Recruiters at Whistler Partners and partners from Foley & Lardner, Orrick, and Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz shed some light on how to start building your own book of business in part one of this two-part series.
Once you become a senior associate or a young partner, arguably one of the most important aspects of your career to examine is whether you have your own book of business. For the uninitiated, this means either originating matters from existing clients, or originating clients who you can comfortably call your own; not your firm’s, but ones that you have a personal relationship with, who pick up the phone and call you first because they know that you do good work. Now, you might be panicking, ‘Oh no, I don’t have a book! I have no clients!’ Look, we’re not here to discredit your experience, but that’s likely not true. You need to take the time to examine your practice, and you may find that there’s a case that you do have some of your own business. Either way, the long and short of it is that having your own clients and originating is the ticket to having more control over your legal career, but it isn’t always easy. That said, you can better position yourself to originate. How? We don’t have all the answers, but Whistler Partners’ Matt Miller, Wolf Konstant, Sean Burke, and attorneys Josh Beser, Gregory Boyd, and Louis Lehot sure do – read on to find out more.
The Battle of Who Could Care the Most
Right off the bat, it’s necessary to take a long, hard look in the mirror… not literally, but in terms of your career trajectory. Having the right kinds of clients can make it much easier to generate business. So, ask yourself: “where are you? What kind of clients does your firm have? Are they the kind of clients you want to have? Those are the clients that you’re going to develop,” Whistler recruiter and former Much Shelist partner and BARK general counsel, Matt Miller details, and as Whistler senior recruiter, Wolf Konstant notes, “There’s all sorts of clients. Look at the verticals your firm works within, which clients you’ve already worked with, where you’re able to add value, and target those people.” Gone are the days when “you could go play golf or pick up the phone and cold call someone you don’t know. That’s not how it works,” Whistler’s founding partner Sean Burke gives us a reality check. Now, “you work hard, do a great job, and stay in touch with people,” so if you’re currently in law school, connect with the people you work with throughout the early years of your career; you never know when you might need to pick up the phone and give them a call.
"I mean, people are literally sending you shoe boxes of $100 bills..."
At the end of the day, “law is a commodity,” Gregory Boyd, partner and co-chair of the interactive entertainment group at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, reminds us, “so people are buying both expertise, and you as a person.” As a result, juniors have got to work on curating their image, as “it’s very hard to sell yourself if people don’t think of you in a certain way.” Of course, it’s often easier to “sell the whole firm – not just yourself and your practice area,” because “you are the gateway to your entire law firm.” According to Boyd, part of this means being both engaged and responsive: “You want people to think that no one answers faster and is more willing to do work than you are. That’s the reputation you want to build. Confirm receipt, give status updates, say thank you. I mean, people are literally sending you shoe boxes of $100 bills. We lose sight of that as attorneys… pick up the box of hundreds!” (NB: if anyone wants to send us actual shoe boxes of $100 bills, you can find our address at the bottom of the page…)
Another facet of this is trust. With potential clients, most of it involves connecting with “people that you have some type of pre-existing relationship with, where they have some element of trust with you,” Burke adds, “Now, if those potential clients are in a vertical that your firm is good at… that’s even better.” Josh Beser, partner in Orrick’s technology companies group, agrees, as he’s a testament to this very fact: “I had a client who I met 15 years ago through a pro bono relationship at my old firm reach out to me last summer. We had never worked together, but now, we’re working on some big projects through the combination of our relationship and Orrick’s deep fintech regulatory experience .”
More so, trust is a way to set yourself apart: “A lot of law firms do a great job, and they all have smart people. The person you have a connection with knows you, trusts you, knows you’re going to do a good job and that they’re important to you. Their client will be important to you.”
“You could be smarter than the next person, but if you don’t fundamentally care, you’re not going to spend the time, and clients know."
Put simply: “There’s one skill that cannot be taught, and that is giving a hoot,” Louis Lehot, partner in Foley & Lardner’s private equity & venture capital, M&A, and transactions practices, as well as the technology, health care, life sciences, and energy industry teams, lays out in no uncertain terms. “You have to care more than the next person,” Lehot nods, “you could be smarter than the next person, but if you don’t fundamentally care, you’re not going to spend the time, and clients know. They know when they talk to you if you’ve thought about them since the last time they spoke to you, if you’ve anticipated what they’re going to need, if you’re putting yourself in their shoes, if you’re sweating their bullets.” (Almost psychic…) Lehot summarizes, “Clients will follow people to the ends of the Earth, and they’ll pay if you can cover them. So, try and leave every client with the feeling that they’re covered after speaking with you.”
As Miller helpfully points out, “It sounds like there’s a theme going through all these answers.” He’s right, and it’s that “you’ve got to play to your strengths. You’ve got to know what you do well, what your partners do well, what your firm does well. Otherwise, you’re swinging and missing – and you don’t get that many bats at the plate either!” Burke laughs, “Right?! You have one shot at doing a really good job.” So… no pressure at all then! (And for all of our sports-inclined readers: this is the first of many sports analogies. Stay tuned.)
Steering Your Own Ship
It may sound pretty straightforward – do a good job and the business will come – but unfortunately, things aren’t always so simple. Associates are bound to run into roadblocks in their attempts to originate work, especially those at white shoe firms. One challenge is billing rates – and it’s a biggie. “You want to develop clients as an associate, but you’re super expensive,” Miller admits, “A lot of people can’t afford you.” As much as it may sound like a positive – as in you’ll only attract high-caliber clientele – this isn’t always the case. Being expensive only makes it more difficult for you to attract the kinds of clients who are willing to take a chance on a younger partner. We’ll explain this more in a second.
“Being a good lawyer is essential. That’s the first step, but that’s not your only step.”
Aside from that, “the other challenge is that you’ve got to be the captain of your own ship,” Miller says, “If you’re one of 50 people on some massive deal your firm is doing, how do you get noticed? How do you stand out? Part of that is having to advocate for yourself.” Lest you don’t speak up, “it’ll be five, six, seven years on in your career and you won’t have made any client contact because you’re just doing the work,” he continues. That’s not to say you’re not “doing awesome work;” in fact, “you’re probably super smart. But if you haven’t stood up and raised your hand, you’re never going to develop” the necessary relationships to have your own business. Make no mistake: “being a good lawyer is essential. That’s the first step, but that’s not your only step.” If it is, “you’re going to fall behind.”
It’s not hopeless though. Even if you do mostly work for huge institutional clients, “you need to try to meet the right people,” Konstant advises, “If you’re on a large client team, you’re going to have trouble getting in front of the decision-maker.” That’s why it’s important to make yourself known because “what you’re doing is building your network. If you can get in on those important meetings, LinkedIn connect with everyone you meet afterward,” says Konstant, so down the road when you’re ready to start building out and utilizing your network, “you can reach out to these people; remind them that you worked on that one deal; see what they’re doing and potentially bring in some business.” He does admit that this isn’t the most realistic place to start for juniors, but later in your career, you reach a point where you are “ultimately able to reach out to the decision-makers and pitch both yourself and your firm.” More on this later.
Beser suggests, “The best advice I can give is become a really great technician but also an advisor to the business. That means learning how to ask questions and develop instincts around not just the project at hand but the commercial problem the client is solving for.” He adds: “Then, you have to build the muscle of delivering advice that’s succinct, thoughtful, and actionable for the person who is receiving it. If you do that, you’ll make them more successful, and the relationship will grow in value over time.”
“In a way, when you’re an associate, your client is the partner.”
What’s equally important is finding a way to add value to the deal or case you’re working on, because “in a way, when you’re an associate, your client is the partner,” Burke reminds us. He goes on to explain, “If you can make that partner’s life 100x easier, that partner’s going to want to step back. So, if you can have a dramatic impact wherein some of those calls start going to you and you’re doing a great job, that partner’s ecstatic.” Essentially, actively streamlining work for the partner equals increased levels of responsibility and client contact for an associate, which in turn equals a greater chance at business of your own later on. Once you set your sights on a client you want to build a relationship with, you want to become the go-to person for any and all work that relates to them – no matter how small. Here’s an example: “One of my old mentors was very much that person,” Burke recalls, “There was this massive, very contentious property lawsuit, and she became the person the client could just call late at night being like, ‘I can’t believe what’s going on!’ Guess where she went in-house?” (The client’s private equity firm!) So, while those phone calls had no bearing on the professional nature of the case, “they very much shaped her career. There are countless examples of this.”
He means it. Example #2 from Burke is as follows: “You know Elon Musk has a company that does neural implants?” We do now. “The government was basically threatening to shut them down because they were violating monkey testing regulations, and a partner I know spent a week studying those regulations, then went to the people in his network with any kind of tangential relationship to Elon and said ‘I’m the foremost expert in monkey litigation.’ He made it his mission” to get a meeting with him. “And it worked. He got the business and the work he did made the monkeys’ lives better.” As bizarre as studying up on monkeys sounds, the big takeaway from this is that you can’t be afraid to put yourself out there to get a seat at the table you want.
Miller jumps in to add, “The best time to pick up on this is as a young associate. It’s not realistic to think a big bank is going to be your client – it’s just not happening.” He echoes Burke’s sentiment that “when you’re just starting out, your partner’s the client, and if you impress that partner, you’ll get business.” Even “the people on the other side of a deal or case can be clients.” Miller reminisces, “When I was in private practice, one of my biggest clients when I started my own firm was Groupon. I got Groupon as a client and later became the Global Head of Litigation at Groupon because I sued the founders of Groupon, like, eight years before they were Groupon. They hated it but appreciated my work!”
"There are a lot of rude lawyers out there; don’t be one of them.”
Again, while amusing, there is a message here, as Miller elaborates: “I was good at what I did! It was aggressive, but I wasn’t rude. There are a lot of rude lawyers out there; don’t be one of them.” Plain and simple: “I’m going to step on your throat in this case, but if it’s your kid’s birthday tomorrow, I’ll take my foot off for the day.” In case you missed the gist of that, Miller means that another challenge in originating work is presenting yourself well to everyone you meet, because you never know who a potential future client could be.
This is admittedly a lot to think about but what’s even crazier is that, according to Miller, the only place you’re not going to get your business from is “everywhere you think you’re going to get your business from.” This is why “you have to work all these angles,” Miller elaborates, “The people who you think, ‘This is in the bag, I’m getting these clients for sure!’… it’s not happening. It’s the guy on the other side of the deal who you forgot about five or six years ago who’s calling you up and wanting to work with you. It’s really an upside-down world when it comes to client development.” Bottom line? “You have to hustle,” Konstant shrugs.
That’s not all, but that is all from us for now. In part two of this article, we explore more in-depth advice on how to network, how to overcome your billing rates as an associate, where Whistler fits into all of this, and… you guessed it: sports analogies! (It wouldn’t be a Whistler article without them.)
Read part two of 'So you want to start originating?' here.
