Client Expansion & Client Teams: An Essential Tool in the Growth Toolbox

Mike White

| August 15, 2024 Operational Effectiveness

“Our clients are our greatest assets but we do precious little to become more relevant to them . . . “ “We really stink at cross-selling . . .”, etc. These laments from even the most successful law firms are legion and reflect a reliable frustration among firm leaders. Firms that ask me to help them solve “the cross-selling problem” complain about “program fatigue” and lawyer pushback that their firm should become a more lightly managed enterprise. Leadership credibility flags as lawyer eye rolling is the typical reaction to yet another managerial edict.

Below are some of the barriers that prevent law firms from executing on even a well supported client team (“CST”)/”cross-selling” strategy:

1. Inadequate understanding of all legal work the client generates across all departments that the law firm is not servicing.
2. Insufficient intelligence on the underlying business activities that generate legal work and “hybrid” legal work (i.e., legal work associated with non-legal work streams); not recognizing that some sophisticated legal work is linked to work overseen by a non-law advisers (e.g., strategy consultants, investment bankers, IT consultants, etc.).
3. Failing to provide “raving fan” client contacts a compelling reason to sponsor the law firm into discussions with client colleagues who oversee other legal work.
4. Inadequate access to and rapport/dialogue with: i) senior executives and client department heads; ii) all law department lawyers; iii) all internal clients of law department lawyers.
5. Risk in two forms: i) relationship partners (“RP”) who believe it is “risky” to have other firm partners manage matters outside of the RP’s expertise area; and, ii) clients who believe it is “risky” and a hassle to move legal work away from one firm to your another law firm.
6. Failing to integrate service delivery of potential new legal work with client legal operations processes, technology and innovations. 
7. Confusion about which firm lawyers should apply focused attention to client research, outreach and cultivation efforts; i.e., who should be on the CST? What role(s) should they play on the CST?
8. Tendency among RPs to “hand-off” dialogue too quickly to law firm colleagues who work in other practice areas but are strangers to the client relationship.
9. Outside of matter related dialogue, limiting client interaction only to discussions of additional law firm capability that might relate to a client need without building sponsorship properly.
10. Developing no strategy for explaining why client decision makers should move some work away from existing incumbent law firms who are performing well.
11. Existence of internal law firm “turf wars” over who owns the client. 
12. Reluctance among expertise defined lawyers to engage in non-legal business dialogue that may reveal their knowledge gaps in the area of business.
13. Inability to tie legal work expansion opportunities to: i) professional growth and upskilling ambitions of individual client decision makers; or, ii) bonus/incentive comp criteria of individual client decision makers. 
14. Difficulty knowing whether progress is being made while establishing rapport with others across the client organization.
15. Time – law firm lawyers are busy- when there is plenty of billable hour work to go around it can be hard to get lawyers to invest non-billable time in extracurricular client outreach.

Client expansion efforts should have an answer for the above potential barriers; firms should outfit their lawyers with a toolbox of methods, strategies and tactics that addresses the above impediments.

Not all client expansion efforts need be organized through a CST. Sometimes expansion activities/dialogue can be executed through a single RP. In other contexts it may make sense to organize a small standing CST of lawyers (usually 3-4 lawyers) to reach out and spread out across the client organizational chart. CST initiatives should increase relationship quality and convert identified opportunities efficiently and rapidly.

Each firm client that is capable of being grown would typically have three established “bottom up” expansion pathways in place, namely:

1. Direct client contacts (“DCC”) – existing client contacts who have already experienced the value you confer also have a broader portfolio of responsibilities (both legal and non-legal) that should be understood fully. You have standing to compete for any work here that is a good fit.
2. DCC internal clients – in-house lawyers who are DCCs are accountable to internal business people who generate the matters trafficked through and managed by law department lawyers. The ultimate beneficiary of work funneled through a DCC often is the internal client of your firm’s DCC who has experienced value already; the internal client’s portfolio of responsibilities should be understood fully. You have standing to compete for any work here that is a good fit.
3. Matter bridging – finally, firm lawyers have standing to compete for any client work that looks like the work your firm is already doing- and the more technical the work, the better the fit. You may not yet know the decision makers who oversee additional work of the same type, but you should have little trouble establishing dialogue with these new decision makers given the history you’ve established with the matter type itself.

If the client is an operating company, “top down” pathways also should be explored through the client company’s strategy agenda and multi-year capital initiatives that senior executives and the board care about most. 

Relative to a specific client expansion effort, my expertise:

1. Helps identify and organize the people who are responsible for internal planning and external “doing” as relates the client- usually a formal standing CST but sometimes a single RP.
2. Trains CST lawyers on methods, strategies and behaviors to learn about the full scope of opportunity and to mature/convert retention decisions for new client work streams. These client expansion skills will also help your CST lawyers cultivate new prospects beyond the CST growth effort. 
3. Documents a concrete client plan with associated priorities. CST planning is designed to rapidly identify the few best opportunities for your firm to capture new work, build sponsorship with the right people in the right way, and convert these opportunities so that clients can make uncomplicated retention decisions. 
4. Supports CST lawyers as they apply the methods to defined priorities and aspirational discussions. 
5. Most importantly: Drives (durable) behavior change by making it easy for individual lawyers to engage in new discussions, research and outreach that are “different-in-kind” from client activities and dialogue they are used to.

The above roadmap represents a structured approach to the “cross-selling” challenge; when established, our law firm clients are poised to identify entirely new legal work streams and capture new revenue.