Acquiring Foreign-Born Clients: Marketing Legal Services to a Growing Niche
Copyright © 2004 by Nina Ivanichvili, CEO, All Language Alliance, Inc.
Gain Competitive Edge Through Cultural Sensitivity
Effective marketing starts with a clear view of the clientele—the target audience. This requires insight into the clients' attitudes and values, challenges, and expectations. When faced with a legal problem in their new homeland, foreign-born individuals are likely to manifest fear, insecurity, agitation, and mistrust. It is important to bear in mind that many of them have never before been in contact with lawyers. They also are likely to have different communication styles, lack knowledge of the U.S. legal system, and have no understanding about specialization in the legal profession. They may perceive crime and conflict differently than American-born citizens, based on their own cultural imperatives.
Lawyers committed to serving foreign-born clients, therefore, need to develop cross-cultural empathy. This is the critical ability to see the client's world, at least for a moment, through that client's eyes. Understanding is the foundation of empathy, so lawyers may find it helpful to research topics such as the language, religion, customs, and ethnic distinctions of their foreign-born clients, as well as the history, politics, and legal system of their country of origin. The challenge is to use this information only as a point of reference, not to stereotype or to generalize.
A good place to start such research is Infoplease,® which is searchable by key words.9 It provides links to up-to-date reference information encompassing the history and culture, as well as the language and political system of various countries. Other resources include the following:
- Amnesty International ("AI")10 and Human Rights Watch11 websites offer information on human rights violations in various countries of the world.
- FindLaw provides a collection of international resources.12
- Columbia Law School presents information on finding foreign law resources on the Internet.13
- International Trade Data System ("ITDS") delivers information on a country's exports and imports.14
- The website embassyworld.com lists the world's embassies and consulates.15
Knowledge of a foreign-born client's culture would provide an American attorney with a context for interpreting, for example, a battered immigrant woman's behavior. As noted below, domestic violence is not a legal matter in many countries. Therefore, such women are likely to treat abuse as a very private matter and be reluctant to testify against the abuser. On a different note, potential roadblocks in attorney-client conversations can be caused by a lack of understanding of how business is conducted in different countries. German banks, for example, do not mail monthly bank statements to their customers. It is up to the customer to request a bank statement while visiting the bank in person. Therefore, a German-speaking client who tells his U.S.-born attorney that he has no German bank statements in his possession and cannot easily obtain them is not necessarily being uncooperative.
