Why is setting business development strategy so difficult and so absent in many law firms?

Building business development cultures that thrive.

Hello S-Curvers,

“Rowing harder doesn't help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction.”

Kenichi Ohmae Kenichi San - the person who brought Japanese business thinking to

the West.

Lead with strategy to boost your business development results.

Strategy is the key to amplifying business development results. So why is setting business development strategy so difficult and so absent in many law firms?

The particular challenges of professional services.

Professor Laura Empson says that professional organisations such as law firms embody some of the most complex interpersonal and leadership issues that organisations present (Empson, 2017). Setting business development strategically in these environments is particularly challenging, as there can be competing agendas among leaders and team members, creating a reactive business development culture. This can lead to a scattergun approach to marketing and business development across the firm, one where everyone feels intensely busy, but that doesn’t deliver results.

Wasted Opportunities.

Marketing as a discipline has a lot to offer firms in terms of business strategy development. However, due to the power dynamics of law firms, marketing and business development can become a service function, working in an isolated way with those team leaders who engage with it. In these circumstances, it’s easy to end up only fulfilling a wish-list of tactics that respective team leaders wish to pursue, rather than creating a whole-of-firm marketing and business strategy that's focussed on activity 'outside the windows' of the firm – on clients and markets.

A recent report by Passle, in their 2024 Legal Marketing Leadership Survey, found that only 20% of Managing Partners believed that marketing’s contribution was widely understood throughout the firm.

Thrive Council.

The Thrive Council model is one way of overcoming this problem. The idea is that lawyers are most profitable when they are engaged in client-focussed legal activities 'outside the windows' of the firm. That means they do not become over-involved in meetings or committees that business services professionals can autonomously run, if they are trusted and competent to do so.

For example, Partners don't lead Information Technology or Marketing projects, or sit on People & Culture committees. They are purely focussed on being with clients in their respective markets, picking up the latest news, opportunities, challenges and trends and bringing these back to the firm or the firm’s Thrive Council for consideration. (Please see Thrive Council model far below).

Work-in-Door (WID).

The Thrive Council is focussed on getting work in the door. It's convened by marketing and business development. It meets online, via Teams or Zoom, as a whole-of-firm activity once a month or quarter. It has a budget allocated to it, which doesn't have to be huge. Partners present their ideas and may ask for funding to explore growth opportunities further. These opportunities may crop up during the financial year and are in addition to planned marketing and business development projects. Examples might be a campaign to run a blitz of information sessions with clients on recent changes to the law to stay one step ahead of the competition. Your Thrive Council can be as simple or as complicated as you like, and it’s best if you tailor it to your firm’s needs.

Unexpected Benefits.

In many firms there are no formal learning and development opportunities for lawyers to hear more experienced practitioners share information about how they develop business. Thrive Council gives everyone the chance to tune in and learn from people who are actively chasing work-in-door. If the sessions are recorded they can be saved to the intranet and form part of induction processes, and as a way to preserve business development knowledge for the future.

Strategy First.

Firms need to place strategy before tactics in their approach to marketing and business development. The challenge for leaders in law firms is to put in place systems and processes that work in the firm's long-term strategic interests and not cave into 'being busy' for the sake of it. For marketing and business development professionals it can mean taking up your authority as an expert in your role and not pandering to tactical wish lists. Otherwise you run the risk of rowing harder in the wrong direction…

THANK YOU

Laura Empson. Leading Professionals Power, Politics, and PrimaDonnas. London: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Passle, and HayHurst Consultancy. “US & UK Legal Marketing Leadership Survey 2024 Understanding The Performance and Priorities of Legal Marketers.,” CMO Series, 1, no. 1 (2024): 1–12.