Don’t wait. Take positive steps over the next 30 days to set up your law firm business development plan for lawyer success.
Highlights
- Shifting from “Convincing” to “Helping”: Desperate pitching pushes clients away; structured, empathic listening pulls them in as trusted advice naturally surfaces hidden legal needs.
- The “Less is More” Position Niche: Legal marketplaces reward deep specialization over generic service offerings. Differentiating your core strength makes targeting highly accurate.
- The Power of Daily Micro-Habits: Selling yourself just one hour a day for pipeline activities and 15 minutes for digital visibility creates an unstoppable compound effect over time.
Executing a focused business development plan for lawyers is essential for staying top-of-mind in a hyper-competitive, modern legal marketplace. Whether you are navigating unexpected economic shifts or simply looking to stabilize a fluctuating caseload, building consistent pipeline habits is critical.
You’ve likely heard mixed messages about whether you should be aggressively engaging in law firm business development activities during shifting economic landscape cycles. My take is that, yes, you absolutely should. However, it’s critical to understand what types of activities are appropriate for the moment. The term “business development” means different things to different lawyers.
Now is not the time to try to convince people to buy your legal services. Attempts to convince often come off as desperate, unseemly and tone-deaf. Rather — and this is true in any economic cycle — your business development strategy should focus on exhibiting your integrity through genuine attempts to help your clients and prospects.
Helping Is Qualitatively Different From Convincing
When you set out to help, you empower those you hope to serve. They don’t feel pressured, and you come across as a trusted advisor. When you set out to convince, you end up doing most of the talking. When helping is your only objective, you ask lots of questions and spend most of your time listening and empathizing. If the problems the client is facing require the assistance of legal counsel, you’ll naturally be in a position to assist.
If you set out to help, the client, feeling empowered, will leave the interaction feeling like she took a positive step forward, rather than uncertain of whether you just talked her into something she didn’t need or couldn’t afford. In most cases, genuine conversation marked by empathic engagement won’t immediately lead to new business opportunities. But that’s true of any business development interaction.
Business development is a long game. Resist the urge to put on the hard sell despite not knowing how you’ll get your normal number of hours billed this month. The best way to generate new business, now and in the future, is to maintain your posture as the confident expert who is ready to serve the client on her timetable, not your own.
Plan for and accept the fact that practice pipelines experience natural ebbs and flows. However, it’s essential to focus on what is within your control. You can’t afford to sit back and wait, nor come across as aggressive or desperate. It’s time to help, and here are some ideas for taking steps forward and setting yourself up for long-term legal marketing success over the next 30 days.
Focus on Less, Not More
Organize around your strengths. Demand for niche legal services requires that you clearly differentiate yours. Set aside all the tangential practice areas you’ve dabbled in over the years, and go all-in on what you do best. When talking with clients and prospects, don’t offer them a grab-bag of services to choose from — that reeks of desperation. Instead, explore what challenges they’re facing and seek to determine whether there’s alignment between your expertise and their pain points. Regardless of the immediate outcome, the client will walk away from the conversation with a positive feeling engendered by a sense they were being advised by a discerning professional.
Action Step: Complete the following sentence: I help [clients] with [services]. Try to narrow “clients” down to those within a specific industry (or a small number of industries). If you have a consumer practice, such as estate planning, create a demographic profile of your ideal client (net worth, profession, geography, etc.). For “services,” focus on one or two of your core services — the things you do best. Optimize your overarching business development plan for lawyers around this narrowly defined positioning.
Five Calls Per Week
Having genuine, empathic conversations in which you come across as the expert requires that you take the initiative to schedule interactions with your clients and prospects. Many lawyers are hesitant to reach out to clients to schedule business development-related calls. You shouldn’t be, as long as you’re not framing the conversation as one that involves pitching.
In a hybrid work world where clients often feel physically isolated from their advisors, structured check-ins are highly welcomed. If you’re setting out to help, not pitch, your clients will be receptive to talking with you. In some cases — though not all — these conversations can lead to immediate new business opportunities.
Action Step: Schedule at least five off-the-clock calls every week with existing, former and prospective clients. Use email or scheduling tools to secure appointments, and touch base via a brief phone call or a fast video conference. Have a series of questions ready, starting with personal inquiries ( How are you and the team holding up? ) and easing toward business matters ( What are some of the biggest challenges your operational ecosystem is facing right now? ). Don’t push or nudge. Add value where you can. Listen carefully. Aim to help, which will trigger the client to ask for your help when appropriate.
Create Thought Leadership Content
In a digital-first environment, your marketing and law firm business development options are unlocked by scale. One of the best ways to reach people widely is by creating valuable thought leadership content. You can’t be everywhere, but your ideas can be. When someone reads something you’ve written that addresses a specific problem they’re facing and offers a helpful solution, they’ll be naturally inclined to think of you as the right expert to execute the solution.
Action Step: If you’re already a prolific content creator, now is the time to hit the accelerator and crank up your production. If you’re just getting started, try to write and publish at least one piece in the next 30 days. To make your efforts more effective, collaborate with a client or prospect on a brief article or co-hosted digital session.
Tap Your Network
If there ever was a time to make a respectful “ask” of your network of colleagues, friends and clients, it is now. Using your narrow positioning, specify for members of your network the types of clients you’re looking to connect with and the problems you can help them solve. And make your request reciprocal — ask your network how you can help them as well.
Action Step: Make a list of 50 people, from former colleagues to law school friends, and send individualized emails to each (no BCCing the group) asking if they might be able to put you in touch with someone you may be in a position to help. Make it easy on them by clearly spelling out the specific types of problems you can solve and for whom. Close each email by offering to help them reciprocally.
Establish New Habits
Business development is most effective when it becomes habitual. Success results from doing the right thing, at the right time, over and over. Breaking old habits is hard when you’re stuck in comfortable day-to-day routines. Since dynamic modern practices demand agility, now is the perfect time to establish new and better habits — the most important of which is dedicating consistent time to executing your business development plan for lawyers.
Action Step: Start investing in yourself by selling yourself one hour of your time every day to engage in active business development activities.
Remain Visible
Opportunities will be hard to come by if you are not remaining top-of-mind. Creating thought leadership content and scheduling quick digital calls are two great ways to stay visible. Still, you must supplement those with other activities, such as engaging intentionally with others on professional networks. Over the next 30 days, commit time every day to curate and share content relevant to your audience. Like and comment on other people’s posts. Find ways to appear in others’ feeds by staying at the forefront of the industry conversations happening in your area of focus.
Action Step: Spend 15 minutes every day on LinkedIn with the objective of making one new connection, sharing one piece of content, and liking or commenting on someone else’s post.
Business Development Plan for Lawyers FAQ
You’ll find several articles on related issues:
- “Law Firm Marketing 101: Identifying Your Ideal Client” by Jay Harrington
- “Writing Your Annual Business Development Plan” by Sally Schmidt
- “Working From Home: Ways to Protect Your Health and Sanity” by Jamie Spannhake
- “Handling Fear and Stress During a Prolonged Crisis” by Shawn Healy
- “Getting Started With Zoom — and Using It Securely” by Sharon Nelson and John Simek
