How Law Firms Are Overcoming New Business Development Challenges

Lack of Time Is a Lawyer's Greatest Challenge

The vast majority of a lawyer's total available professional time is spent producing and delivering legal work to clients. All law firms' revenues are generated by firm lawyers and professionals producing, delivering, billing for and collecting on the legal work they do for clients. So most lawyers spend 80%-100% of their time fueling the lifeblood of the firm by generating billable hours and revenues. Due to these realities, once lawyers are done with their legal work and associated tasks, most are either exhausted or have numerous other professional and personal demands on their remaining available time.

In addition, most lawyers:

• Focus their very limited available business development time on speaking, presenting, attending conferences and writing. Each of these traditional marketing activities increases visibility and may develop business, but not as productively as other means. The fact is, almost all new legal work is awarded either during or shortly after a private, one-on-one or small group meeting or conversation, yet most lawyers don't have the time, inclination or skill to plan, conduct and follow up on qualified leads.
• Only make time and effort to market or develop business when they are less than fully busy, e., often when a case or matter ends. But because the sales cycle for outside legal services can be long and usually requires many appropriate contacts over time, many lawyers find it difficult to follow up and stay in touch over the two or more years it often takes to convert qualified leads into actual new legal work.
• Know their own practice and practice group, but not the whole firms.
• Do not have time to create, use or maintain a regular client development action plan. Instead, they engage in client or business development only when they are not busy (which, for most successful lawyers, is not very often).

Defining and Measuring Qualified Leads

A qualified lead is defined as one in which an existing client, prospective client or referral source communicates an interest in a legal area or topic. Most often, qualified leads come in the form of questions a client or prospective client asks, such as, "Does your firm have a written cybersecurity policy it recommends?" "Does your firm do FCPA work?" "Are any of your partners experienced in oil and gas?" Clients or prospects ask these kinds of questions because they have (or someone they know has) a need for outside counsel, advice or representation.