Roundtable report on best practices, Part 1 of 2

A few months ago, I wrote about the first meeting of the Boston Roundtable on Legal Business Development, a group of senior business development professionals from the largest firms in Boston. 

Our second meeting was held a few weeks ago to discuss "How to sell business development internally." This two part report describes several of the key topics we discussed in our 90 minute meeting, which strayed far from its title into a variety of challenges and best practices.

Publicizing success

One great way to promote the business development function within a law firm is to make sure everyone knows when it works.  At two of the five firms at this Roundtable, one person has taken responsibility to track success stories, and to summarize and distribute the information in a consistent format.

One of the firms publicizes success stories at every partners’ meeting, the other does it online.  When each attorney signs on to their computer in the morning, they see a standard intranet screen with a number of news items about the firm.  One section of the screen is consistently devoted to a business development success story, describing how a new engagement came about, and including a picture of the responsible attorney.

This leads to a friendly competition, and promotes communication between practice groups and offices.  On a surprising number of occasions, attorneys first learn that the firm is working for a particular client from these online articles.

Communication

At large firms, it can be embarrassing to admit how often two teams from different offices of the same firm have submitted proposals for the same legal matter.  In essence, the law firm has bid against itself.  This is not only an enormous waste of resources; it makes the firm look incredibly inefficient and foolish.  There are many ways to avoid such gaffes, including client service teams, systematic processes for responding to RFPs, and proper use of CRMs.

But they all come down to the same thing:  communication.  When lawyers learn what their partners are working on, and for whom, it not only avoids embarrassment, it also opens up new opportunities for cross-selling.

One Roundtable firm holds monthly networking meetings for its attorneys in the late afternoon one Thursday per month, including free beer.  Another has a lunch the first Friday of every month, with their own lawyers speaking about new business, plus an occasional outside speaker.  (Full disclosure:  I recently spoke at one of their lunches about “The top five ways to increase your legal marketing results in a down economy.”)

Hiring sales people

The conversation then somehow shifted to a discussion of hiring sales people from other professions for legal business development.  One participant, who has a sales background, said, “When I started working with law firms, I needed a lobotomy to change my personality and adjust to my role.”

In law firms, lawyers do the selling.  Legal business development is a sales support role, and many go-get-‘em sales people find it hard to adapt.  Several at the meeting agreed that when sales people were hired from other fields some turned into stars, but many more did not work out.  “After they have been at a law firm for about month, they think: ‘What in the world have I done?’”

Within a law firm, business development staff must sometimes “perform lots of extraneous tasks to earn the right to coach.”  And they must also become masters of prioritizing.  Soon after they start, they will “find themselves at 150% capacity” and an important part of the job will be “figuring out who to disappoint” because no human can possibly perform all the tasks that will be requested.  In a firm with 300 partners, you will have at least 300 bosses, and most of them will think that their top priority of the day should be your top priority.

Noise in the system

As if the number of bosses were not enough, there is an astonishing amount of “noise in the system... unimportant junk that you can easily spend all day on.”   One example is the ever increasing number of “best lawyer” directories.  When the topic of directories came up, there were many sighs and pained looks.  Most of the directories are seen as a complete waste of marketing time and money and “absolutely awful.”  Said one participant: “I wish they would just go away.” 

If marketing people agree on this, why do legal directories continue to prosper and multiply?  Because marketing people are not the bosses, lawyers are.  And many love to see themselves in such lists, whether it’s the best lawyers in downtown Detroit, or the best lawyers in the world.  The people who sell these directories tell lawyers that they bring in new business, and the lawyers don’t have the time or experience to know that in most cases the only person who makes money is the one who publishes the directory.

A few directories had fans in our group, including PLC Which Lawyer and the Chambers Guides.  But most did not.  I don’t want to get sued, so I will not list the names of the specific directories that elicited the loudest groans.  But in Part 2 of this Roundtable report, coming soon, I will discuss other marketing expenses that, in the eyes of these experts, are a complete waste of money.