The best clients may or may not be the biggest clients or the most profitable clients. For my corporate/business practice, the best clients are the ones that value my services and want to build a long term relationship. So how do you find clients that value legal services? How do you build long term relationships?

When I first started practicing law, I had this image that business development meant putting on my sales and marketing hat, heading out to some networking event, and then rounding up a bunch of great new clients (all wearing suits and ties with $100 bills spilling out their pockets). I quickly learned that it seldom, if ever, works like that. In fact, when I try “selling” my services to new clients, it usually doesn’t work at all. So, how do you get new clients? Where do you find them?

Start by assessing whom your best clients are. As recommended by Jim Hassett in his new book Legal Business Development, you must first build stronger relationships with your existing clients, before trying to generate new clients. Think about which clients value your legal services the most and which clients you enjoy working with you the most. Then, invite your best clients to go to an “appreciation” lunch and ask them why they like your services. Were you right?

Also, think about which clients don’t value your services very much and which clients fail to understand what you really do. Think about those clients that are difficult to collect fees from or who are trying to get more than they are paying for. Every once in a while, I get a client that has read Rich Dad, Poor Dad and believes that “money is power.” Those are the clients that I have come to realize detract the most from my business. The more I weed out the bad clients, the more I begin to attract the best clients.

Clients will not hire you unless they develop some kind of relationship with you. It may be a real relationship or it may be that they just identify with who you are. In Seth Godin’s book All Marketer’s Are Liars , which ironically is a book about telling the truth, he says that you have to be authentic. For me, being authentic means acknowledging that I primarily represent entrepreneurs and investors of early-stage ventures, not Fortune 500 companies, and I have the practical experience of having actually owned and managed a software development business. Clients respect it when you give them a clear picture of who you are and what you do rather than pretending to be something bigger.

Developing relationships with other people requires more than just telling the truth. As business development coach, Stewart Hirsch, says “it’s not just about you.” Whether it is a potential client or a referral contact, you need to focus on how you can help the other person. That way you can start building the relationship. Think about how you and your whole business model can facilitate and improve client relationships.

As my long time (9 days) readers know, I have been considering various pricing models. The so-called “alternative billing” models seem to be generating a lot of buzz lately (e.g., Gruntled Employees, LawBiz, The HR Lawyer’s Blog), but I’m still wary of going to anything radical like an all “fixed-fee” model. The process of billing on a “fixed fee” basis all the time means sending an invoice to the client every time a new issue comes up or a new document needs to be drafted. The problem is that very quickly the “fixed-fee” creates a disincentive for building a strong relationship with the client. Fundamentally, high-value relationships are based on trust. If the lawyer doesn’t trust the client, or the client doesn’t trust the lawyer, the value of that relationship will be very low and the client will likely move on to the next lawyer that comes along.

So, my advice is take a client or prospective client to lunch. Ask them what they value most in their law firm, and find out how you can be of greater service to them (whether as a lawyer or as a friend).

What makes your best clients the “best“? How do you go about attracting new ones?