Jen is a passionate entrepreneur who has been working on her project for over three years.
This project is Jen’s baby—she lives and breathes it. You know the feeling.

Jen was finally at the stage of trademarking her company internationally, and because she wanted to do things right she engaged a lawyer to file the application. As often happens when you are filing in multiple classes an adverse report was returned, meaning she might not be able to register the trademark in some of the classes without a appeal. The lawyer sent through a note which outlined Jen’s options, mostly copied and pasted from the GOV.UK response and recommendations (with one important and repeated addition).

She could proceed, appeal, limit the classes or withdraw her application. The email reminded her repeatedly that any decision and next steps would “incur further legal costs”.

The result was a very deflated Jen, not because of what the email said, but because of how it was communicated.

What if the lawyer had picked up the phone and walked Jen through everything? What if she had explained the possibilities to Jen without using jargon or putting the issue of fees front and centre?

In a world where information is freely available, when domain knowledge becomes less scarce and the cost of doing business with anyone, anywhere becomes cheaper and cheaper, all of the value we provide will be in the humanity with which we do business. The ability to walk in our customers’ shoes, to feel what they feel and then to respond in the way we’d like to be treated, is what matters now and into the future.

Yes, the law is law and legal professionals are obliged to dot the i’s and cross the t’s AND to be compensated for it. Every professional is—but not at the expense of humanity.

What Jen wants more than the facts, which she can get with two clicks of her trackpad, is empathy.

Image by Brook Novak.