His lawyer spends long, expensive hours drafting an elaborate, airtight document providing for a thousand contingencies which, in the client's real-world business life will never occur. At the same time, TQM teaches the other members of the firm to focus on and be responsive to client needs. Clients want it. Many surveys show that clients' unmet needs and expectations often have little to do with a lawyer's competence. Client dissatisfaction is a result of the insensitivity of the lawyer to the client's needs.
Quality is increasingly important because the legal market is a mature service market.
All market niches being served by more than one firm giving clients a choice of many law firms to provide needed services. Intense price competition. Local markets being served by branch offices of large firms headquartered elsewhere. Quality is becoming more and more the differentiating factor between law firms. In 1993, the American Bar Association set up a TQM task force with ten test firms agreeing to work with the task force to implement quality programs and report their results.