Five Business Development Action Items for Law Firm Partners - Summer 2025
June is a great time to check on your business development goals. What did you jot down in January, hoping to achieve by year-end? Are you ahead of those targets, or did you fall behind? If you’re ahead, now is a great time to identify ways to exceed your performance. If you’re behind, now is an opportune time to reinvest. At the heart of your efforts, you’re seeking to answer the age-old question: What is my client struggling with? And to that conversation, you’re coming prepared with a full understanding of how you and your firm, as a partnership, can solve those problems.
1. Meet with your business development team: If you do nothing else, do one thing: set up a meeting with your law firm’s business development team this month. Take stock of your key client relationships, discuss new relationships and existing ones, and solicit the team’s ideas to strengthen them. If you already set a BD plan in place earlier this year, ask them to come to the meeting with ideas for how to advance it. Plus, by meeting with them and contextualizing your goals and relationships, your advisors will be able to offer better, smarter, and more creative BD ideas—while feeling a sense of investment from you in their work. (If you don’t have a business development team or are a solo practitioner, now is the time to engage an experienced consultant who can help you set goals and a client development plan.) Ask your team to record the meeting: it allows them to revisit your comments afterward to ensure everything is captured.
2. Check on your clients: When was the last time you met each of your clients face-to-face? If this isn’t a question for you, skip to the next section. But if it’s been a minute since you’ve had dinner with them, read on. I routinely hear from a GC who complains that a key relationship partner at an elite New York firm hasn’t come by for dinner or a drink in the last two years. While the two are separated by a few hundred miles, their relationship spans years, and the partner should make a visit. The visit would most likely please the client, and it’s also an opportunity for the partner to ask key questions about the client relationship, even if they are among the most straightforward: What keeps the client up at night? What are their pain points? Which other firms are serving them well, and which ones are falling short? What’s their vision—both for the teams they lead and the organization as a whole? Gathering answers to key questions, relaying that feedback to a business development team, and identifying certain pain points would allow this partner to identify sales opportunities. More than that, it would also quell the most fundamental client frustration: the client currently thinks their service partner only somewhat cares about their business. For the moment, retaining the business is not necessarily an issue for the partner, but because they aren’t meeting with the client and deepening the relationship, a more assertive partner at a competing firm could easily swoop in and lay the groundwork to take the client’s business.
3. Build a thought leadership campaign: This summer, identify a topic to drive thought leadership and work with your firm’s marketing, BD, and public relations teams to bring it to life. Generic “updates” and monthly newsletters are typically low performers when it comes to email marketing. What performs well are client-centric topics based on rapidly evolving legal or regulatory changes that pair some degree of client urgency and direct impact. As an example, several leading firms have found great success helping clients grasp a patchwork of state regulations on things like health care, cybersecurity, and ESG by creating state tracking maps that monitor state-level developments. Risk assessment tools, readiness checklists, deal timeline templates, and compliance calendars are also great ideas and can be fodder for podcasts, presentations, media relations, and, ultimately, awards. If you’d like to hit the speaking circuit, ChatGPT can quickly perform research on conferences and events. In fact, with some major events slated for early 2026, now is the time to think about submitting speaking topics—especially those connected to any thought leadership you might currently be launching this summer.
4. Host an event: It’s not too late to plan a dinner for 10 or 12 people this summer, although the clock is certainly ticking. Small-format events have a wonderful way of creating connections and connectivity with your clients and prospects, especially if you carefully hand-pick a group of people who might enjoy each other’s company. Inviting people with aligned interests is a powerful way to ensure commonality that helps guests build bonds. Lean on your firm’s events team to ensure the venue and experience for clients is unique, but also one where they feel comfortable opening up. Look for restaurants that delight, rooftops with views, or hard-to-get concert tickets. Leverage your events team for recommendations, including how to get impossible reservations at the newest, hottest restaurants—they may be able to get coveted seats. Finally, size up the interests of your clients. Do they want to see Beyoncé’s tour? Or Morgan Wallen? Goodwill can be compromised if you mistakenly demonstrate that you don’t know their tastes.
5. Meet your fellow partners: Especially at firms with dozens or hundreds of partners, there are always new partners to get to know. Ask yourself: Who don’t I know? Who should I meet? And who can help me land client work? With that mindset, break the ice with one or two partners that you don’t know—but should. If appropriate, go so far as to invite them to your house or apartment for dinner with your spouse. Again, your firm’s events team might be able to help with hosting. Building bonds and communicating within the firm can be just as important to landing new client work as directly interfacing with clients.
Finally, generative AI is a powerful companion in helping to brainstorm ideas for client development. ChatGPT in voice mode operates as a sounding board and brainstorming device. Is it a replacement for an experienced marketing and business development team? Not yet—and hopefully not anytime soon. But as you navigate this new paradigm, it’s a useful tool—as long as client sensitivities and boundaries are respected.
