Can Your Firm Survive the Departure of Key Rainmaker(s)?

by Terry Graham, M.A.
Legal Marketing Consultant

Many small to medium-sized firms face a frightening prospect: their practice has been built by one rainmaker who is reaching retirement and can no longer sustain the firm's revenue requirements. (In larger firms, several top rainmakers may stand out among many attorneys.)

Attorneys recruited when business was booming were hired to do the work generated by the rainmaker. Today, these partners and senior associates must confront reality: they must now share responsibility for getting new business if their firm is to survive.

To determine if your firm is in danger, answer these basic questions:

° Has the rainmaker brought his partners into relationships with key client executives or has he kept such contact to a minimum?

° Does she trust her partners to handle the client base she has spent years developing?

° Has he successfully mentored attorneys in the firm, encouraging them to develop relationships that lead to new business?

If the answers to these questions are "no", it's time to accept the fact that the lifespan of your firm is the same as that of your rainmaker.

Whether the rainmaker is able to accept and spearhead a change in business development strategy or whether his or her partners must lead the uphill battle to ensure the firm's survival, the following steps must be taken to put the firm on track:

1. Change Perceptions

Many attorneys at one-rainmaker firms have unrealistic opinions about what it takes to develop a client base. They may actually be in awe of their colleague's ability to generate business where they see none.

Study after study confirms that understanding your prospect/client's business and being accessible are two of the most important characteristics clients seek in their attorneys. Demystifying the rainmaking process will help attorneys accept their ability to at least become "mistmakers." By bringing more attorneys into the client relationship. and by helping those attorneys learn the clients' business needs, your firm will position itself to retain existing clients and encourage referrals from them.

Basic training in business development skills combined with assistance in developing individual and practice group marketing plans and strategies will reinforce other efforts to change perceptions of the rainmaking process.

If possible, have the rainmaker share personal stories of pounding the pavement looking for business. This will help partners and associates revise their perceptions and attitudes toward the time and effort that goes into developing their own client bases. At the same time, understand that the tactics that worked for your rainmaker may not be those that work for others.

A frequent complaint of younger associates is that no one is going to hire a 30-year old attorney to handle the problems of a big company. It helps to point out that the contacts made now by less experienced attorneys in their marketing activities will someday be decisionmakers in the industries they, as more seasoned attorneys, will serve.

2. Adjust Compensation

Establishing a compensation system that recognizes appropriate and successful marketing is critical to ensuring that attorneys assume responsibility for developing new business. This is a sensitive and complex issue since it hits everyone in the pocketbook. Attorneys who fear failure at business development may unite to block compensation based upon their abilities to generate new business. However, only if financial rewards are tied in part to business development can the one-rainmaker firm hope to survive in today's more competitive environment. The compensation system must also avoid creating internal competition for clients, but rather support cooperative efforts to bring in and nurture new business relationships.

3. Recognize Success

Success needs to be acknowledged in ways other than financial incentives. Some firms acknowledge marketing coups with awards, internal email announcements, or simply a public pat on the back at practice group or firmwide meetings for a job well done. This type of recognition is especially important to associates who are participating in focused business development activities that may not immediately result in new clients, but which bring the firm recognition and create a presence in important markets.

4. Conduct Performance Evaluations

Clear, appropriate and attainable goals that can be objectively assessed must be defined prior to the evaluation period. These goals can be expressed in a number of quantifiable ways (e.g., number of new clients, dollars generated, speeches given to and articles published for target markets, etc.). Progress towards and successful completion of these goals should be discussed and incorporated into the overall performance review. The key elements here are clearly setting the level of expectations, defining the rewards for success, and then consistently utilizing recognition and fmancial incentives as promised.

5. Recruit

Perhaps the easiest way to promote a change in firm culture is by recruiting new associates who demonstrate an interest in and willingness to develop a client base. Lateral hires with "portable practices and clients" compatible with firm goals also will serve to jumpstart the activities of attorneys who are adverse to changes in the status quo.

6. Provide the Road Map

Like any business, a law firm must identify its products and markets (specifically, which services it provides to whom). Even a basic business and marketing plan will provide important direction to partners and associates as they assume more responsibility for generating business. For the one-rainmaker law firm, it may be necessary to bring in an outside consultant to help define the future of the practice.

To promote changes in basic firm culture, adequate training and guidance regarding business development skills must be provided on an ongoing basis.

If your rainmaker understands and supports these fundamental changes to firm culture, ask him to introduce partners and senior associates to key clients. Set up mentoring sessions where she speaks to the firm's attorneys about her career and how she found and nurtured clients. Your rainmaker's stature in the firm can profoundly affect acceptance of the new order.

If your rainmaker is threatened by the changes your firm must undergo to survive today's volatile economy, the process of evolution will be painful and filled with setbacks. In this case, new directions must ultimately be advanced by a majority of attorneys who recognize their own livelihoods are at stake.

If the rainmaker views the proposed changes as intolerable threats to his or her power and control of the firm. a splitting off of the more progressive attorneys may occur. More likely, however, is a steady pace orchestrated by visionaries toward becoming a firm that adjusts, survives and ultimately prospers in the future.

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Terry Graham, M.A., is a legal marketing and public relations consultant. She can be reached at 415/686-8442 or tg@terry-graham.com. Check out her website at www.terry-graham.com

© 2009 Terry Graham. This article may be reproduced and distributed as is, with no changes and with all attribution, including author's copyright and contact information intact. Any other use constitutes a violation of copyright.