Why Lawyers Struggle with Business Development

There are a lot of reasons lawyers know business development matters, plan to do it, and still don't follow through. In my experience, three come up most often: it competes with client work, it can feel like it requires a different personality, and it's hard to trust a process whose results take time.

Client work comes with deadlines and people waiting on an answer. It's not just important — it's urgent.

Business development rarely feels urgent. No one notices if you don't do it. A follow-up gets pushed a week. A lunch gets rescheduled. An idea for reconnecting with a former client sits on a list for months. Postponing can even feel like the responsible choice, since something else always seems to need your attention more.

The problem is that client work never really lets up — a full practice keeps generating urgent demands indefinitely. So business development can't wait for a quiet stretch that isn't coming. It has to have a real place in your week, the same way client matters do.

Many lawyers picture the rainmaker: extroverted, comfortable working a room, good at talking about themselves. They watch that and think, I'll never be good at that — it's just not me. Others try to imitate it and it feels fake, like pretending to be someone they're not.

But practices grow through a lot of different kinds of relationship-building — writing, thoughtful follow-up, subject-matter credibility, strong internal relationships, client service, professional involvement, a handful of genuinely trusted connections. Even something like a conference doesn't have to mean working the room. It can mean a few planned conversations instead of open mingling, or a well-timed follow-up afterward with the two or three people. The best approach is the one built around who your personal style.

Business development builds slowly, like investing. It can take months or years for a conversation to lead somewhere, often by a path you couldn't have predicted when it started. Some efforts never lead anywhere at all. Most lawyers simply haven't worked the process long enough, or consistently enough, to see it pay off.

I compare it to boiling water. It takes a while — long enough that we came up with a saying about how a watched pot never boils. But we don't turn off the heat after a few minutes because nothing's happening yet. We've boiled enough water to know that if we leave the heat on, it boils. It just takes time.

Business development works the same way. But without enough experience trusting it, lawyers do some BD work, see no immediate result, and go back to client work. They pick it back up when things slow down, then drop it again when they get busy. On-again, off-again business development is like trying to boil water by switching the burner on and off — you never quite get there, and each restart means rebuilding heat you'd already built once.

In my coaching, I help lawyers figure out where to focus and how to follow through more consistently. Together we identify the relationships and opportunities that deserve attention, build an approach suited to your strengths and circumstances, and turn priorities into action.

Depending on what matters most to you, that might mean reconnecting with a former client, preparing for an industry event, strengthening an internal relationship, developing a referral strategy, following up after a conversation, sharpening a bio or LinkedIn profile, or building a more deliberate plan for an existing client relationship.

Every coaching engagement starts with an in-depth planning session. One-to-one coaching continues through focused weekly meetings that support accountability, problem-solving, and steady progress. Small-group coaching combines that same individualized planning with the ideas and encouragement of colleagues working through the same challenges.

Clients can also reach out between sessions—to prepare for a conversation, think through an opportunity, or figure out the next useful step.

Over time, lawyers spend less energy each week worrying that they're not doing enough business development and don't know where to start. They develop a process they trust enough to return to incorporate it into their day-to-day work.