Marc W. Kitay 🇨🇦🇮🇱’s Post

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Partner at Whitten and Lublin Employment Lawyers

Before entering law, I held the glamorous role of painting houses. When applying a garage floor epoxy, there is a term called “pushing the puddle”. This means that as you roll the paint across the floor, there should always be a puddle in front of your roller. Once it dissipates, then it is time to add more paint. I use this analogy often when mentoring students and junior lawyers. Clients rarely seek an employment lawyer when times are good. For the most part, it is because they are dealing with a stressful and novel problem. This leaves them anxious. Poor communication or lack thereof confounds their anxiety. It erodes trust and results in a loss of business. One way to keep clients calm is to leave every email and phone call with the date that they can expect to hear from you next. In other words, you push the puddle for your client so that there is always a future date to next hear from you. The review below doesn’t particularly resonate with me, which tells me it wasn’t as successful (based on my standards) as the client perceived it to be. This is a lesson for new lawyers: great communication will always enhance a client’s perception of your service and motivate them to hire you.

Stuart Rudner

Helping employers and employees understand and enforce their rights

3mo

That's a great lesson in customer service

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Daniel Lublin

Leading Human Resources Lawyer | Founding Partner | Expert Media Writer and Commentator | Setting New Standards in Employment Law

3mo

Great story Marc about your early career. It says a lot about your character that were you able to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. You're a warrior.

Lisa Shiroff

Helping visionaries, innovators, and executives create books as unique as they are.

3mo

I think that lesson applies to everyone in the service industry. Thanks for the reminder and thank you for the “push the puddle” phrase! I intend to borrow that!

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