How to Get Great Testimonials is one of those areas where the practitioners who actually do the work are usually too busy to write about it, and the ones who write about it tend to do less of it. This piece tries to split the difference.
Written for mediators considering How to Get Great Testimonials as one of several possible practice directions, with limited time to evaluate which one is worth pursuing.
Mediation involving How to Get Great Testimonials often benefits from explicit education for both parties on the substantive issues before negotiation begins. A mediator who spends 20 minutes walking both parties through the basics of How to Get Great Testimonials levels the information asymmetry that often blocks productive discussion. This is education, not advocacy — and it’s a core mediator skill.
The first meeting
Document the intake. Either contemporaneous notes you keep in the file or a follow-up summary email to the client. How to Get Great Testimonials engagements involve enough small decisions across long timelines that working from memory six months in produces errors.
A useful intake habit: ask the client to articulate, in their own words, what they’re hoping the engagement will produce. The answer reveals where the client’s expectations align with what How to Get Great Testimonials engagements actually deliver and where they don’t. Closing the gap before the engagement starts saves significant friction during the matter.
What happens in the middle phase
The pacing of the middle phase depends heavily on third-party responsiveness. Some How to Get Great Testimonials engagements can complete the middle phase in 30 days; others stretch to four months because a critical document custodian is slow to respond. Practitioners who actively chase third-party documents — rather than waiting for them — keep matters moving meaningfully faster than passive practitioners.
Communication discipline during the middle phase prevents most of the problems that show up at the deliverable. Practitioners who send the client weekly or biweekly written updates — even short ones — maintain trust and surface issues early. Practitioners who go silent during the analytical work leave the client to imagine what might be happening, which is rarely productive. For deeper reference, see ABA Model Standards of Conduct for Mediators.
Producing the work product
Most How to Get Great Testimonials deliverables follow a consistent format that practitioners refine over multiple matters. An executive summary at the top. Background and scope. Methodology. Findings. Conclusions and recommendations. Appendices with supporting documentation. Practitioners who maintain a template they refine engagement by engagement produce stronger deliverables faster than those who reinvent the format each time.
The deliverable for a How to Get Great Testimonials engagement is the work product everyone will reference for years afterward. It needs to be defensible (your analysis can withstand scrutiny), readable (the client and any non-specialist can understand it), and complete (it addresses what the engagement was scoped to address). The deliverable usually takes 20-40% of the engagement hours; underestimating this consistently produces matters that run over time.
Matter-specific considerations
How to Get Great Testimonials engagements vary along a few predictable dimensions: client sophistication (institutional client vs. unsophisticated individual), case complexity (single straightforward question vs. multiple intertwined issues), opposing-side cooperation (cooperative vs. adversarial), and timeline pressure (negotiated timeline vs. court-imposed deadlines). Each dimension affects how the standard engagement pattern needs to adjust.
High-conflict matters require different communication and documentation discipline than cooperative ones. In high-conflict How to Get Great Testimonials engagements, every communication may eventually be reviewed by opposing counsel or a judge; the practitioner needs to write as if the matter will be litigated, even when it won’t be.
None of this is shortcut work. The practitioners who own How to Get Great Testimonials in their markets earned their position the slow way — consistent attendance at the same conferences, careful case work compounding over years, relationships built deliberately.
How VennBoard fits in
If you’re building a focus on How to Get Great Testimonials, the case-management infrastructure matters more than most practitioners think going in. VennBoard is built specifically for family-law-adjacent practitioners and handles the document organization, the multi-party coordination, and the engagement-management that makes long-arc matters manageable.
Learn more about how VennBoard fits into a mediator practice focused on How to Get Great Testimonials at VennBoard.com.