Our English-based pals at Roll on Friday delivered an excellent scoop a few days ago regarding the implementation of a new initiative at Freehills:
Freehills has taken mad management group-think to a whole new level with the launch of a client care strategy which involves placing a single red chair in each of the firm’s meeting rooms. Hatched at the recent National Partners Conference, the new plan has been dubbed the “Empty Chair” initiative…According to a leaked internal email from Managing Partner Mark Rigotti the red chair “serves as a constant reminder that the client should always be top of mind” and it “symbolises our clients’ voice when discussions are held“
We weren’t really sure where Mr Rigotti was going with this empty chair business until we googled it, discovering that it is a psychological technique designed to adduce repressed feelings through imagination. Yes, according to psychologist C. Ramya, the rationale for the “empty chair technique” can be described as follows:
When the client expresses a conflict with another person, through this technique, the client is directed to talk to that another person who is imagined to be sitting in an empty chair beside or across the client. This helps the client to experience and understand the feeling more fully. Thus, it stimulates your thinking, highlighting your emotions and attitudes. For example, the therapist may say, “Imagine your father in this chair (about 3 feet away), see him vividly, and, now, talk to him about how you felt when he was unfaithful to your mother.” There are innumerable other people, objects (your car or wedding ring), parts of your personality (critical parent, natural child, introversion, obsession with work), any of your emotions, symptoms (headaches, fatigue), any aspect of a dream, a stereotype (blacks, macho males, independent women), and so on that you can imagine in the empty chair. The key is a long, detailed, emotional interaction–a conversation. You should shift back and forth between chairs as you also speak for the person-trait-object in the other chair. This “conversation” clarifies your feelings and reactions to the other person and may increase your understanding of the other person.
So presumably Mr Rigotti and his fellow Freehills partners will now be instructing all clients to “talk to the empty chair” and “imagine [insert issue/company] is sitting in the empty chair”. Tony Abbott, for example, might be instructed “imagine Julia Gillard is sitting in the chair“. Of course, we probably shouldn’t be surprised that Rigotti has been inspired by this psychological babble; last year when asked what would be his key focus as managing partner, Mr Rigotti told Lawyers Weekly:
There’s going to be a big, big focus on talking to clients. I’m pretty sick of looking at things with butcher’s paper. I want to have real interactions with clients rather than strategy sessions…
Yes, real interactions… with a chair and a client’s imagination.
Perhaps Mr Rigotti has butchered this one?
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I get the pop-psychology as far as it goes, but what do they tell clients when they [presumably] ask why only one of the meeting-room chairs are red?
Presumably the answer would be along the lines of “well that will be the colour of your face when you receive our fee note”.
There is no “talk to the chair”, we are told it is a passive reminder that the client should be front of mind in all meetings. Which I’m pretty sure is exactly what clients will be told when they ask. In an era of cost-consciousness, some may even appreciate it.
(Not defending the idea, just saying it’s not as completely crazy as your article suggests)
Sounds pretty crazy to me
What if someone sits in the chair. Is that a breach of our No Intimate Relations with Clients Policy?
This clearly does not go far enough. Presumably most of Freehills’ clients are corporate entities which cannot sit on a chair, so the chair as a “reminder” is tenuous and too confusing for young Freehills solicitors who conflate directors with their companies. Those corporate clients could be represented by, say, a chest of drawers. For all of those multi-client transactions, in each meeting room there should be two or more chairs and a variety of chest of drawers, representing each client. Edward de Bono’s different coloured hats should not be overlooked in the drive to improve solicitors’ abstract and reflective thinking. Each meeting room should have several hats of different colours for use by all during the meetings. Obviously this needs a hat stand or two in each meeting room. Freehills’ younger solicitors might benefit from having replicas of Harry Potter’s Mirror of Erised to warn them of getting what they seek (horrendously detailed mutually applicable but badly drafted indemnities), so I would expect each meeting room to be complemented by a free-standing full length mirror which can be manoeuvred behind a client and face the lawyer. In case clients, or representatives of corporate clients, feel they are in a Woollahra antique dealer’s shop, visitors to the meetin rooms could be lent iPods for audio tours of their meeting room, explaining the significance of each item of furniture or hat.
… just don’t sniff the chair …
Cicero – please email us at news@firmspy.com.
Slow news day at Firm Spy? Why is a story from September 2010 being re-published?
I have a strange sense of deja vu. Wasn’t this, or a simlar article published by Firm Spy last year?
Yes, sorry guys- a few too many volts last night! We’ll have new “features” up soon.