YOU’VE JUST LANDED THE BIGGEST PROMOTION of your entire career— you made partner at your firm. Congratulations! Only one problem. They failed to mention that now you’re expected to not only be on top of the latest applicable rules and regulations in your practice area and provide sound legal advice, but you’re also expected to generate business for the firm. I know what you’re thinking. “Wait! I went to law school to become a lawyer, not a businessperson. Why do I need to do business development?” Well, the reality is as I always say, the practice of law is a profession, but the running of law practice is a business. To be a successful partner in a law firm, you have to run your practice like a business and absolutely engage in business development.
Unfortunately, the Law Firm Business Development 101 course was left off the register at your law school, so how do you now tackle this newly found major job requirement in your new role as a partner in the firm? The short answer is gather intelligence, gather intelligence, and gather intelligence.
In this segment, we’re going to delve into one of the most difficult aspects of law firm business development which is landing a completely new client. The process of business development is multi-faceted and impossible to cover in just one article. As such, I’m going to focus on the prospecting of a brand new client. By brand new client, I mean a client that has never worked with your law firm before. It’s relatively an easier business development task to provide additional legal services to an existing client, mainly because the relationship already exists and presumably since they are still an active client, it is a healthy attorney-client relationship. With a brand new client, however, there is no existing attorney- client relationship. There is no firm relationship manager to help pave the path for you to meet the right decision makers within the client’s organization. And, there is no muscle memory within the client’s in-house counsel roster as to you or your firm’s reputation and skill level. With that said, how does one go about landing a completely brand new client? The answer is to gather intelligence.
For purposes of this article, I’m going to pretend that you’re a newly minted partner at a reputable law firm, practicing in the area of litigation and you’ve been tasked with landing a new client for the firm.
Of the thousands of companies that are potential prospects, I’m going to just randomly select one of my favorite brands and a company from my home state of Maryland—Under Armour. As mentioned, the first step is to gather intelligence. You need to gather as much information as you can from various resources available to you (i.e. company’s website, annual report, quarterly filings, press releases, executive interviews, and relevant industry articles) to answer this simple question:
What is the DNA of the organization?
At first glance, you may think of Under Armour as simply a sports apparel manufacturer, similar to Nike and Adidas, selling sneakers and various sports apparel. However, when you take the time to thoroughly research Under Armour’s company website and annual report, you realize that they are much, much more than just a sports apparel manufacturer. For example, their mission, vision and values page on their company website states, “Under Armour's vision is to inspire you with performance solutions you never knew you needed and can’t imagine living without.” Further, their website states, “We innovate by taking bold and smart risks.” In their CEO letter addressed to shareholders in the company’s 2023 Annual Report, the CEO stated “ . . . bring together design, engineering, storytelling, and an “it” factor wrapped in a solution only Under Armour can create.” Additional excerpts from their 2023 Annual Report provide the following: “ . . . we aim to innovate technical apparel products . . . ,” “. . . These types of innovations and technologies, embedded in many of our apparel products . . . , and “ . . . leading cushioning technologies . . . .” Even their press releases and quarterly filings refer to the organization as “ . . . a leading inventor . . .” and “ . . . Under Armour’s innovative products and experiences are engineered to make athletes better.”
After gathering this intelligence, you realize that Under Armour is not just a sports apparel manufacturer. The company’s core DNA lies within innovation with deep roots in R&D, invention, engineering, and technological disruption in the space, dating back to their founding in 1996 with the commercialization of sweat-wicking technology. Now that you know the DNA of Under Armour, you know that intellectual property law is something of immense importance for them and a possible entry point for business development. In fact, upon further investigation, Under Armour is a staunch protector of its intellectual property rights and has and/or is currently engaged in many intellectual property related lawsuits. Yet another opportunity for business development. Next, let’s continue gathering additional intelligence to answer this question:
Where are they currently and where are they going as an organization?
Upon closer examination of Under Armour’s company website, press releases, executive interviews, its annual report, and other filings, you actually uncover the fact that they are very bullish on harnessing consumer data to provide better products and services to their consumers. And, they also have plans on utilizing AI to provide consumers with a better experience on their path to achieving their fitness goals. This data-driven approach powered by AI is also a great opportunity for not only providing intellectual property law counsel, but also data privacy law and data security law.
A Rainstar harnesses the power of research to gather as much information and intelligence they can on a potential client prior to ever reaching out to that prospect. The research and intelligence gathering is fundamentally what identifies for outside counsel the specific areas of need of a prospective client. Had you simply proceeded to attempt business development based on your initial mistaken belief that Under Armour is just a sneaker and sports apparel company, you would have completely misinterpreted the true DNA of their organization as an inventive and innovative engineering company with ambitions of leveraging data-driven strategies powered AI on a global scale.
In future articles, we will continue this exercise to understand how to use the intelligence that you’ve gathered on prospective clients to translate it into actually landing the prospect as a new client for the firm.client for the firm.