ABSTRACTA small, newly-formed, law firm in Hong Kong wants to determine how their new customers feel about the legal services that they are receiving. The results from a customer-focused, operations management audit (OMA) showed that a small sample of the firm's clients perceived their services to be more than satisfactory. Using the same survey instrument, the firm's senior partners consistently ranked the firm's performance higher than did their clients. To achieve a better understanding of the survey results within a comparative framework, the OMA was then administered to samples of new clients from each of four highly-respected, well-established Hong Kong law firms. From an overall perspective, the comparative analysis showed that, to the surprise of the management, the service performance as perceived by the new firm's clients was significantly below the performance measurements recorded by their counterparts at the benchmarked firms. The benchmark results were successful in attracting the attention of the new firm's leadership and a simple approach was utilized to determine recommendations for improvement which possess the greatest leverage.