker a welcome full-time job. “Reach- ing the ‘top of the mountain’ in business, in your family life, and in cycling essentially boils down to your level of commitment. Give it everything you’ve got; that’s how you get there.” At a Glance HA TLEY S TUDIO S 3100 McKinnon Street, Sixth Floor | Dallas, TX 75201 500 Main Street, Suite. 1100 | Fort W orth, TX 76102 balfourbeattyus.com We are honored that trusted us to partner with designer Corgan to manage the construction of their recently renovated offices. Welcome to your new space. Client-focused construction management services3100 McKinnon Street, Sixth Floor | Dallas, TX 75201 500 Main Street, Suite. 1100 | Fort W orth, TX 76102 balfourbeattyus.com We are honored that trusted us to partner with designer Corgan to manage the construction of their recently renovated offices. Welcome to your new space. Client-focused construction management servicesNext >