The excellent and knowledgeable duo of Mo Bunnell and Elena Cutri ran a fantastic, engaging and (importantly) digestible session on the Key Trends we can look to 2022 to deliver from a business development perspective.

They opened the session by sharing how the International Legal Technology Associations (LITA) 2021 research shows that almost half of all law firms are struggling to get users to adopt new behaviours, especially around business development. The research goes deeper into this and shows that 80% of those law firms that do struggle with user adoption, also report there is little to no accountability. So, how can we expect to address this challenge?

As Mo shares, you have to "flip the script" and these are the three key areas that can help in 2022:

Campaign Based Trends

Business Development, Marketing and Communications teams need to speak with their Partners and Leads to see precisely what support they need to help accomplish the years goals, such as increasing the exposure of the ESG practice. How do you approach this?

• decide what you want from the campaign.
• curate one-to-one content to deliver, showing how your knowledge.
• have some 'meaty' content such as webinars that are aligned to the goal to get the word out. 

As you go through this process of mapping out a campaign, Partners etc. will engage, opening the opportunity to teach them BD skills. 

Client Teams

This is an area becoming ever more prevalent as BD, Marketing and Communications teams are seen as the trusted partner. The idea here is:

• identify the clients you wish to do more with and those that need reengaging.
• work through a playbook for growth 
• facilitate a client team planning session
• think in month-long sprints - this will allow you to think about what will take place and not look at the past. To quote Mo, "look through the windshield, not the rearview mirror".

Customised Coaching at Scale

All too often upskilling takes place on a one-to-one basis, which isn't the most efficient approach, so how can you implement customised coaching at scale?

• speak with the Managing Partner, Practice Leads or Partners and find out what their main business development worries are.
• break it down for them, and show them that BD and Marketing is one holistic process and ask what they need help with.
• whatever this issue might be, now you can do specific training on an area that everyone will benefit from.  

Ultimately when considering any of these focus areas, Elena reiterated that it is about being proactive (particularly going into the new year being a great time for new focus areas) and this will help show you in an advisory role to the firm.