Chapter 4 Summary and Conclusion

• Library: Building Rainmakers: The Definitive Guide to Business Development for Lawyers (ABA) (2016 Ed.)

Chapter 4 Summary and Conclusion

My goal in writing this book was to provide you with the definitive guide to business development for lawyers. From the contributors to the editors, everyone involved in Building Rainmakers hopes that this book becomes a valuable resource that you can refer to throughout your professional legal services career, and then serve as a gift you can pass on to others who are facing the classic issues addressed in these pages.

There are 400+ business development strategies presented in this book. Here are just a few:

• Make client-centered face time a priority. The single most productive rainmaker activity with the greatest ROI is face time with individual client decision makers. This is where client-centered, not firm-centered, conversations should take place. To achieve this, the client or potential client should be doing most of the talking because you should be asking the right questions to draw out the client's known and unknown legal needs. Sounds simple enough, yet how much time, energy, and money is spent on other activities?
• Take a full-service, full-firm approach to every client. Two big mistakes a law firm can make are: one, not knowing what percentage of the client's total legal billing you currently enjoy, and two, not taking a full-service, full-firm approach to every client. There are some partners who don't want to share their client with the firm's other

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