Serving Clients: How cognitive empathy turns legal expertise into real value

By Brenda Plowman

Clients often receive advice that is accurate, timely, and legally sound, yet still hesitate. They ask follow-up questions, circle back days later, or struggle to act. From the lawyer’s perspective, the work is done. From the client’s perspective, something is missing.

That disconnect highlights a fundamental truth about serving clients well. Value is not created by expertise alone. It is shaped by how that expertise is experienced, understood, and applied. In today’s legal market, this gap is rarely about competence. It is about perspective.

This distinction sits at the heart of serving clients effectively. Technical excellence is essential, but it is no longer sufficient to ensure that advice lands, decisions move forward, or trust deepens.

Expertise is assumed. Experience is remembered.

Legal expertise has become table stakes. Clients, industry leaders, and the market itself reinforce the same message. Accuracy, technical competence, and sound judgment are expected by legal consumers. The rapid adoption of AI only intensifies expectations around speed, efficiency, and precision.

As technical differentiation narrows, client experience becomes one of the few remaining levers lawyers can actively control.

What increasingly differentiates lawyers is not what they know, but how well their advice fits into the client’s reality. Clients are operating under sustained pressure, balancing risk, resources, internal stakeholders, and time. They value professionals who can help them see around corners and translate complexity into practical insight.

Clients may not remember every detail of the advice they received, but they will remember what it felt like to work with a lawyer who helped them move forward with confidence.

Empathy as a professional capability

Empathy is often misunderstood in professional services. In this context, the relevant skill is cognitive empathy. It is the ability to understand another person’s perspective, to communicate more effectively, and support better decision-making.

Cognitive empathy is not emotional handholding. It is not about absorbing a client’s stress or managing feelings. It is about understanding how the client sees the situation, commercially, operationally, and personally.

When lawyers apply cognitive empathy, they are better positioned to frame advice in business terms, anticipate concerns before they are voiced, and translate legal analysis into actionable insight. This is where legal knowledge begins to generate real value.

Where empathy shapes the client experience

Cognitive empathy should inform the entire client lifecycle. Four moments, however, tend to have an outsized impact.

At the beginning of the relationship
Clients typically reach out for a reason, often under time pressure or uncertainty. Taking the time to listen carefully, understand context, and clarify what success looks like from the client’s perspective sets the tone for the relationship. Sharing these insights with the broader team creates alignment early and helps ensure consistency in how the client is served. This initial investment builds trust and establishes a foundation that can withstand challenges later.

During moments of uncertainty
Uncertainty shows up in many forms. Decision fatigue, shifting priorities, internal pressure, or unexpected developments can all stall momentum. When trust has been established early, lawyers are better able to recognize these moments and respond with clarity and options. Even when something does not go as planned, cognitive empathy allows the lawyer to put themselves in the client’s position and work back to solid ground. Often, these moments strengthen the relationship rather than weaken it.

When delivering advice
Exceptional legal knowledge is expected. It is the price of admission. Lawyers invest years developing judgment, integrity, and technical skill. The differentiator is what happens next.

When legal analysis is paired with cognitive empathy, advice shifts from being technically correct to being decisively useful. Framing advice around scenarios, options, implications, and recommended next steps enables clients to make decisions with confidence. This requires active listening, honest communication, and transparency. When advice is delivered through the client’s lens, lawyers become stronger advocates not only for the law, but for the client’s business and objectives.

After the advice, build forward
The conclusion of a matter creates a powerful opportunity. Checking in to confirm expectations were met, addressing concerns, and discussing what comes next reinforces the partnership. While it may feel easier to move on to the next matter, a thoughtful debrief signals commitment and positions the relationship for long-term growth. These conversations often surface insights that shape future work and deepen trust.

Value is created through small, intentional choices

Empathy connects directly to value creation often through small, deliberate actions rather than grand gestures. Effective advice is experienced through clear executive summaries, explicit recommendations, timely check-ins, and anticipating the next question.

These choices do not change the law or the lawyer’s technical mastery. They do change the client’s confidence, sense of being understood, and willingness to act. Over time, these moments accumulate into trust.

Practical questions that improve alignment

Simple questions will materially improve the quality and impact of advice. What decision does the client need to make with this advice? What options and implications matter most in their context? Where would a clear recommendation reduce uncertainty?

Sharing relevant past experiences, including successes and pitfalls, can further support decision-making. Finally, checking in explicitly on whether the client feels they are receiving value creates space to adjust and improve the relationship over time.

Serving clients is ultimately about perspective

Serving clients is not simply about delivering legal advice. It is about delivering insight through a lens that reflects what matters most to them. Cognitive empathy makes it easier to understand how clients define value and how lawyers can act against that expectation.

In a competitive legal market, how clients experience service may matter as much as the advice itself.

Brenda Plowman spent nearly 20 years at one of Canada’s largest law firms, nine as chief marketing and business development officer, where she built its first-ever client service excellence program. She was president of the International Legal Marketing Association in 2022 and is now a consultant to professional services firms specifically around service excellence and client listening, business development and growth strategies, and brand development and repositioning. She can be reached at https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendaplowman/.