In thirty years of coaching lawyers, I have met very few who were completely broken. What I meet much more often are lawyers who are tied up in “nots”.
No matter what I suggest, the answer comes back the same: “No, not for me, that won't work, I'm not that kind of person.”
Not comfortable.
Not my thing.
Not good at selling.
Say “not” to yourself often enough, and the nots start to tighten into knots.
I could call it resistance and move on, but I don’t think it is. A knot is usually tied by something specific: a pitch that went badly early in their career, a mentor who told them the work would find them, a firm that stopped expecting much from them and let them know it.
Over time the lawyer starts to believe it.
The bell curve inside every firm
If you plotted your lawyers by business development, you would likely see a bell curve. At one end, a small percentage of rainmakers. In the middle, a large group with real potential. At the far end, a few who seem like lost causes.
Most firms support all three groups in some way, but much of that support assumes the lawyer already sees themselves as someone who does business development.
For a lawyer tied up in nots, that is exactly where it stops working.
One word has the potential to change everything
There is a reframe I use with lawyers in exactly this spot, and it is almost embarrassingly small.
"I am not a rainmaker" becomes "I am not yet a rainmaker."
That one word turns a verdict into a direction. It does not ask anyone to become someone else overnight. It just reopens a door that was quietly closed, and for the lawyers in the middle and at the far end of the curve, that is where the move up begins.
Then we get practical, and the practical part is a conversation that goes something like this:
Could you do this? - No, I'm not comfortable.
Could you do this? - No, I'm not comfortable.
Could you do this? - Well, I could do that.
We start with the thing they could do, however small it is, because a lawyer who takes one step they chose themselves has already started to move up, whatever the origination report says this year.
What the middle is worth to your firm
It is natural to put the most energy where it pays off fastest: the rainmakers, and the strongest of the middle. But the middle is where most of a firm’s lawyers sit, and every one of them who moves even a little way up the curve changes what the firm can originate.
As the work a lawyer can bill gets faster and cheaper, leaving that movement to chance may become a much more expensive decision than it looks.
And the lawyers at the far end are not necessarily a lost cause. In my experience, a meaningful number of them are simply waiting for someone to untie the first knot.
Two things worth trying before the year ends
Name three lawyers in your firm who have quietly stopped expecting business development from themselves. Then have someone they respect ask each of them one question: what would you be willing to try?
Listen for the “not” underneath the excuse. "I'm not good at selling" is rarely about skill. Often it is about the word selling. "I don't have time" is often about not knowing what to do with the time. Each knot points to a different first step, and the first step should be small enough that saying yes feels easier than saying no.
None of this is a program. It is a decision about how far up the curve your firm believes its lawyers can move.
My answer, after thirty years, is: further than you think.
From the coaching chair
A firm once asked me to coach several lawyers they were planning to fire within a year. Their real motivation was to protect themselves against potential complaints that they hadn't provided adequate support.
A few of those lawyers ultimately didn't make it, but at least three went on to build significant books of business.
It turned out they didn't lack potential. They just needed the right support to unlock it.
I think about those three often. Not because the numbers were dramatic, but because of what changed underneath them. They stopped seeing themselves as lawyers who didn't do business development. For me, that is the most satisfying work there is, because it is bigger than business development. It is closer to a shift in how someone sees themselves.
One question
How many of the lawyers in your firm’s curve have quietly decided they are “not” rainmakers?
And a harder one: when was the last time anyone in leadership told one of them "not yet" and meant it?
Keep building,
David Freeman, J.D.