Building a Book of Business

A few weeks ago, I wrote a memo internally for our firm on some suggestions on how to build a book of business. Often, my post are about insolvency matters and comments on cases. That said, during my early years in practice I spent a lot of time laying the groundwork - and working towards building a practice - which I am lucky to have a busy practice supporting an entire firm.

I decided to summarize my approach to building a book of business with suggestions in a memo to our staff. My memo is below:

Here are some suggestions on building a book of business for lawyers at the firm, or allied professionals:

1. Pick a niche and develop subject matter expertise - its easier to stand out by “niching down” rather than having a general practice. The days of “general civil litigation” or a “general practice” are quickly being eroded. Many potential clients expect that their lawyers will already be familiar, or expect to be familiar with, their areas of practice and the client's legal issues. Clients are often not willing to pay their lawyer to learn an entire area of practice from scratch.

Practical Points

(a) Identify a niche within a niche - e.g. representation of consumers or individual debtors in bankruptcy and restructuring law, a geographic area or an industry such as craft breweries, cannabis companies or construction.

(b) Think about who your ideal client is - provide a fictionalize version of your ideal client - where they work, what are their hobbies, what is the sort of work that they are doing to begin narrowing down your ideal client.

2. Be seen + heard - if you are interested in generating a book of business, being seen and heard is a necessary next step. Writing blog posts are only a minimum step. Being seen in the community, attending professional development events (CPD), writing legal commentary and doing good work will all open up doors.

3. Files + Referrals - without files and clients, you don’t have a practice nor a book of business. Looking who would be a potential referral source will be critical to ensuring a steady flow of files. This is important for a few reasons.

(a) Weeding out calls from the public can be time consuming and inefficient. Your referral sources will weed out files and act as your advocate on why potential clients should hire you.

(b) Building a book of business is about building relationships - with referral sources, your clients, with opposing counsel and other stakeholders. Early in my career, senior lawyers who had excess work were a good source of referrals and also other lawyers and accountants who referred me commercial disputes and insolvency matters. Often, I would get referrals from lawyers who were opposing counsel on past files. You never know where your next file might come form.

4. Authentic Relationships - or ethical networking - I am a classic introvert. Attending professional development or networking events is taxing and exhausts me after about 30 to 45 minutes. I would rather get to know someone over coffee or lunch and identify opportunities to collaborate or refer. Sometimes, its a one-way arrangement and the value proposition is to ensure that referrals are handled with dignity, or referred to another trusted source if I cannot assist or handle the file.

5. Putting it all together - you have identified your niche, started developing your subject matter expertise, started writing writing blog posts and articles and attending conferences. You have been developing your legal skills, and becoming a trusted advisor. Great - you are laying the foundation and keep it up. It is a gradual process and it may take time to build up - including potentially taking a hit or a loss off of those first few files to build a track record. Over time, the sacrifices that may be necessary early on when building a book of business as a lawyer or allied professional.

This could include taking on smaller or less profitable cases to build a track record, investing time and resources into networking and community involvement, and putting in extra effort to establish oneself as a trusted advisor. These sacrifices may not yield immediate results, but are necessary for long-term success in building a sustainable book of business.

Now - where are the files and why isn’t my inbox filling up with referrals or phone calls coming in?

Give it time. It takes a while for people to build up the trust to refer clients over, and years to build up a track record. You may not get your ideal client immediately, but if you treat each client with care and dignity, it will eventually allow you to get to your ideal and preferred client. It may not come on year one, two, three or four - but you need to put in time, energy and expertise into building this and eventually it will pay off.