On August 28, the Future Leaders SIG hosted another Brownbag Lunch event titled “Business Development: What The Heck Am I Doing?” This event was a roundtable format specifically targeted to those in their first five years of legal marketing to share success stories and advice, as well as ask stump-worthy questions. The purpose of this event was to offer an accessible and open environment for an information exchange purely with peers.
Some key takeaways from the event included:
- Be valuable: Each interaction with an attorney is an opportunity to prove your value. Instead of asking open-ended questions, offer a solution or something for the attorney to react to as a starting point.
- Social media can work: Lawyers can be suspicious of social media and resistant to getting active on the various platforms. A few ways to increase success with social media include: understand your attorney’s personality, have a strategy, establish a process, and make it easy.
- Understand the compensation plans of your attorneys: Know how the attorneys at your firm make money. Their business development behavior (or lack thereof) is directly related to how they are compensated.
- Maintain work/life balance: Communicate and manage expectations with your attorneys and managers early-on. Set work limits and stick to them!
Join the Future Leaders SIG
Keep an eye out for information on our next Brownbag Lunch event coming this winter! If you are interested in joining the group or being added to our mailing list, please contact Kara Kane at kkane@steptoe.com.
By Michelle E. Gamlen, Senior Business Development Coordinator – Litigation, Steptoe & Johnson LLP for the September/October 2014 issue of the Capital Ideas Newsletter.