The key to business development: trusting your attorneys.

• Author: Bowers, John D.

Though they have a greater potential to enrich the attorney developing the opportunity--through origination credit or billable work--new business opportunities also benefit the firm generally. When you support an attorney's project, you are provided with multiple opportunities to prove your worth or drop the ball In business development, timing and personalities--many of which you have no hope of influencing, much less controlling--are often the difference between ultimate success (i.e., new revenue) and failure. Even if a project you support is successful, it is very likely that the lawyer will withhold his or her most prized new business agenda from you. It takes multiple projects to earn such trust.

If you don't trust your attorneys, how can you expect them to trust you with their potentially highly valuable lead? We all know that stated trust is practically worthless. Likewise, if your standard operating procedures for business development projects don't demonstrate that you believe your lawyers will consistently do the right thing even at the risk of their own enrichment, you can bet that attorneys will cut you out of their future new business projects.

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The most pivotal part of new business opportunities is personal relationships. Temperatures in relationships are constantly in flux. And as relationships are the Holy Grail, business development projects of any value assume relational risk by your lawyer. However, because the attorney has come to you, your professional discretion in handling the request plays an important role. In these moments--often in the wash of too much work with competing deadlines and interests--take 30 seconds and find a way to instill trust in your attorneys. This article details seven practical ways you can engender mutual trust.

1. Practice confidentiality and preparedness.

   With every business development project, the most important component you can offer is the utmost confidentiality, even when the opportunity initially appears contrary to another of your attorneys' or the firm's interests. Short of a potential conflict of interest or offending stated firm policy, even outlandish business development projects deserve to be properly evaluated prior to unwanted dissemination of any details. Your attorneys are often more than happy to talk through (i.e., sell you on) the logic behind the apparent madness as long as you can prove that you are not wasting their nonbillable time by a)...