Offering business development training isn’t the same as developing business developers.
For most lawyers, business development sits on top of the job — one more thing to do, competing with work that has a deadline. The real obstacle isn’t time. It’s that business development never becomes part of their practice.
They’ve been told it’s part of the job, but their calendar says otherwise.
Substantive work, a partner’s request, a client call — all of it gets a slot. Business development gets whatever’s left, and there’s never anything left.
They’ve sat through the training, and business development still feels like a mystery.
So they picture the version they’d hate — schmoozing, asking for the business, being “that person” — and quietly decide it isn’t for them.
There are “seventy-two” BD tactics a lawyer is supposed to be doing.
Network, post, pitch, follow up, go to the conference, write the article, join the committee. All good advice, but they could work on this all day and still feel behind.
And they get all “seventy-two,” whether they can use them right then or not.
What a junior associate needs to develop isn’t what a senior associate needs, or a new partner.
Understanding business development is the easy part.
A principle makes sense in the room. Applying it to your own practice, your own clients, is a different problem.
Being able to do it isn’t the same as doing it consistently.
Every piece of business development is a choice a lawyer has to make again and again. The lawyers who become business developers stop having to choose.
So what do you do with all of that?
Teach fewer things, at the right time, so a lawyer can actually use them.
Which starts with knowing what they’re struggling with.
Who should I even be keeping in touch with?
My network won’t be decision makers for another ten years — what do I do now?
How do I justify my rate?
Do I have to post on LinkedIn?
How do I get from “how’s it going” to getting hired?
They’re happy with their firm, so why would they hire me?
And how do I stay in touch with anyone when I’m this busy?
Questions like these come up in every room, at every firm, and I’ve been in these conversations for more than twenty-five years: six as the PD person inside a firm, and twenty as a consultant. The answers are usually simple. Obvious, even, once somebody says them out loud.
And when unpacked, it’s simple enough to be almost disappointing.
There are five disciplines, not “seventy-two.” A lawyer works on the ones their stage calls for, and the teaching goes all the way down to how. Do that for enough years and it isn’t something they have to make time for anymore. It becomes habit.
I’ve mapped it all out. Want to see it?
Show me