Mike O'Horo's conversation about business development for lawyers

Language matters. Not simply because language precision is the currency of the realm for lawyers, but because the words we use to describe or refer to business functions influence our expectations. 

In the referenced post, I described outside lawyers who communicate solely with the Legal Dept. as "myopic." The same goes for in-house counsel who insist on such restrictions. It was no surprise that this stance triggered a number of comments from readers in various LinkedIn groups to which it was published, a number of whom argued that establishing contact with business management would alienate the GC and have serious repercussions.

April 25, I posted the original title above, basically arguing that 1) time has no inherent value, and 2) commercial projects more complicated than legal transactions or litigation have managed to develop methods to deliver reasonably reliable project estimates. This topic stimulated more comments by far than any other post in a long time.  

Around 2008 or so, when things started getting testy in the legal world, "business development" replaced "marketing" as the law firm zeitgeist. The language change did little to change lawyers' hopes, namely, that the rechristened business development department would do some magic wand stuff to generate business without triggering lawyers' sales phobia.

With some regularity, the legal media reports on how law firms and lawyers are responding to the competitive aspects of the "new normal." Lawyers have awakened to the harsh reality that, if they don't have clients, they're in danger -- not merely of missing out on the brass partnership ring, but of keeping their jobs, period. 

Time worked has no inherent value. The output of one's work can have value, as measured by the relative impact your work has on a client's situation, but how long it takes to produce that output is irrelevant to its value.

Such is the mantra of Graphicly founder and serial entrepreneur Micah Baldwin. In these seven words, Micah captures the essence of the thousands of words published in the legal press about a litany of challenges:

During the 25-year seller's market that the American Lawyer called "the golden age of law firms," many lawyers had the luxury of simply filtering the steady stream of incoming business through the "who should do what" sieve to make sure the work got done properly.

Editor's Note: Today we feature a guest post from attorney David Barrett, an early, early adopter of LinkedIn, who now has the world's largest LinkedIn lawyer network. David explains the attitudes and actions that limit your success on this powerful platform.

I follow a lot of law-biz-dev blogs and related discussions in LinkedIn groups.  It’s hard to discern patterns within the small bites of these channels that I consume daily.  However, nothing smacks you in the forehead with the obvious quite like reading a lot of these at once after an absence.