Biz Development Tip Of The Month: Make An Onboarding Plan

Your new client was sufficiently impressed with your skills to hire you, but you haven’t yet shown how you’ll work together. A personalized client onboarding plan is a golden opportunity to reinforce for the client why trusting you to represent them was the right decision.

The Future-Forward Opportunity Most Lawyers Miss

The typical engagement letter includes terms and provisions that ensure your firm complies with professional conduct rules and mitigates risk. To the client, the engagement letter is a boilerplate contract that requires them to compensate you with no guarantees of success. It makes them feel like just another client rather than your most important client.

Let’s skip to the end of the matter. You hope your client will reflect positively on your representation and remember your professionalism, thorough communications, and responsiveness, as well as the extra, unexpected care that differentiates you from any other lawyer they could have retained.

You hope the image they will have of you will prompt them to give you more work and refer new clients to you. But hope, as they say, is not a strategy.

Building Your Personal Onboarding Framework

Your first meeting with the new client, especially if it’s when they sign the engagement letter, is your one-time chance to deliver a uniquely personal and memorable client experience that will pay dividends.

A tailored client onboarding checklist addresses five critical areas that standard retention agreements typically ignore.

Communication Preferences

Timely communication and responsiveness are table stakes for client service, not differentiators, usually based on the lawyer’s preferences and timetable. Your personal onboarding plan flips that paradigm and focuses on the client’s personality type and expectations.

For example, extroverts usually prefer direct communication (i.e., in-person meetings, phone calls, or Zoom meetings), while introverts gravitate more to indirect communications (email, written correspondence, text, etc.).

If you’re an introvert and your client is an extrovert, or vice versa, adapting to their communication preference builds trust and confidence. It won’t make you a better lawyer, but it will show your willingness to accommodate.

The cadence and method of communication are also important. Written documentation will always be essential to the attorney-client relationship and every litigation, transaction, or file, but that doesn’t mean you have to paper the client, too.

During your onboarding conversation, ask the client:

• “What’s the best way for me to keep you informed as we work on this matter?”
• “Should I send you detailed updates via email or schedule regular check-in calls, or would you prefer that I only contact you when there are significant developments?”
• “What time of day works best for calls?”
• “Do you prefer to receive updates at the end of the week so you can review them over the weekend, or would you rather get them early in the week?”

Don’t assume you know these answers based on the client’s generation, industry, or your previous relationship. There are 75-year-old manufacturing CEOs who prefer text messages and 25-year-old tech entrepreneurs who insist on formal letters. Your job is to confirm, not guess.

Expectation Calibration

Clients need to understand what good service looks like in your specific practice area.

If you handle complex commercial litigation, explain that there may be months of document review and discovery with little visible progress, followed by intense bursts of activity around depositions and motions.

If you’re managing a sophisticated M&A transaction, describe the usual timeline for due diligence, drafting, negotiation, and closing.

As you explain, don’t just look for nods of agreement. Ask if their business operations or personal schedules might conflict with the matter timetable. Perhaps gathering the necessary records, financials, photographs, or organizational buy-in will pose a challenge.

Uncovering problems and laying the groundwork for efficiency shows your thoroughness and foresight, and it raises any challenges you might have unwittingly encountered later.

This isn’t about managing expectations downward — it’s about providing context that allows clients to be informed participants rather than anxious observers.

When clients understand the cadence of their case, they’re less likely to interpret normal lulls as neglect or typical complications as evidence of poor performance.

Team Introductions

One of the most underutilized client onboarding opportunities is introducing other team members strategically rather than haphazardly.

Instead of copying junior associates and professional staff on client emails without context, take time to explain each person’s role and qualifications, and how their involvement is a sign of resource allocation and not adding people to compound fees.

Face-to-face or screen-to-screen introductions during the first meeting are best, but written introductions work, too.

Here’s an example:

I’m including Sarah Williams because she’ll be conducting much of the research on the regulatory issues we discussed. Sarah has particular expertise in this area; she spent three years at the agency before joining our firm, and she’s handled several matters similar to yours. You’ll likely interact with her regularly, and I know you’ll find her work product excellent.

By spotlighting your team and their capabilities, you build the client’s confidence, show your faith in each team member, and avoid surprises that would cause the client to later ask, “Who is this person and how much are they costing me?”

It also expressly permits your colleagues to communicate directly with the client when appropriate — and the client with them — when you’re unavailable.

Introducing team members is an ongoing task. People switch firms and jobs, go on leave, or get promoted with new responsibilities. Let the client know about succession plans as soon as possible and resolidify their trust in the team when personnel changes happen.

Request the same introductions from the client:

• “Who in your business or family will also be involved?”
• “Do you anticipate any departures or additions among those people?”
• “Who are the people to contact for records requests, scheduling, and decision-making?”
• “Do you have an accountant, financial adviser, supplier, or other business partner who will play a role?”

Don’t assume you have permission to contact these people; ask the client if, how, and when you should communicate with them.

Access and Availability

During onboarding, ask the client what they expect from you and your team regarding availability and responsiveness.

If they reasonably want you to reply to emails by the end of the day and return phone calls within 24 hours, confirm that you and your team will oblige. If they want faster and unrealistic responses, discuss why and agree on a more feasible turnaround.

Onboarding is the time to determine and set your respective boundaries. Will you take the client’s calls or respond to texts and emails after 7 p.m. and on weekends? Will they do the same?

Define what constitutes an emergency in your practice and give clients appropriate escalation procedures, like:

If something urgent arises outside normal business hours, you can reach me directly on my cellphone at this number. For true emergencies — which in our practice means situations requiring immediate court action or responses to government investigations — I’ll respond immediately. For other matters marked urgent, I’ll typically get back to you within three hours.

Establishing coverage protocols at this early stage is also essential. Clients need to know who’s responsible for their matter when you’re unavailable. A simple heads up might be:

When I’m out of the office for more than a day, my partner Bill Martinez will monitor my urgent matters. I’ll make sure Bill is familiar with your situation, and he has the authority to take any immediate action that might be necessary. You can reach him at this number, and he’ll coordinate with me as needed.

Early Intelligence-Gathering

Perhaps the most valuable part of your onboarding plan is the intelligence-gathering conversation, a structured discussion designed to understand what the client will need to experience to find your relationship valuable, and what they’ve experienced — good and bad — with other lawyers and law firms.

You may have won the client’s work because of another lawyer’s poor performance, but probing into the previous counsel’s shortcomings — at any time — is ill-advised. Instead, ask the client, “Of the lawyers you’ve worked with in the past, what did they do that you valued and appreciated?”

By framing the question positively, not naming names, and not limiting the client’s answers to legal services, you invite broader, more forthright details. If the client criticizes or complains about their past counsel, that is their choice, not because you asked them to throw another lawyer under the bus.

Consider subsequent questions like:

• “Tell me about your best experience working with a lawyer.”
• “What made it exceptional?”
• “What experiences do you want to avoid?”
• “Apart from achieving the best outcome in your case or matter, what does success look like to you?”

These inquiries reveal important intelligence you can’t obtain any other way. You might learn your client values lawyers who explain legal concepts in plain English or business terms rather than legalese.

Or they’ve been frustrated by lawyers who involved too many team members without clear role definitions. Or the client loves it when their lawyer sends invoices on the 15th of each month or remembers their birthday, hobbies, or children’s names and ages.

Let the client define the experience they want from you, and then overdeliver.

Implementing Your Onboarding System

The difference between good intentions and consistent execution lies in systems. Develop a standardized onboarding checklist — an actual form with checkboxes, questions, and ample space for your notes — that you complete for every new client engagement.

This document isn’t only for you; everyone on the team, present and future, gets a copy and should reference it regularly.

Follow up on your onboarding commitments consistently. If you said you would provide weekly updates, then deliver weekly updates. If you establish specific response time frames, adhere to them religiously.

If the client told you they would provide information or make introductions to key players, politely hold them to it. Your onboarding process creates a series of promises about how you’ll manage the relationship.

Failing to honor those commitments undermines everything you’re trying to build.

The Business Development Return

Effective client onboarding isn’t just about client satisfaction; it’s also about business development.

Clients like to work with people they like and trust, but clients who feel cared for and thoroughly informed are more likely to care for you by assigning more legal work, referring you to other potential clients, and remembering personal things about you.

The intelligence you gather during onboarding and later conversations may yield information about legal needs or business opportunities that weren’t apparent before. Clients who trust your judgment and appreciate your service approach will naturally turn to you when other issues arise.

The investment required for a thoughtful personal onboarding plan is minimal. Time spent preparing your checklist is well worth it. Treat it like a living document, refining and enhancing it, and asking for contributions from your team to make it a valuable road map for engagement and a learning lesson for the group.

The return on investment, measured in client satisfaction, relationship strength and longevity, and business development opportunities, can be extraordinary.

In a profession where technical competence is often assumed, your ability to deliver an exceptional client experience becomes your primary differentiator. That differentiation starts on day one.

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This article was originally published on Law360 Pulse on December 15, 2025. Subscription required.