As an attorney, you’re doing everything right. You’re helping your clients navigate difficult situations, whether at the negotiating table or in the courtroom. Your work is impeccable, getting compliments from judges and GCs. Your partners trust you, and you’re getting referrals.
But you aren’t quite getting the attention that you deserve. You want to elevate your standing as a lawyer. You see peers writing and getting quoted in articles, speaking at events, winning awards, and building reputations as leaders in your area of law. How do you keep up? How do you get to the next level — in prestige and in pay?
Business development (BD for short) is all about personal branding. Your practice strengths, reputation, authority, and personality are all tied into your value proposition as a service provider and expert. Your personal brand is intertwined with BD — perhaps even one and the same — and BD is essentially the art and hustle of marketing your personal brand by getting your story out there and raising your profile.
When you raise your profile, your revenue increases. Why?
- Reputation is an asset and you can leverage it to boost your rate or negotiate a lateral move.
- Presence brings more clients to you. Your name in an article can travel to new corners of the market.
- Expertise is a premium quality. Leadership enhances perceived value.
You know all this — you’re a lawyer. People who go to law school understand that expertise is valuable.
So is time. BD is an investment. With a full caseload, the thought of adding anything to your schedule can feel overwhelming. Where do you even start?
Pursuing BD without strategy is like going to a hearing without prep. You can just throw things at the judge to see what sticks, but you’ll find yourself exhausted, stressed, and without much juice for the squeeze.
Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to farm out business development work to save yourself time, integrate it into your schedule to make it sustainable long-term, and leverage technology to make it easier. But the first step is having a strategy.
To help you get started, here are the four essential elements of an intentional and effective BD strategy for attorneys to raise their profiles. For each element, we include tips where you can outsource work or use AI to save time.
1. How to Build Referral Networks for Attorney Business Development
We’ve worked with hundreds, if not thousands, of attorneys — from solo practitioners and boutiques to senior, equity, and managing partners of mid-size and Big Law firms — all across the country. Over and over (as you’re certainly aware), successful attorneys tell us, “It’s all about relationships.” That’s not a cliché, it’s lived experience. Lawyers get business by word-of-mouth reliably, even in the AI era of the digital age. In law particularly, what’s tried is true.
Here is how attorneys report that they’ve earned recommendations from other attorneys, professional service providers, and former clients, building a personal brand around their capabilities and personalities by word-of-mouth.
Client service. Satisfied clients will always tell friends and colleagues the name of their attorney when asked. A friend of a friend is potential new business. You’ve heard this before, but what does that really mean?
- Friendliness
- Likeability
- Straightforward communication
- Responsiveness (evenings, weekends, and vacations)
- Cost-effectiveness
- Solutions
- Never milk the file
Professional networks. Joining and participating in associations, whether at the bar or in the local business community, is a proven tactic. It requires face time, but it’s worth it. It’s generally most effective to join professional services networks that are specifically targeted towards generating leads, cross-selling services, and networking in small groups, rather than going to a panel discussion and doling out business cards while munching crudités in a meandering herd of suits. But speaking at an event — that’s another story. More on that below.
You can’t farm out this essential element of business development for attorneys. Client service, responsiveness, and face time should be embedded in your daily practice and your monthly calendar.
2. Get Into the Media
Networking is easy. Providing exceptional client service is in your control. You can write persuasive briefs, argue motions, and file regulatory disclosures. But getting into the media? Not easy. Here’s why.
You need to have a good story — a reason why a journalist should write about you, or why an editor should publish your article.
More than that, you have to be so good at writing an email subject line and a succinct and engaging summary of your story that said reporter or editor will actually open your email, read your pitch, and take the time to respond.
There are entire college courses about the art of writing email subject lines and short, compelling summaries of a story so reporters and editors will actually open your email and approve your article, or seek you out for a quote. It’s absolutely not worth your time to learn this art, any more than it’s worth your clients’ time to learn how to write contracts. But just as obtaining a strong contract is a good idea for your client, getting into the media is a great idea for attorneys.
Articles and quotes in the media are shiny, evergreen links for your bio and LinkedIn profile that establish you as an authority and raise your profile (and hence, your revenue).
This isn’t an area that AI can automate, since relationships in the media are so critical. This is work you should definitely farm out, whether to your firm’s communications team or to seasoned professionals. Not only do they have established media relationships — so editors don’t delete upon receipt — they also have a finger on the pulse of the media market, with ideas to get you heard in places you may not otherwise think of, such as podcasts. A junior partner may not edge into the Wall Street Journal, but an expert publicist has contacts in other places with lower barriers to entry, perhaps even where there is more readership if your practice area.
3. How to Become an Authority in Your Practice Area
Fortunately, you don’t need to appease a gatekeeper to become recognized as an authority in your practice area. Any article you want to write can be posted on your firm’s blog and posted on your LinkedIn profile. By participating in associations and networks, you can find opportunities to speak on panels and events and post them on social media. Working with your bar association, you can develop a CLE and instantly become regarded as an expert in your area.
Thought leadership can be done solo, simplified and streamlined with AI, or farmed out to a communications professional, such as a ghostwriter. Regularly publishing content can be as easy as reserving half a day per month or quarter to write an article, or sitting down with a ghostwriter for a 30-minute interview every so often to offload shower thoughts about the Circuit’s latest ruling about your practice forte.
4. Show Potential Clients Your Wins
Law is conservative. Confidentiality is essential. But if you don’t tell anyone what you are doing or how you are winning, how will they know you are the right attorney for their case?
In the pitch room, attorneys know that clients are looking to see themselves in your case history. They want to know that you’ve handled problems similar to theirs before, that you’ve worked with clients like them before, and know how to navigate.
Law is hierarchical. There’s a mountain to climb, few reach the summit, and it’s really difficult to get there. As your career progresses, it’s a good idea to mark your trail as you go along.
You should be consistently tracking your matters and using these wins beyond the pitch room or RFP responses. Your cases are valuable material to tell your story and show clients what you’ve done for others like them. The client will see themselves in the menu of representative matters you provide on your bio.
Only you know your cases, but there are ways to leverage your representative matters to raise your profile without adding a lot more work to your plate.
By periodically meeting with a member of your communications or marketing team, you can provide information about your representative matters, letting them craft compelling stories for submission to awards and rankings. Awards are fabulous to raise your profile, and obtaining coveted rankings in prestige directories puts you right in front of decisionmakers like general counsel or executives searching for trusted and reputable lawyers to take their cases.
If you’re ready to implement a comprehensive BD strategy to raise your profile and raise your revenue, and you need a team to outsource the communications work, reach out to Jaffe CEO Terry M. Isner at tisner@jaffepr.com.
I’m Ada Kase, and I help attorneys articulate their stories and differentiate themselves to raise their profiles in the legal market. For more ideas about how to tell your story and raise your profile, reach out to me at ajkase@jaffepr.com.