Client connection: Creating a client-led business development retreat for young lawyers

Chief strategy officer Janis Nordstrom shares Wolf Theiss’ experiences in creating a business development retreat led by general counsel

 

Key takeaway points:

1. Nothing is impossible. We secured the participation of eight leading general counsel at the retreat by giving them the unique opportunity to teach young lawyers who had never before presented to top decision makers.

2. Recognise and respond to changing times. The legal services market has undergone a transformation and business development plays an ever-increasing role in firm strategy. All lawyers at every level need to be cognisant of this fact.

3. Preparation is key. We kept 300+ lawyers and eight top legal leaders actively engaged for three solid days with business development training.

4. Look for benefits beyond the training itself. These types of programmes can ignite a spark and reenergise the firm’s business development efforts.

5. All work and no play is a ‘no go’. On top of a tremendous amount of guidance, ensure you foster an atmosphere of camaraderie and fun.

6. Anticipate an increased interest in business development. Be prepared to follow up on the excitement and enthusiasm generated by young attorneys who have experienced the first real opportunity to prove themselves.

 

I know from firsthand experience that the best way to find out what you really need to do to get a client mandate is to go directly to the source. That way, you can get clear-cut advice on what it will take to succeed and narrow your focus on exactly what clients want.

Over the years, I have learned so much from speaking and interacting with general counsel that I felt strongly that giving young lawyers the opportunity to do so would leave a lasting mark on their careers.

Our lawyers’ retreat, held last year in Loipersdorf, Austria, presented a unique platform to engage general counsel with our practice development in a way never before seen in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CEE/SEE).

Like most large law firms, Wolf Theiss has made a point of bringing together the firm’s entire cadre of lawyers every few years for a weekend training session. This has given our lawyers the opportunity to get to know each other on a firmwide basis and to engage in a variety of group discussions.

These sessions provided training for the development of practice-related skill sets and other core competencies. However, they were largely hosted and led by the firm’s own lawyers on narrow areas of technical expertise, together with external legal consultants providing their own subjective views on what they believe clients really want and need.

So, we designed last year’s lawyers’ retreat to provide a truly commercial edge and an outstanding experience for those involved.

This being our first firmwide retreat since the onset of the global financial crisis, it was critical to create the type of programme that would take out the guesswork and cut straight to the core of how clients actually buy legal services and what they seek when selecting counsel for high-value work.

We therefore decided to take these partners and consultants out of the mix. In their place, buyers of legal products and services were brought in to objectively teach our young lawyers what it would take to be able to advise top-level multinationals on a local level and how to secure a spot on their regional legal panels.

The programme

With more than 300 lawyers comprised of 30 different nationalities in 12 offices throughout the region, Wolf Theiss is home to the first generation of non-expat lawyers to practise law in CEE/SEE following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The average age of our lawyers is 34 years old.

Over the course of three days, our lawyers underwent a ‘first-to-market’ programme designed to unite the firm’s highly diverse talent, with the goal of transforming these young country-specific, technical lawyers into more regional trusted advisers.

At the same time, we put them together with eight of the world’s leading general counsel to learn directly from them, as the true experts, how to pitch for high-level work and be judged on their own merits as to whether they could secure a spot on one of their coveted panels.

This was a daunting task for any young lawyer, let alone a first-generation lawyer from Central and Eastern Europe. Unlike many of their western counterparts, these lawyers had never before been exposed to any high-level business development (BD) training, or undertaken in-depth market research and case study analysis in preparation for pitching to leading general counsel. Here they had the opportunity to do just that.

Such a wide-ranging three-day programme had several challenges and it required the firm’s entire BD department to put it together. They secured the participation of the general counsel, helped to draft case studies and panel questions, and assembled 300+ lawyers – a process which took over four months.

Two case studies were prepared and the lawyers were divided into eight different groups, each being represented by lawyers from different countries, practice areas and levels of seniority. The aim of the exercise was to create a roadmap of solutions for a client’s multijurisdictional legal issues and provide advice on how to achieve the most successful business results.

As Wolf Theiss is the largest law firm in CEE/SEE, this exercise fitted well with our goals of breaking down silos, drawing upon diversity to achieve a ‘one firm, one voice’ culture with similar standards of excellence across all offices, and achieving a true understanding of clients’ expectations of their external legal advisers.

To facilitate this effort, we brought in eight general counsel from world-renowned companies such as Siemens, EADS, Borealis and members of the Association of Corporate Counsel to work together with our lawyers.

The general counsel panel also reflected the firm’s diversity, with representatives from Germany, Belgium, France, Russia, Switzerland, the UK and US participating. In a region that has had no formalised legal BD instruction before, not only was this a first, but the opportunity to work hand-in-hand with general counsel of this calibre was a real coup.

During the first day’s panel discussion, the general counsel were forthcoming in their commentary and eagerly engaged with our young lawyers on topics such as:

• the characteristics they seek out in lawyers and the firms they retain;

• what lawyers consistently do to irritate corporate counsel;

• how law firms have been able to favourably differentiate themselves from the competition; and

• industry trends such as moving away from hourly billing.

Following the panel discussion, each group was sequestered to take on the case studies, with the luxury of working directly with one of the general counsel.

In an era when diversity is demanded from corporate counsel, each group had to call upon their cultural, regional and vocational expertise in order to successfully complete the exercise. This was a true test of real diversity, with lawyers from traditional hot-spot countries such as Albania, Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia working together towards a common goal.

The results of each case study were then presented on the final day of the retreat to the general counsel, who then selected the legal team they would have hired and explained why they had won and the others had not.

It was stipulated in advance that partners were not allowed to play major roles in the pitch to the panel, only associates. This allowed the associates to control the process.

In a region that traditionally has seen senior figures very much in the driver’s seat, this state-of-play provided a much-needed opportunity for our younger lawyers to engage directly with in-house counsel and to take centre stage. 

The results

The biggest return on investment for our firm was not only the business we received as a direct result of this exercise, but also in seeing what had been accomplished by these young lawyers.

By successfully building a rapport across both borders and practices, we now operate with fully integrated firmwide industry groups that are specific to client needs.

The Loipersdorf experience has also empowered our young lawyers and given them the confidence to become more actively engaged in client-facing settings. Working hand-in-hand with general counsel for three days taught them how to address real-life client needs and tackle legal issues through the eyes of clients.

Future development

The programme was our first small step in becoming a better firm. At the retreat, we preached client service, unity and communication, and the necessity of becoming a true trusted legal and business adviser.

The next step is to equip our army of lawyers with the tangible business tools that will give credence to the lessons learned and the messages that have been broadcast throughout the firm.

That process is already well underway. Presently, we are in the process of implementing a firmwide school. This will ensure that all of our lawyers, from junior associates through to our most senior partners, are constantly improving themselves to better serve our clients – not only to meet their expectations but to exceed them wherever possible. Going forward, that will be the litmus test upon which we measure our success.

 

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Developing a business development retreat

Do

• Reach out to your client base and business network and ask what they expect from their outside counsel. Invite them to have an active voice.

• Make your programme as interactive as possible and solicit as many different opinions as you possibly can from diverse sources to make your retreat a success.

• Give every participant a voice.

• Draw upon all of your resources for input, preparation and execution.

• Continuously check in with your senior lawyers.

• Have fun. The training should encourage attorneys to get actively involved in business development.

• Use the energy and momentum from the retreat to propel your next business development venture.

Don’t

• Have outside ‘talking heads’ educate your lawyers on what they think clients might want.

• Have lawyers or outside consultants lecture rather than engage.

• Use your office as a location for the retreat – this makes it easy for lawyers to recede back to work and tune out the programme.

• Have a monotonous programme. Schedule regular breaks and different activities at various intervals.

• Forget to add a social element to the retreat.

• Let the programme be dominated by a small group of individuals.

• Exclude parts of the firm. Business development involves all members of the firm, top to bottom, not just the lawyers.

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janis.nordstrom@wolftheiss.com