Good stories inspire and create emotional connections. Great stories go one step further, staying with us, shaping our views of the world, our interactions with others, and our conversations about human experience.
Business development is a set of learnable, repeatable skills that are not reserved for rainmakers. In fact, you won’t get to be a rainmaker without them. If associates start building those skills and habits now, before the expectation hits, you’ll not only be prepared — you’ll be ahead.
The lawyers who are best at business developemnt are the ones who consistently grow strong books of business, aren’t “selling” in the traditional sense. They’re not always trying to “close” the next deal. Instead, they’ve adopted a different mindset. One that’s resilient, generous, and surprisingly childlike.
With generative AI, research time has collapsed and review time has expanded. The model can draft in minutes, which means you now spend more time asking whether the draft is accurate, defensible, and on brand. Prompting skill is not about magic words. It is about shaping the first draft so the review phase is shorter and you are not fixing preventable mistakes. A good prompt removes ambiguity, narrows scope, and sets expectations. The better the prompt, the less the scramble at the end.
Even the savviest marketer, business developer, or business leader needs guidance on what content elements will address their current client and new business needs as market dynamics swiftly change. This is where content choreography comes in to take one activity, such as a speaking engagement, to propel a comprehensive suite of next steps. Here are some strategies to create original content and maximize your efforts with content choreography.
If technology can draft contracts, emails, and court filings, then the skills clients will still pay for are those machines cannot replicate: human judgment, relational trust and persuasive presence. Early evidence and commentary already point to this shift, with embodied skills emerging as the key differentiator in an AI-saturated world.
Lawyers have long managed their digital footprint to market their practices. But as artificial intelligence becomes more pervasive, they need to start rethinking their approach.
If your law firm still views “search visibility” as landing a top spot in Google’s traditional results, you may be missing a seismic shift in how clients, referral sources, legal journalists, and even opposing counsel find trusted expertise. The game is changing fast. One force accelerating that change more than any other: the rise of AI-powered search, including generative tools like ChatGPT and Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE).
In an era dominated by digital communication, the simple thank you note often feels like a relic from the past. Yet, in the legal profession — a field built on relationships, trust, and reputation — the handwritten or carefully crafted thank you remains one of the most powerful gestures of professionalism. Whether addressed to a client, a mentor, a colleague, or even opposing counsel, the art of writing a thoughtful thank you note can strengthen connections and elevate your professional presence.
The firms and vendors who adapt will stop chasing page-one rankings and start competing for something more powerful: inclusion in the generative responses that shape buyer perceptions and decisions. That is the new measure of influence in a self-service world.
