What Your Clients Are Still Looking For

Dr. Zoë Chance, keynote speaker at Fennemore’s Annual Attorney Retreat, explored what truly drives client relationships, sharing powerful examples of influence and connection from her work at the Yale School of Management. As she puts it, “Competence is now the price of admission, and without warmth, it’s not enough.” She builds on that idea here, offering practical ways to strengthen client relationships through more intentional, human-centered interactions.

Like you, I make my living from what I know. I teach influence at the Yale School of Management. People pay to take my class and hire me to consult, even though they could learn a lot of what I can teach without ever meeting me – my book is on shelves and my TEDx talk is free. Your clients are getting legal advice from AI, but they still value their relationship with you. To understand why we still have jobs, and why we will, we have to realize that nobody was ever choosing us on competence alone.

Social psychologists have consistently found people judge one another along two dimensions: warmth and competence. When we meet someone new, our mind asks, Do I like them? and, Do I respect them? Both answers matter, but warmth wins by a lot. In a study of 10,000 work relationships across multiple organizations, researchers found that when someone was perceived as cold, their competence became “virtually irrelevant” in whether anyone wanted to work with them. In service relationships specifically, warmth dominates the referral process – and in law, that’s a problem. When more than 500 corporate legal decision-makers at billion-dollar companies were interviewed in 2024, only 28% said they would recommend their primary outside counsel to a peer. Four years earlier, the number had been 69%.

Competence is now the price of admission, and without warmth, it’s not enough.

Signs of warmth – or its absence – register faster than you’d think. When study participants listened to brief clips of surgeons speaking with their patients, they could predict which of those surgeons were sued for malpractice — even though the words had been garbled and all they could hear was the surgeon’s tone of voice.

So what can you do with this? Here’s a place to start.

Listen for values, not just the facts. When a prospective client describes their situation, you’ve been trained to extract the issues. In a conflict, you’ve been trained to poke holes in the argument. But try something else instead. Listen for that deep underlying thing they care about that’s leading them to think or feel the way they do. Maybe it’s predictability, autonomy, protecting their team… Reflect it back in different, simple words. It sounds like predictability matters a lot to you. You’re not parroting, you’re naming something you noticed. If you’re right, they’ll feel seen and understood. If you’re wrong, they’ll correct you, and you’ll get to know them better. The process uncovers shared values, which is a helpful foundation.

Stop interrogating. Start wondering. In law school, you learned how to cross-examine: short questions, one fact at a time, never asking anything you didn’t know the answer to. No one likes to feel cross-examined, but they do like to be asked questions. In an analysis of half a million sales conversations, researchers found the main difference between top performers and everyone else was that the top performers listened more than they talked – they got curious, and asked more questions. In studies of networking conversations and speed-dating events, researchers found more questions led to more liking — specifically when those questions were follow-up questions. Follow-ups invite the speaker to go deeper. They signal responsiveness – listening, validation, care – in a way nothing else does, because you can’t fake a follow-up. It comes from the answer the person just gave you.

To ask better questions:

Rather than asking why, echo a specific word back. Why? can sound like an interrogation, like you’re forcing someone to justify themselves. Instead, repeat the most charged or precise word your client just used, and pause. Misaligned? They’ll explain.

Let their answers have breathing room. Let their substantive answer sink in for a couple of seconds before you respond. The reflex to jump to the next question while they’re still finishing signals that you weren’t listening; you were just waiting to speak.

Ask questions about them that they don’t know the answer to. Talking about ourselves activates the primary reward network – it’s a fundamentally pleasurable feeling. And when people get to engage in a process of discovery as they talk about themselves, they feel alive. Most people aren’t noticing how they’re feeling most of the time, and they appreciate questions like, How does it feel to… ? or What was that like for you when… ? You might be reluctant to follow up on discomfort, but putting feelings into words calms activation in the speaker’s amygdala (where the brain processes fear and stress) and has a stress-relieving effect on the listener’s brain, too.

If you’re wondering whether you’re listening or interrogating, ask yourself, Did what they just said change what I’m asking next? If yes, you’re in conversation. If no, you’re in cross.

The competence layer of legal work is being commoditized quickly. It’s the same in my world. Our clients can access a lot of the information we used to be gatekeepers for. But they’re not just seeking our advice, they’re craving our questions. What kinds of questions do you love to be asked?

Dr. Zoë Chance is an award-winning Yale professor and bestselling author who travels the world to share the science of good influence. She helps people lead teams, negotiate deals, change policies, run for office, find love, and even influence their kids (sometimes). Her work has influenced Google’s global food policy as well as climate policy negotiations at the United Nations and in the White House. She’s an alum of Harvard, Haverford, and USC, and before academia, she managed a $200 million segment of the Barbie brand at Mattel. Outside of Yale, Zoe teaches workshops and coaches executives at Fortune 500 companies and sustainability-focused nonprofits. Her international bestseller Influence Is Your Superpower is being published in 28 languages.