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Thank you and farewell!

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Let me start with the big news: this is the final post you’ll be receiving from me. I’ve been working with lawyers on business development for nearly 20 years, and it’s time for a new adventure. Next month, I’ll be moving to 40 acres just west of Cheyenne, Wyoming, and everything within me tells me it’s time for a new season. I’ll be raising chickens, planting vegetables, perhaps even raising some Highland cows or alpacas. I’ve also been reading up on restoring land, squeezing out weeds and encouraging growth of the native grasses without using pesticides, and I’d love to do that so we can leave the land better than we found it. This isn’t the life I envisioned when I graduated from law school thirty years ago, but it’s the life I’ve been working toward for many years.

Professionally, I’m shifting fully to writing creative nonfiction, working on a book about how midlife women can access the clarity and fierceness needed to make seemingly impossible changes and break the rules that don’t make sense for them. It’s based on what I’ve learned in the last decade or so as I made huge life changes that culminated in moving from the life I expected and planned in Atlanta to the life I most wanted in Wyoming. I’ll also be continuing to work with The Purple Sherpa, the nonprofit I founded to support people who are caring for family members living with dementia. A friend recently congratulated me on my retirement, but I see this change as a new movement in the symphony of life, not a coda.

Working with so many lawyers over the years has been deeply rewarding, and I’ve loved almost every minute of it. But my goals have changed, so the things I’m doing have to change as well.

The relationship between where we want to be in the future and what we do now to get there is at the foundation of a successful life—and successful business development. Let’s look at what that may mean for you.

What do you want from your practice? From your life? Although many business development recommendations skip these questions, I think they’re critical so that you can build a business development plan that will meet your objectives, not just one that will grow your practice. Let’s take a few examples so you see why I hold this position.

Every lawyer in private practice must focus on business development, and…

  • If you’re a law firm associate who wants to make partner at a large law firm, you’ll want to focus first on internal networking so that you’re building strong relationships with more senior lawyers. You’ll also work at business development because you know that BD success or potential is generally required for election to partnership. When you reach a stage to be bringing in your own business, internal networking will continue to be a key part of your BD plan. Of course, because partnership is rarely a foregone conclusion, you’ll also network with lawyers at other firms where you might want to be partner so that you have alternative and perhaps more attractive paths toward your goal.
  • If you’re an associate who wants to move to a smaller firm in the reasonably near future, you’ll want to emphasize networking with lawyers in smaller firms as well as with “bring in the business” work. When you land at your new firm, you’ll continue networking with other lawyers to some degree, but it will no longer be a primary part of your plans.Note that a similar principle applies if you’re a sole practitioner or working in a smaller firm and want to move to a larger firm. While you’ll spend the bulk of your time on business development activities, you’ll incorporate networking with lawyers in the kinds of firm you’d like to join.
  • If you’re an associate who wants to go solo, you’ll focus on business development work such as building your professional profile and networking with potential clients and referral sources as well as doing the work necessary to be a good citizen of your law firm (business development for the firm, internal networking, etc.) until it’s time for you to make your move.
  • If you have no desire to remain in private practice, you’ll do the “good firm citizen” work while you investigate your desired next position and meet people who can help you get there.


Knowing why you want to engage in business development is critical to make sure you reach your goals. Can you imagine being an associate who focused exclusively on internal networking, who decided that a boutique firm would be a better fit, who faced a difficult transition because for a lack of strong relationships with lawyers at boutique firms or portable business?  It happens, and it’s an ugly place to be. Recovery is possible, but thinking ahead would avoid that problem.

I’ll leave these questions with you:

  • What do you want from your practice? What kind of setting do you want to practice in? What role do you want to hold? What’s required to reach that objective?
  • What kind of attorney do you want to be? How do you want to focus your practice? What kinds of clients do you want? How do you want to work with them?
  • How do you want to spend your life? In practice, and if so, how? In some other kind of business, and if so, how (if at all) is it connected to your current practice? What do you need to do to get from here to there? If your goal is retirement, what financial security do you need to feel comfortable retiring, and how can you create that?
  • What’s your timeline? While the best time to get started on a goal is always right now, your timeline may dictate what steps you take.For example, if you’re in practice and you need to bring in business ASAP (you’re short on work and none will be assigned to you by other lawyers or you’re facing a partnership decision in a year or two), you need to be meeting with the people who are most likely to retain you or refer business to you. If you want to retire from practice in the next five years and withdraw from a firm or sell your practice, you need to think about a succession plan, which may shift how you work to bring in new business. If you want to shift to a new substantive focus for your practice, you’ll start by focusing most of your time on building your knowledge and platform in the new area plus building contacts relevant to that practice, and over time the balance of your time will shift toward building your network in that new area.
  • Based on your responses to these questions, what needs to change in your BD plan?

The happiest lawyers I have worked with have a clear objective for their professional and personal life and are working toward that. The most unhappy are those who are taking the next logical step based on what’s happening now without consciously deciding that they want to be where that step and the next and the next will take them. Circumstances and desires change, but if you don’t know what you want from your life, you can work hard and be productive toward an outcome you’d never choose. Don’t let that happen to you.

Finally, thank you for your years (many, many years for some of you!) of being on the BD journey with me. Earning a place in your inbox is a privilege I’ve never taken for granted. Please feel free to reach out if I can ever be of help. My email and website will remain active, and I’d love to hear from you.

Happy holidays, and here’s to a terrific new year!

What’s their “why”?

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I’ve written over and over about the importance of knowing why you want to build your own book of business. Why gets to the root of your motivation. It will carry you through the difficult times when business development work seems like too much on top of your billable and other responsibilities. It will give you the reason to persist even when your effort isn’t yielding the results you’d hoped. Most importantly, it gives you a way to measure whether what you’re doing is moving you toward satisfaction or away from it. If it’s been a while since you’ve given this some thought, I’d encourage you to spend some time with your why soon.

But today, let’s focus on the why your client or potential client holds. Their why matters on two levels:

  • Level One: the substantive purpose (what they hope to accomplish through the work you’ll be doing) For example, if you’re a litigator and your client or potential client is contemplating filing a breach of contract claim against a supplier, the substantive why is addressing an issue (quality, cost, etc.) that arguably violates the terms of the agreement. If a criminal defendant is considering hiring you, their fervent desire is for you to show that they aren’t criminally liable for their actions.  This is the kind of why we learned about in law school, it’s the why that determines the strategy we use to approach a matter, and it’s the kind of why that we focus on day in and day out.
  • Level two: the motivation that underlies the matter, which may speak to a larger strategy or an emotion For example, the breach of contract claim might be lodged to clarify rights and responsibilities in an ongoing relationship, it might be lodged to terminate a relationship, or it might be designed to seek recompense for problems in a relationship that’s irretrievably broken. The criminal defendant might want simply to avoid liability, or they might have taken the steps they did because they want to test the validity of the underlying law.

The secondary why often plays the stronger role in business development. Why is this business development client/potential client approaching you to discuss this matter? What do they hope to accomplish through the representation?

When you understand the motivation behind the contemplated action (or the desired secondary outcome in the case of a litigation defendant whose first goal is obviously to avoid liability), you’re better positioned to demonstrate that you understand your client/potential client. You’ll be able to present your relevant experience and to discuss the approach you might take considering the underlying motivation. You can slant the conversation toward the underlying desire. Sometimes the desire won’t be attainable or shouldn’t be pursued (revenge fantasies, for example), but when you demonstrate you understand the business development client/potential client’s motivation, you let them know they’ve been heard and that you’ll work toward their objectives as best you can.

The why also comes into play when a potential client expresses reservations about the cost of hiring you. When you understand their motivation underlying the matter, in addition to explaining your methods of cost containment, you can connect the motivation to the cost of the desired outcome. Budget is often an issue for a routine matter, but if the motivation underlying a matter is particularly critical, you can use that to explain why the costs are as they are. (To be clear, I’m not suggesting a premium for a matter that’s particularly important; this is simply a method to help explain the budget you might propose.)

Finding your client’s/potential client’s why is as simple as asking questions. What would you like to take away from this transaction? What matters most to you about this? Why would you or wouldn’t you consider settlement, if we can find common ground? In negotiating this deal, is there anything you must have or can’t agree to give up?

Both business development and successful representations require you to understand your client’s motivation. Start laying the groundwork when you meet new business development contacts. As you’re learning about them and (where appropriate) their business, ask questions that will help you to understand their values, their emotional temperature, and the reason they do the things they do. The more you know, the better you’ll be able to position yourself for BD, and the better you’ll be able to represent and/or manage your clients and their matters.

On Credible Visibility

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Are you visible to your referral sources and potential clients?

Are you credibly visible to them?

We all know that in order to land business, you must be known to those who will send you work, either directly or indirectly. That much is obvious. And so in business development we talk about strategies to help us become visible to referral sources and potential clients, such as:

  • Networking
  • Staying in touch with contacts
  • Writing articles
  • Speaking at conferences and CLE meetings
  • Teaching (formally or informally)
  • Blogging/using Substack
  • Podcasting or being a podcast guest

Let’s narrow that field a bit today to ask the critical question: are the business development strategies you’re using to be visible doing so in a way that builds your credibility?

Again with the obvious: you won’t gain anything that’s likely to lead to business if you do these activities with the wrong group of people. If you represent employers on labor and employment issues, you probably won’t get much out of attending a solo entrepreneurs’ networking group. They don’t have employees, and employment law is likely not relevant to them. Sure, you might run into someone who could refer business to you or you might hit it off with someone who will send you business years down the line, but that’s luck, not strategy. Effective business development requires strategy.

When you spend time in the right circles, whether in person, online, or via your writing, you build credible visibility as part of your business development strategy. You become visible in ways that are connected to your practice, ways that will help people recognize you as someone active and knowledgeable in your area of law.

Here are some ways to make sure you’re working in the right business development circles:

  1. Unless you represent lawyers, don’t spend your time with networking with or speaking or writing to them and call it business development work. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve spoken with a lawyer who said they were active with the local bar for business development, I’d have a nice pot of cash. If I had a dollar for every time a lawyer told me that strategy had delivered as they’d hoped, my pot would be close to empty. Yes, you might occasionally get a referral due to a conflict, but that too is luck rather than a business development strategy.Networking with or speaking or writing to your competitors rarely pays off as a business development strategy.
  2. Focus on attending conferences and networking groups populated by people who either (a) work in the same industry or (b) address the same issues you do from another angle. For example, if you represent dentists, you’ll want to move in their circles. If you do IP work for start-ups, you’ll want to network with investors. When you focus on these two ways of defining what’s a right audience for you, you’ll be able to define a good-sized circle of referral sources and clients who share an interest in your area of legal interest. And, of course, as an integral part of your business development strategy, you may consider writing and speaking to these same audiences.
  3. If you’re in a larger firm, try cross-selling. I prefer to think of cross-selling as cross-servicing, since the effort should not be designed simply to sell something to a colleague’s client but rather to identify other legal needs the client has that are not currently being addressed. Focusing on service rather than selling aligns you with the client and removes an “ick” factor that some lawyers feel when contemplating this activity. By engaging with another lawyer who’s addressing different legal issues and helping to spot ways you can help, then following up with your colleague and, if appropriate, with the client to continue to deliver useful information, you can better support both your colleague and the client while working to bring in new business. (Note that success with this business development strategy often depends in large part on firm culture—but that’s a topic for another day.)
  4. Look for unique ways to reach the right people. If you’re active and building credibility through the usual channels (as discussed above), think about new ways to reach out. Could you publish an article in your college alumni magazine or join a targeted alumni group that will include many people who are potential clients or referral sources? Could you join a board of directors for a nonprofit that has some connection to your practice and meet other directors who would be useful business development contacts? Think out of the box but stick to the “relevant to my practice” parameter.

Be sure to distinguish your efforts to build credible visibility from your efforts to develop relationships in your business development strategy. Credible visibility requires you to be centering your attention on issues relevant to your practice while connecting in some way to the audiences who may send you business, directly or indirectly. Building relationships for business development purposes will include business discussions (otherwise, you’re just becoming friends—which is great but not a path to bringing in new business); it will also bring in conversations designed for you to get to know, like, and trust one another.

When you’re having well-focused conversations (spoken or written) about legal issues relevant to your practice with the rights audiences, you’ll raise your professional profile. Your contacts, potential referral sources, and potential and prospective clients will be more likely to know about you and to view you as someone knowledgeable about the issues they need addressed.

Are you credibly visible in your market? If not, lay your plans to shift that using these business development guidelines and suggestions, and get to it. It’s never too early to start. You can make substantial inroads on this in Q4. The wind is at your back.

Take a Fresh Look at Your Business Development Efforts

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If you’ve been reading this newsletter for any time, you know I often urge you to review your business development plan and your BD progress. The reason is simple: it’s easy to focus on what’s right in front of you (whether that’s a success or a failure) and therefore easy to let other activities or results slide off your radar. That’s always a mistake. Even if you were to attain the practice and client roster of your dreams in the proverbial sweep of a magic wand, no one can afford to rest on success, and no one who wants to move forward professionally can let failure derail their efforts.

Let’s take a fresh look at your business development efforts this month, through the lens of appreciative inquiry. Lawyers are trained problem solvers, which means that we often look first for problems. And there’s nothing wrong with that: spotting the problem is obviously the first step to solving it, so checking on what isn’t working is an important part of your review.

It’s at least as important to look at what’s right in your business development plan. You’ll spot your obvious successes and the instances in which it appears success is right at hand. That’s easy.

Let’s look at an example.

Sarah is a midlevel associate IP litigator who focuses on the life sciences industry. Like many lawyers, she came to me with a list of business development activities and goals, but no coordinated plan. We designed a plan and put some meat on her goals by adding a time frame and measurables, and she got busy.

Over time, Sarah experienced a variety of successful outcomes. She’d wanted to raise her professional platform, and she did so through several writing opportunities. She attended a seminar attended by in-house counsel and was able to start building relationships with several people working in-house in life sciences companies. A law school classmate had invited her to events attended by other lawyers (both in-house and outside) and she was growing her network substantially.

She also had some less positive outcomes, including attending other affinity group meetings with zero life sciences company attendance, working to grow relationships but not being successful in getting follow-up conversations or meetings scheduled, and taking part in some unsuccessful pitches.

My client consulting relationships start with a seven-month engagement, and we always conduct a green/yellow/red light analysis at the end of the seven months to ask what the lawyer should continue doing, continue but evaluate again soon, and stop doing. You can probably make a good guess at those lists based on what I’ve shared about her activities.

I asked Sarah to take a deeper look at her business development activity. Beyond the wins, losses, and lack of movement already identified, what’s going right? After some discussion, Sarah came up with several things that were going right and logical next steps:

  • Sarah had a business development-focused conversation as a part of her year-end review, along with an offer for regular BD discussions with her team leader, and Sarah devised a non-intrusive way to keep the team leader up-to-date about her BD efforts;
  • She noticed that a partner in her firm had been including Sarah in client meetings and helping her to build relationships with senior-level client representatives, so she decided to be proactive in asking for client introductions;
  • She reflected on a difficult experience on a matter that left her feeling that a senior associate lacked confidence in her and asked, What else might be going on here? Sarah identified three alternate reasons for what happened that allowed her to consider whether the events were actually about her, how she could follow up to determine whether her feelings were grounded, and how she might approach the senior associate in the future;
  • She discovered that conversations she’d had with several contacts revealed interest in a particular legal topic, so she explored writing an article about that topic and was able to secure a tentative agreement to publish her piece in a journal that would reach her ideal clients both internally and externally; and
  • She realized that through her networking, she’s started to develop business relationships with several people who might serve as referral sources, so she planned to have conversations with them about referrals that could run in both directions.

Without appreciative inquiry, Sarah likely wouldn’t have noticed or addressed these events in the same way, and she would have missed valuable information and opportunities that support her business development work.

Now, it’s your turn: beyond the obvious, what’s going right with your business development efforts?  What does that inquiry reveal about next steps you might take to shift a “going right” activity to a full-fledged win?

You Should Be in Pictures!

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The tide of video viewership has been rising for years now, but it’s crested in 2023. Video ranks as the most popular type of online content, expected to amass nearly 83% of all web traffic this year. Many people find videos to be highly engaging and seek them out in preference to articles. When you share information via video, you create connection because viewers get a sense of who you are based on how you look, speak, and move. And it’s sometimes easier to understand complex concepts via video because of the multiple ways information is conveyed.

So, should you be in pictures? Yes, and…

Video is an important avenue for marketing, but especially if your practice is business-oriented, you should continue producing written material as well as part of your business development strategy. There’s no either/or here: when you offer the same information in video and in writing, you significantly increase the benefit to your recipient.

Let’s take a quick look at three types of video you might produce:

  • Professionally produced website videos: These high-production value videos are designed to be more formal and to convey information that doesn’t change rapidly, such as broad strokes about practice areas or discussions of representative matters.
  • Short, semi-off-the-cuff videos that will build connection and position you as the just-in-time source of key information: These are short, conversational videos that present relevant and timely information in a manner designed to speak to your ideal client. Quality matters, and it’s especially critical that your lighting and audio is crisp so that your video is easy to watch and hear, but you can shoot these with a webcam or smartphone. Done appropriately, these short videos can set you apart when you know your business development contacts are likely receiving updates from other lawyers and firms as well.
  • Video interviews: Like a podcast, you can use video interviews to offer conversations with relevant industry professionals. (You can even strip the audio and offer a podcast as well.) These videos require more planning but can be quite effective in positioning you as a well-connected, highly knowledgeable member of your field.

What do you need to understand to succeed with video as part of your business development strategy?

  1. Your clients’ demographics and psychographics. What interests them? How sophisticated is their knowledge about the topics you want to discuss? Fortunately, if you’ve created a business development plan, you already know this information, and it’s just a matter of shifting the way you use it. Before you create a video, ask who this video is for and why they’ll watch it, and keep those guidelines in mind throughout your production process.
  2. Your objective for the video. Do you want to convey information about your practice or your firm? Are you shooting a video to share information on a recent development or a legal concept that’s relevant to your practice? Know what you’d like the video to accomplish as part of your business development plan and be sure your objective lines up with the reasons a viewer take the time to watch your video.
  3. Your script. Your script forms the bridge between your viewer and your objective. Use your first few seconds to capture your viewers’ attention and establish why they should keep watching, and make your points clearly and concisely. A script or detailed outline that you can post near your camera will keep you on track. Practice before you press record.
  4. Bells and whistles. Add closed captioning to your videos so that a viewer can get the content without having to use audio. YouTube and several other platforms can automatically generate subtitles for your videos, and many third-party tools exist for adding closed captioning.
  5. Your distribution plan. As you build your business development video library, all videos you generate should reside on your website, and YouTube is the most obvious external option for distribution. Consider social media (LinkedIn most particularly, where video can make you stand out from the crowd) as well as your own newsletter distribution that might offer the same information in a video and in an article. You may even want to send the video directly to certain contacts. As always, you’ll want to pay attention to the results you get, in terms of viewing statistics (how many views overall, how many make timed stages, etc.) and direct response to you.

Video is a strategy that allows you to build a connection with viewers before you ever meet. Using video can help you to extend your professional platform and your reach. Take a few minutes during your next business development planning session to see how you might add video into your toolkit.

Midyear Business Development Check-In

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How often do you lift your attention from the day-to-day to check your Business Development progress toward your goals? I often see well-intended, focused lawyers who develop a solid BD plan in December and don’t revisit that plan until the next December. And I get it: balancing billable work, practice-focused nonbillable work, and other commitments can be tough.

But here’s the thing: if you fail to check your Business Development plan, it’s easy to get so caught up in the day-to-day that you lose sight of the bigger picture. You don’t get the opportunity to adjust your plan according to your actual results and you lose the chance to evaluate how new activity you’ve added fits into your plan. As a result, you can be busy with BD activity and not discover that your efforts aren’t paying off until you’ve invested a lot of time. Nobody can afford that error.

Take this month to check your Business Development progress. Questions to ask include:

  • Have I brought in new business? If so, what’s the source? Can I trace that business to something on my BD plan, and if so, do I need to change or refocus to take advantage of a trend I’m seeing?
  • What progress have I made on building or expanding my professional platform? Review your plans for writing, speaking, teaching, etc. Have you kept to the frequency you’d set for those activities? Are you reaching the audiences you’ve intended to reach? What results are you seeing? What new opportunities exist now?
    • On platform building results: don’t fall into the trap of thinking that this activity is unproductive if it hasn’t produced new business. Platform-building activity is designed to build your professional credibility. It’s important that you reach the right audiences, but in most cases, new business won’t be traced directly to your one-to-many outreach.
  • How well am I keeping in touch with my network? This is the time to review your A/B/C lists, ensure that the right people are on each list, and confirm that you’re keeping in touch as often as you intended. For your A list, consider too the balance between requests to meet, sending information relevant to your contact with some kind of personal comment, and outreach on topics more personally interesting to your contact.
  • Am I meeting new people to add to my contact list? If you’ve been networking, are you meeting the kinds of people you’d identified in your Business Development plan? Are you going beyond first meetings to develop relationships? If you’ve been involved in a group for a substantial chunk of time (four to six months), are you seeing results in terms of beneficial new relationships, introductions, referrals, invitations to professional opportunities, or new business? How’s your LinkedIn activity working?

Finally, do the Traffic Light exercise. Based on your Business Development plan and review, list your green lights (productive activities you want to continue), yellow lights (activities that aren’t producing the results you’d hoped but that may benefit from more time or refreshed effort), and red lights (activities to discontinue because they’re unproductive or so unenjoyable that you aren’t giving them the effort necessary to see results). Wrap up by looking for new lanes: avenues, activities, or relationships that aren’t on your BD plan that seem attractive. Determine which you might add to your plan, with a careful eye toward balancing the activities you’re removing with those you’re adding.

This review shouldn’t take more than an hour or two, in most instances. Investing that time will help you to ensure that you’ll put the next six months to good use so that 2023 will be a year of Business Development success for you.

If you need help conducting this review (evaluating your results, for example, or identifying missing pieces in your Business Development plan), please reply to this e-mail. I’ve set aside three spots for limited BD plan review and refresh, plus one spot for a new client to begin work this month. I’ll be happy to arrange a 30-minute complimentary consultation to see how I might help.

How to Build Your Business Development Habit

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If you’ve read this newsletter for a while, you know that I’m a fan of looking outside the legal industry for good ideas. Hearing the same old, same old tends to numb us to the wisdom that’s there, but looking to other industries and figuring out how to apply their good ideas to your Business Development process will get your brain working in a whole new way. Check out these two articles.

    1. This article about how to get your writing done, and substitute “Business Development work” for writing. You’ll find some fresh takes on how to advance your BD, starting with how to set and track your goals and how to find harness your working tendencies to make progress on those goals each month. You’ll see immediately how to use this for the writing parts of your Business Development efforts, but it’s more broadly applicable as well.
    2. Since we’re talking about writing, let’s dive into creativity in Business Development activities. What role does creativity play in your business development efforts? Many lawyers I speak with respond to this question with an awkward laugh and the words, ummm, none really. It’s as if creativity has no place in law, but we know that isn’t true. Creativity comes into play in litigation and in transactional work as we work to build persuasive arguments and well-structured deals. Boundaries that reign in legal creativity do exist, but lawyers who aren’t even trying to design an ingenious approach to a vexing issue arguably aren’t doing their job as well as they should.Why should Business Development be any different? Establishing your value proposition usually requires a creative approach (what makes you different from the other lawyers in your practice area?), as does identifying prospective clients and referral sources and how you might reach them and finding the right ways to stay in touch and build a relationship with a high-priority contact—among other times.So, how can you unleash your creativity rather than looking at your BD efforts as just more items on your to-do list? This article from the Harvard Business School blog does a nice job of making the case for creativity in the workplace, offering seven tips to encourage it. While those tips are intended for a team setting, they’re equally applicable to support your individual BD creativity. My two favorite tips are Don’t Try to Measure Results Too Quickly and Foster Collaboration. Last month’s newsletter discussed how to find one or more Business Development partners, so if you’d like to increase collaboration, take another look at those ideas, and consider other ways you might collaborate with colleagues at your firm.

I’d love to hear what thought or outcomes these articles spur for you.

Does Business Development rely on thought leadership?

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The term thought leadership has been a buzzword since the mid-1990s, when Joel Kurtzman first used it to describe people who “who had business ideas that merited attention.”

It’s now a phrase that people use in their LinkedIn profiles (I wouldn’t recommend that) and something that many lawyers aim for as they work on growing a book of business. But, does this help you in your business development strategy? On one level, that makes a lot of sense: we know the value of leadership in business and in client relationships, and we know that offering that leadership in substantive matters demonstrates knowledge, skill, and value.

However, over the years, many of my clients have aimed for thought leadership and found themselves stymied. Coming up with a brilliant and original idea and the time to write about it in a way that’s authoritative and accessible can be daunting. But it doesn’t have to be that hard.

Let’s look at what might constitute a brilliant, original idea for your clients.

First, let’s focus on you. You’re steeped in your practice area. You work in it nearly every day, so you touch on the basic principles, the nitty gritty. At times, you’ll delve into the reticular aspects of your topic, the intricate, interwoven, perhaps wispy ideas where new law is made. Some part of your work is likely to be somewhat rote, but you’re always thinking about the implications, legal and business, of the work you’re doing. You likely see more than someone who might know the legal principles but not put them into real-world practice.

Now, let’s look at your clients. This is where you need to know who your clients are as you work on your business development plan: what they know, how they think, and their level of legal sophistication. (I’m referencing your clients on the assumption that your clients are the kinds of new clients with the kinds of new business you’d like to attract. If that isn’t true, then substitute an ideal client description for the rest of this discussion.)

If your clients haven’t had much experience in your field of law, most any insight you share will seem original to them, it will educate them, and it will help them to understand the landscape in which they’re operating. For those business development clients, delivering a deeply insightful perspective on a highly specialized part of the law (think the kind of arguments that would end up in a court of appeals) is probably overkill. They don’t know the basics of the law and presenting a highly technical point of practice is not going to land well with them because they aren’t sufficiently familiar with the basics to appreciate the deep view. It isn’t that they’re unable to understand, but you don’t want to deliver PhD-level information to a client who’s operating at a 101 or 201 level of comprehension. (Of course, if their business requires the deep and original view, that’s another matter: this discussion is purely focused on business development.)

If your clients are highly sophisticated in your aspect of law, then you can go deeper. You can look at positions that parties are taking in appellate cases, for example, and discuss the minutiae of those arguments, then discuss what you view as the likely outcome (if you’re willing to make that forecast) and what effect that might have on your clients going forward. Because they’re familiar with the field, they’ll be able to follow and appreciate your discussion, and if they focus on this area as much as you do, they’ll be able to engage with your analysis.

But ask yourself: do even your most sophisticated business development clients focus on your slice of law in the same depth that you do? Sometimes the answer is yes, but often even those clients who work on your issues also have other responsibilities, so they’re quite familiar with the basics and some advanced parts of the topic but less so with the most technical parts.

I bet you see where I’m going here. When you can identify your clients’ and potential clients’ level of understanding, you can find the right focus for your own substantive business development work. You know the ins and outs of the law, and you can look at recent developments, for example, and decide what would be helpful for your clients to know. You can layer your discussion, leading with the general principles and then going a few layers deeper, and then you can add your own insights about why the topic you’re discussing matters to your audience. (Don’t skip that part: anyone can share recent developments and analysis of them, but not everyone can or will explain why they matter, and that’s often what clients and potential clients want to know.)

Rather than aiming for thought leadership status in your business development writing and speaking, aim for a standard of useful insight. Educate on the law and its development, and always do so through the lens of what your audience already understands and what will matter for them going forward. That’s true thought leadership, and that’s what will get the attention that you’re truly seeking with your business development work.

When you target the right level of understanding and make it relevant to and useful for your audience, they’ll pay attention, and they’ll regard you as a leader and a reliable source of pertinent, practical information. Pure thought leadership isn’t the key to your business development activity; accessible authority on subjects that matter to your clients is.

Take a few minutes right now, or calendar a time to do this later, and list three topics that your clients need to know about, both from the purely legal perspective as well as why it matters to them. The more focused the topics, the better, so that you can write a short, focused, useful article that your audience will actually read. It’s easier to write, and it’s more likely to be consumed.

Three Business Development Steps to Take Right Now

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Have you accomplished at least 10% of your marketing goals for the year? Now that we’re into February, pause and take stock of what you have and haven’t accomplished from your 2023 business development plan. Give yourself credit for reviewing and/or updating your plan, but look for specific actions that you’ve taken that are likely to lead to business and/or to raise your professional profile.

Even if you haven’t yet landed new business this year, you should be able to identify the actions you’ve taken so far, the results you’ve seen, and what ultimate outcome you’re realistically aiming toward. Stop right now and send yourself an email with that information. If you can’t make a cogent statement of activity and accomplishments, schedule time to review and update your business development plan (if you haven’t) and then calendar specific steps you’ll complete this month.

If you can point to progress you’ve made toward your business development goals since January 1, then take a look at these three steps and add, as appropriate, to your calendared BD activity for the next month.

Complete this relationship circles exercise to grow your network.

While a network’s strength lies in strong, reciprocal relationships, you must consistently be meeting people and growing the scope of your business development network. That will, of course, allow you the opportunity of meeting new people who may deliver business or professional opportunities to you. Moreover, as you grow your network, you’ll put yourself in an ever-better position to make referrals and introductions that benefit key contacts.

If your network pipeline feels a bit dry, try this simple exercise. Using the schematic below:

  1. Select six groups of people you can access easily. These groups might include a professional organization such as AUTM (previously known as the Association of University Technology Managers), a business group such as a Rotary Club, your college or law school group of friends, or the PTA at your child’s school. Write those group identifiers on the lines above each circle. Ensure that there’s a reasonable connection between each group that you identify and your business development plan.
  2. Brainstorm four to six names of people you should contact in each circle. You’ll end up discarding or delaying many of the opportunities you identify, but you’ll come up with at least a handful of relationships that you may be able to cultivate starting now.
  3. Calendar a reminder to contact those people and follow through. This exercise will generate a list of people with whom you might develop a beneficial relationship. Designing a plan to deepen your contacts and implementing that plan is up to you—and the particulars should be defined in a thoughtfully-crafted business development strategy.

You can repeat this exercise as often as you’d like, proving that you have a full supply of useful contacts…or that it’s time to join some new formal or informal groups of people.

Keep your eyes on the economy – your clients certainly are.

Clients almost always appreciate proactive communication. In today’s environment, one topic that nearly every client will be watching is the economy. That has two consequences for you.

  1. Couch your advice with an eye to the economy and the effect your client will likely experience. Tailoring advice based on financial exposure is something that you should always be doing, but when the financial pundits are discussing whether a recession is on the way or already present, that’s more important than ever—even if your clients don’t specifically raise financial considerations. You’ll put yourself in good stead when clients know that you’re conscious of what matters to them and seeking to focus your work accordingly.
  2. Stay current with your billing and collections. Think back to the beginning of the pandemic, and you’ll see how quickly a client’s generous budget can dry up due to a change in external circumstances. Don’t put your practice behind the financial eight-ball by letting billing slide.

Review Denney’s 20 Marketing Maxims.

Having practiced law for some 45 years and then consulting on matters including business development, Bob Denney was recognized as a leader in strategic planning, leadership, and management. He had a talent for providing a great deal of insight in just a few words, and that’s perhaps best demonstrated by his Twenty Marketing Maxims.

You’ll benefit from reviewing these fundamental principles of business development, but don’t stop with just a review: ask yourself whether you’re implementing each maxim and how you might adjust your business development activity to better reflect it.

Freshen Up for Successful Business Development in 2023

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Happy New Year! You probably spent some of the last days of 2022 or the first of 2023 working on your business development plan, right? If not, hop to it! A current plan will coordinate your BD actions so that everything you do is working in a cohesive way toward a strategy you’ve defined. It’ll keep you on track and avoid wasting time on efforts that aren’t aligned with your objectives. (Not sure where to start? Check out these free Rainmaker resources.)

But did you do your New Year’s freshening up for your business development strategy? The beginning of the year (along with the beginning of the school year, in the fall) is a natural time to look at work you’ve done previously to make sure it’s current. Some suggestions:

  1. Update your LinkedIn profile. This LinkedIn for Lawyers article has a good list of items to consider. Also, be sure that you’ve updated your credentials including professional history, publications, certifications, etc. Ask yourself what a client seeking a lawyer in your practice area would find important and use that answer to guide the information you highlight in your summary as well as other parts of your profile. Start with identifying what you do, not solely your role within your firm, as your headline.
  2. Review your firm bio sketch. How well does its content mirror what you’ve shared on LinkedIn, and vice-versa? While the two profiles should not be copies of one another, the information and the tone should be consistent. This is also a good time to make sure that your sketch is indeed up to date.
  3. Review and update your contact list. Ideally, you’ve been maintaining your contact list throughout the year, but check it now. The list should include up-to-date contact information, an indication of each person’s relevance for business development purposes (A list, B list, or C list), and perhaps personal information that will help you build a deeper professional relationship.
  4. Schedule the conferences you plan to attend this year. Successful conference attendance requires advance preparation; knowing which conference(s) you plan to attend is step one. Schedule the conferences that fit your Business Development strategy and make a note three months before each conference to make a final decision on attendance and to begin preparations. You may be able to get some mileage even from conferences you don’t attend: see items 3 and 4 on the article linked above for pre-conference tips that you can adapt.

Completing these steps will ensure that your Business Development foundation is solid as you prepare for a successful year of growing your profile, your platform, and your book of business.