With the aging of the Baby Boom generation, industry estimates indicate that roughly a third of the partners in a typical law firm are over the age of 55. These estimates reflect averages: Some firms are younger, others older. But firms at the top of the bell curve face the retirements of a large swath of senior partners over the coming 5-10 years.
How these firms prepare for this will determine whose bottom lines will grow and whose will shrink.
Forward-thinking firms are ramping up business development investment and training for lawyers at all experience levels -- particularly older partners -- to increase new client acquisition and retention of retiring partners’ clients. Coaching younger lawyers on BD is an obvious way to grow future rainmakers, but it should never be limited to partners in the first half of their careers.
A firm’s best business-getters -- veterans who have already demonstrated their marketing and BD skills by building significant books of business -- remain teachable throughout their careers and are the partners who achieve the best return on their firms’ BD investments. These rainmakers are never satisfied with being good; they aspire to be great. They constantly look for new ideas to attract new business while keeping existing clients. These lawyers benefit greatly from top-flight BD coaching.
There are a myriad of consultants who provide BD coaching. When a firm selects a coach to work with this coveted group of successful partners, consideration should be given to hiring a former senior attorney who developed a significant book of business while in practice. This person has the wisdom and gravitas to work with mature, already successful attorneys dedicated to taking their BD to the next level.
An experienced business development coach begins every engagement by addressing succession...
Mature, successful partners do not always respond well to consultants who have not achieved what they want: a larger, ever-more lucrative practice. Working with accomplished senior partners who are motivated to grow their business is the obvious place for experienced and successful consultants—successful former senior partners in their own right—to dig in.
When a law firm invests in BD coaching for its most successful partners, it creates an environment where these partners must push work down to younger ones to serve their clients while they grow their practices. When a partner does not do this and instead hoards work, that partner’s growth potential is inherently limited to the services the lawyer can render alone or supported by attorneys too young to handle matters without close supervision. A partner who adopts this business model does not provide junior partners opportunities to form client relationships. This virtually guarantees that these clients will leave when the older partner retires, which they often do with little or no notice to the firm or their clients.
An experienced BD coach begins every engagement by addressing succession: How will the partner build a team of lawyers capable of serving the new clients that expanded BD will bring in? Without a plan creating a pyramid of service providers groomed to manage client relationships as the older partner develops them, it does not matter how successful the older partner is at BD. Without motivated, well-prepared successors to service new clients, these clients will leave. Clients do not stay with a firm with no retirement succession plan to provide service continuity when the lead partner inevitably leaves the practice.
It takes time and effort to slowly transition business to the next generation of partners and create sticky client relationships. Directing BD coaching to new client acquisition while ignoring existing client retention is expensive. According to Bain & Company, developing new clients costs 6% to 7% more than retaining existing ones. Senior partners willing to transition clients to younger ones are the golden ticket for retaining business through solid retirement succession plans.
The retirement of a senior partner creates an excellent business acquisition opportunity. BD coaching aimed at maximizing this opportunity is often a good investment, especially when the coaching comes from a peer who has successfully navigated the complexities of retaining business following partner retirements.
Are your firm’s older partners open to getting from good to great? Is your firm ready to invest in its work to acquire new clients and retain those of retiring partners – the ones the firm will lose without a BD-focused succession plan? Is growing older partners’ books of business exponentially an objective worth hiring a BD consultant to achieve?
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A former senior partner with Am Law 100 firm Barnes & Thornburg, David Wood retired after a 38-year career as a trial lawyer representing large corporate clients. In his final two years of practice, he spent hundreds of hours migrating his $6 million book of business to younger partners. He now works as a business development and succession consultant to law firms, training and coaching lawyers at all levels to do what he did: Build productive, sticky client relationships that stay with the firm when senior partners retire. He can be reached at David.Wood@davidwoodconsulting.com.
