Law firms often spend substantial sums of money on business development in the belief that this will pay off with new work for the firm. Many law firms pay for their attorneys to attend conferences and networking events so that they can potentially meet people and businesses that might seek out the law firm for legal services. Other law firms spend significant sums on marketing so that they can advertise the shop to different audiences. In my experience, law firms sometimes do not spend enough resources on entertaining existing and potential clients, and this can be a fun way to work on business development.
When I worked at other law firms, partners at those shops occasionally entertained clients and potential clients. Partners took clients to meals, and I am pretty sure that clients and potential clients attended golf outings and poker nights hosted by partners at the firm. However, entertaining clients was often an afterthought and was not an integral part of the business development efforts of those shops.
When I opened my own practice, I tried to be more creative about entertaining clients with the hope of originating additional business. For instance, I would often take a client out for lunch or dinner if we had a victory that was worth celebrating. Perhaps the best idea my firm implemented to develop new business was to buy dozens of tickets to various sports games in our area.
I was initially skeptical of purchasing such tickets, since this was a huge expense, and my firm was not that large. But the attorney who had this idea said that the tickets would pay for themselves if they generated just one new client. It can also take a huge investment of time and energy to take a client out to a sports game since you need to be “on” the entire time, and it was often not easy to commute to and from the stadiums.
However, purchasing the tickets was a great idea for our firm. Firstly, it was a ton of fun to attend these games with clients. Attorneys and the people they serve often interact daily or at least weekly, and it is fun to interact outside of the familiar setting of the attorney-client relationship. In addition, sometimes we were able to invite different referral sources and clients to the same games, and it was useful for these individuals to meet each other since they could potentially assist each other in their respective industries.
What blew me away is how inviting prospects we did not expect would be helpful to our firm actually paid off in client referrals. Since we typically bought four tickets per game, we often had open seats unless we decided to sell the tickets. In many instances, our clients or referral sources had ideas about who should be invited to the sports outing to fill the empty seats. Sometimes, clients and referral sources liked being able to invite people that were important to their own businesses to our outings.
Even though these individuals were strangers before we met them at games, they because fast friends since we had this mutual experience. In multiple instances, these individuals referred work to our firm, likely owing to the fact that they were able to learn about our practices and the services we offered over the course of the game. It is hard to predict how socializing with clients and referral sources can lead to business development opportunities, but it is important to put yourself in a situation to get such business.
All told, organizing sports outings or other social events for clients, prospective clients, and referral sources can be expensive and tiring. However, this can be a solid way to originate business and have a good time along the way.
Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothman.law.
