Episode Three: Plan on it

Overview:

This episode provides a deep dive into the essentials of business planning for attorneys considering lateral moves. Steve Nelson leverages his extensive experience in legal recruitment to guide listeners on crafting high impact business plans that align with market trends and firm expectations. This episode may be our most practical and actionable let. We even have Steve’s business plan templates in our show notes. 

Key Insights:

• Business Plan Importance: Detailed discussion on the necessity of a business plan for lawyers aiming to move laterally.
• Components of a Strong Business Plan: Steve outlines the critical elements that should be included in a business plan, such as market analysis, client needs assessment, and personal value proposition.
• Strategies for Differentiation: Tips on how attorneys can set themselves apart in their business plans by linking their unique experiences to the needs of potential firms.

Episode Highlights:

• Crafting the Business Plan: Steps for developing a plan that addresses both the current landscape and future market opportunities, focusing on the lawyer’s role in navigating these changes.
• Demonstrating Market Knowledge: The importance of showing deep understanding of regulatory trends and how they affect potential clients.
• Networking and Resources: How to effectively utilize existing networks and resources to bolster the business plan’s effectiveness.

Bonus: Steve gives us his analysis of the lateral recruiting market in the the nation’s capital (hint: it is an election year.)
Business Plan Template Option One
Business Plan Template Option Two
Business Plan Template Option Three

Contact Steve
McCormick Group

Contact Murray
M Coffey

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Murray, welcome to Steve's rules, periodic podcast featuring Steve Nelson, executive principal at McCormick group in the law and government affairs practice. My name is Murray Coffey, and I am the principal of M Coffey, a law firm marketing and business development Boutique. For more information, please visit my website at M coffey.net Steve has been an executive recruiter for nearly three decades, and without naming names, he is ready to spill the tea on best practices, and maybe a few not so best practices by firms and candidates that he has seen during his career, recruiting some of the most driven and successful professionals into highly profitable and growing firms. Steve is a former lawyer and journalist and is a fellow of the college of law practice management and a proud son of Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. Full transparency here, Steve has helped my career immensely through the years and has become something of a career shaman to me and I know many others. Hey Steve, welcome back. Hey Murray. We are, I don't know we're in what session. This is the third of this third one,

Steve: 1:12

right? Alright. All I know is, I'm back in DC. My my winter in Key West is over, so I'm back, and now it turns out today is 80 degrees. So you

Unknown: 1:25

know, about the same here in in beautiful Dallas, Texas. So, but why don't we? Why don't we go ahead and and dive in? You know, one of the things that our friends at McCormick Place are quite well versed at is producing market intelligence and helping people understand what's going on in a market, both from the from the the talent side, from the from the people who are thinking of making a move for and also for the firms to understand what the what the market For laterals might look like. And one of the strongest areas for the McCormack group historically has been in the DC lateral market. It's a national firm, but DC is where they started and so, and I think DC may be your first intelligence report that you, that you put out. So what's going on in the DC, the DC market, right,

Steve: 2:24

all right. So contrary to what has been reported in some circles, at least in DC, and I can't really and it's somewhat true in Texas, all the lesson, the lateral market is a little bit less busy than last year. Nothing's dramatic, but it is down, we think around 10% in DC. Now, the interesting thing about that, and that's really the key to this, is that at least half of that decrease is due to the the dramatic decrease in the hiring from government. And this is not entirely unexpected. It's an election year, and you know, a firm isn't going to take a chance on a, you know, a current administration lawyer when they don't know what's going to happen. You know, the great unknown is out there, and while there may be some value with these folks in whatever, whatever happens, clearly it's, it's a big difference, you know, in terms of if it's going to be Biden or Trump and and so that case. So in this case, firms are just not going to take chance right now. They want to wait see what, what, what happens at the end of the year. So lateral hiring from government is way there

Unknown: 3:47

Well, and that's, you know that, I guess that's that's in some ways to be expected. And I expect also that the firms and others that are that are hiring from government, they'll, they'll, they'll sort of gage who they're most interested in based on who gets into office as well. So it's not, it's not doom and gloom for people who are in government service today. It just means that there's a lot of, if I'm hearing you correctly, there's a lot of firms that are pushing pause on their on their efforts, which also might mean a feeding frenzy when things loosen up, I don't know. Yeah,

Steve: 4:24

every at the end of every administration, and this was true for the first Trump administration as well. There's, there's a lot of activity on the lateral side. You also have remember that you've got people coming from the firms that go into government the early months of a new administration. So they've got the, they've got to fill up, you know, the the holes that they that they may have lost. So there's a lot of activity during that first year of a new administration. And that will be true no matter what I mean. I think clearly, there'll probably be more, you know, more active. D if Biden wins, because there'll be, you know, probably more regulation, whereas a Trump administration would be more on the deregulation side. But it's not doom and gloom for those lawyers anyway, because change is usually good no matter what the change is, right? So even if you know, you'll still need these regulatory lawyers, even if Trump gets in and has a major deregulation focus,

Unknown: 5:28

yeah, well, and this, I think, squares well with what we're going to be talking about today, which is, which is the the business plan that that firms will expect attorneys and others who are who are moving not only from government practice, but also laterally from one firm to another, to have in their kind of in their tool kit, ready to go. And you know, Steve, you've seen lots and lots of these, these laterals coming in and out. You've seen, you've coached lots of people, and you've, you know, you've really, you've really, probably seen every, every approach that there could be to the business plans answering the lpqs, which is a whole other piece of business. You can go back to last year. That was one of our first podcasts. Was the LPQ, but, but we're going to talk about the the the business plan today, and it's, I think it's, it's when you and I were prepping for this. I had a similar feeling that I always, often have when I when I trying to talk to the partners about how they, how they pitch to clients, because they always want to kind of come in one way, and we tell them, nope, there's a different way you got to come in. And so, So Steve, why don't you talk about that? I'm not going to, not going to, you know, not going to spoil it here, but, but I do think there's some similarities. And so please. How should they start? What do you do?

Steve: 7:01

So first of all, I want to just emphasize that, that I believe that no matter who you are, whether you're in practice or coming out of government or out of in house, whatever, you ought to be thinking about a business plan. Now, for you know, somebody in private practice, it's a little different, because you've got, you know, you've got your your statistics, and you want to talk about what your current practice is, but it's, yeah, even if you're going to stay at your firm, right, even if you're you have no plans to leave, you should do a business plan. Figure out where, where's where are the clients coming from? What are you going to be selling to your clients? What is the, what's going on in the marketplace that you know that they're going to be interested in. And so that, that, I think, is a preface to this. But the key that, that, I think, that, that you've hinted at, is that the business plan should be focused on the issues of interest to the clients. That's the number one thing the business plan should not begin with. I have 18 years of experience with three government agencies, and I'm a great lawyer, and I went to Harvard Law School. That's not the way to go. The way to go is to talk about what is going on in your field that's driving legal business,

Unknown: 8:18

right, right? So you need to, you need to show a you need. And I kind of think of it as a as a funnel, as you know, we were talking about earlier. So you sort of start out broadly, talking about your understanding of the of the marketplace, and that that's critical, because the the clients are, clients aren't buying the fact that you went to Harvard, the clients are buying that you understand the interplay of of EPA regulations and and business decisions for large corporations, because those are usually the ones who are most focused on something like EPA, right?

Steve: 8:57

And so you gotta do your homework, you know, there's, you know, go to the source materials, you know, you, I think you've got to review succinctly, of course, the issues and why they're important to business, and why they're important to clients and and a little bit of future, looking at the future like this is likely to happen because of what's going on. Good example right now is artificial intelligence. I mean, there's so much going on. It's somebody who, somebody who's in that field, who can talk about what the real issues are going to be, going to have a leg up on somebody who, you know, who's just coming out of cold,

Unknown: 9:38

right that that area especially, is ripe for regulation and and so understanding, understanding that, not just understanding what AI does, because that's, that's, that's a whole other kind of world, and it's good, good to know that, but to also understand what is the regulatory framework going to look like over the next 10 years with AI. Because. Right now, it's the wild west right now. There's not a lot of regulation, but that's going to come to a screeching halt, right? So once they've sort of done this audit of the market and talked about what's going on in the market, what's the next chunk, where's, you know, as we narrow the funnel right, where, what's the next point that the funnel starts to narrow? Right?

Steve: 10:27

I think the next, yeah, the next step is to, is to describe the legal services that clients are looking for. What is it that they need in terms of this market, in terms of whether you know, obviously, for a government lateral, I think one of the things you have to talk about is they need people who've come out of the government, who can tell, can interpret what the likely pathway is going To be with regard to a particular issue. So it's really about the legal services needed, and that at that point, you were still not at the point of tying your particular background and service offering in. You're still just describing what the market is and there and then what? All right, what are clients

Unknown: 11:23

like? Yeah, yeah. And so let's talk about that next step. What's what? What happens next? And I'm thinking, you know, as I, as I not only visualize this as a funnel, I'm also thinking about, you know, if, if I were to give somebody an outline as well, of you know, critical elements that they're going to need to hit. This seems like you know, we're on to the next step here.

Steve: 11:47

Yeah, and then the next step, once you've done that, that's where it's important to bring in your specific expertise and why it's different than everybody else that's in the market. Because, let's face it again, artificial intelligence, there are going to be a lot of people who are going to say they've got experience in artificial intelligence. They've been providing services or whatever. And at that point you have to distinguish yourself from the obvious alternative parts. And at that point you can't, you know, it's not enough again, to just say I've been in government lawyers. I've been a government lawyer. It's more about being at the center of government policy in this particular area is is critical, because the government, you know, has a particular viewpoint, and the clients are going to need to know what you know, what the government agency is thinking. And then there's other, obviously, other aspects of your of a person's experience can be brought in, in terms of, you know what they've done in the past. And that's what sort of thing. And, you know, like, if they've been in private practice before, or other government jobs, so it really setting the stage of, I am unique because of this. And at that point, that's that gets you almost all the way there.

Unknown: 13:18

Yeah, right. Because, because, I think the other critical element, and, and again, this is, this is oftentimes where, where the lawyers will start, and this is where they need to end, actually, which is the, which is the tactics, maybe a little bit of the pedigree, not, don't lean into it too much, but talk a little bit about how, how you describe tactics. And then we'll talk about strategically. You know what? What this means for not only government attorneys, but also lawyers coming who want to, who want a lateral, but maybe don't have the ten million book of business,

Steve: 13:52

right? Alright, so I want to separate tactics from I would, you know, basically your contacts, you know, I think the first thing to do is to talk about, again, because if you've been in government, there's a lot of people who've gone from government to in house, or they've gone to government to a law firm, yeah. And plus, you know, again, previous jobs, law school classmates. You know, you know any, any you want to start to describe at this point. This is the type of people that I can call on. Now, if you're in government currently, you have to be careful, because you're putting this in writing. And so I think you have, you want to, you do not want to be very specific about people, yeah, names, etc, because somehow this gets into the wrong hands. This could be very embarrassing for you, because you're still a government lawyer. So I think it's just important to you. To be, you know, as specific as possible, but without anything too specific, so that it would end up, you know, you know, could come back to haunt you, plus a little bit of a concern that somebody might like, sort of take your names and start to, you know, try to,

Unknown: 15:16

not sure, yeah,

Steve: 15:18

yeah. So, so it would

Unknown: 15:19

be, you maybe position it like you know you're coming out of government, government, practice and service, and you, you don't want to say, I know Joan and I know Sue and I know Ted, but and they're all those are all you know, Chiefs of Staff for major, you know, major, huge government bureaucracies. It's a I maintain direct relationships with, with chiefs of staff across a wide variety of regulatory agencies within, you know, the following sectors

Steve: 15:54

or Congress, plus on the client side, obviously. So you might want to say, I, you know, I, you know, I practice in the government with an attorney who is now the General Counsel of a major logistics company, okay, something like that. So that that the key here is not it's not so much who the people are. It's more that you've thought about it, and that you do have contacts and you've been and then you can take advantage of it. It's the the identities aren't as important, and as we indicated, could come back to haunt you. So as long as you can say with some specificity, so that's real, um, that's that's enough to get to that point. So Okay, so once you've gone through that, then you go through the tactics part, and the tactics are, you know, it's kind of typical. Obviously, social media has played a big role in that now. So LinkedIn profile is going to be important and but also, you know, what do you you know? What are you going to you know, what are you going to write, looking at the speaking circuit? Any kind of newspaper or media contacts you have, all of those things have got to be included. And we have a template, you know, that we'll share with everybody about some of the areas that you want might want to look at in terms of of the tactical side. Now, part of this is also to work, is to make sure that you're going to be working with the firm, that you're that you will be joining and really, you know, dedicate yourself to getting out and meeting everybody within the firm and their clients that, that that would be possible? Because I think that the business plan is as much there to show that you're that you're really focused on this as your business as anything else. Because we see too many people who come out of government, and their first inclination is, I want to go in house, you know, I've heard about, you know, I'll go to a law firm. But you know that, you know that's, that's, if you're, if you're not thinking about the law firm side, it's going to be harder for you to do that, and it will also, I mean, the firms will figure that out. So it's got to be, you've got to really, you know, do a gut check a little bit and say, I really want to do this, and this is what I've got to do. I'll do everything I need to do to get that done.

Unknown: 18:34

And, you know, we something we touched on in a the last podcast was that, which was, which was, for those of you who don't remember, was about about compensation, and it was actually very popular. It's one of our more popular podcasts, for obvious reasons. But the point in that was that, you know, the the your comp is based on the value that you're going to bring to the firm. And part of that book of business, and the other part of it is, you know, being able to grow the business, among other reasons, seems to me that a that a well crafted, well thought out, strategic but also, but also, you know, with a focus on execution, business plan, could be a way for a for somebody who is lateraling from Firm A to firm B, or wants to lateral from Firm A to form B to to make the case that the firm should take risk, because if you're not bringing a big book of business, you are a little bit of a risk. But if you're, if what you're bringing is an enhanced knowledge of what's going on in the market, and you're going to be part of the growth, you know, vector for that practice or that firm, that's a that that could be persuasive. Or am I off on that thinking? No,

Steve: 19:59

no, not at all. Well. And I think, I mean, a very high percentage of of people who move laterally are coming in as councils anyway. So you're talking about people who are not going to have a huge book of business, and, and, and even if you do have some, you know, a book of business you want to be able to show that through your efforts at your current firm, you've had some accomplishments that might not show up in the numbers. We've talked about this again in earlier podcasts, where you're the person you're not getting the origination credit, but you're the one who actually convinces a firm that somebody has a relationship with to actually give you the business. And so your number, you know, your numbers aren't going to necessarily reflect that. So that gives you that opportunity in the kind of the why me section of to really talk about this is, this is my style. This is what I'm good at. This is how, why clients trust me. And it also will also, you know, you can also use that when you're talking about your client, you know, the client part of of the business plan, and there you're there. You've got to be, if you're in a firm, got to be a little more open about who the clients are. It's not the same. Because the government that you know that that sort of Washington Post, you know, fear isn't there. You know, you still might have a little fear of, like, will they steal my client? But, but I don't think that's a big, a big issue. I just think at that point you really do want to talk about, you know, the client relationships you have that might not be exploitable at your current firm,

Unknown: 21:50

right, right, right. There's, that's a great, that's great point. And you know, the fear somebody having a fear of clients getting hijacked is, I've heard that, you know, as a head of marketing, where I had to roll out CRM tools, you know, client relationship management tools, the fear of the partners was that, oh gosh, I'm going to put my client's name into this big pool of contacts in the CRM, And it's now available to everybody, and all the partners are going to be calling all my clients all the time, and I can tell you categorically and and by the way, any CMOS listening, you may want to play this next part for your managing partners when there's some stuck concerns about CRM. I have been doing this for 23 years. In that time, I have rolled out five full CRM implementations, and in that time, I have never seen a single partner at a single firm ever use another partner's contact without first contacting that partner ever. And in most cases, and I've hardly ever seen them even make the ask, because the knowledge, the idea is that that's your client. And, you know, maybe I do want to get in on that, but I'm not going to get in on it if I'm calling them cold and, by the way, partners at law firms do not make cold calls. They don't, they, they simply don't make cold calls. So, so, you know, the this, this paranoia about the, about my, you know, they're going to hijack my clients, if they know who they are, if they can do that, then they're really not very good clients.

Steve: 23:28

Yeah, they learned in law school, the first thing they learned in law school, don't make any cold calls,

Unknown: 23:34

that's, that's not the LSAT. I believe that the LSAT has a question, you know, four. There's four different questions, you know, should you make cold calls? And there's, you know, four, four answers that are almost identically the same. There's only one that's the best, but, but, yeah. So if you're interested in seeing the McCormick groups template, business plan template, which I've seen, and it's quite useful, contact Steve. His contact information is always in the in the show notes. And again, if you mentioned the mentioned the name of the podcast, when you call Steve, you will win a prize of some kind of some, some great value is anywhere from a fruit basket to a Camaro. I don't know it's it's anything can happen, Right? Steve, yeah, that's absolutely true. That's absolutely true. All right, anything else you want to address before we, before we wrap

Steve: 24:31

here, yeah, yeah. I think you know one other point is, and this is for, this is for government laterals and in house laterals, I would say is, do your business plan before you start interviewing. Don't wait for the firm to ask you again. You're trying to, you're you're showing them that initiative. And if you wait, I think there's a already a. The perception that the firm has it now is this, is this person really? Is this person going to be successful? Is this person have the rapid toss and the the incentive to go out and do it, so having that business plan at the ready before you enter is is incredibly valuable. I, you know, I, I'm, you know, I don't know how many times, you know, I've heard from firms that said, you know, this, first of all, let's say this was a great business, but, but moreover, they'll say really thoughtful work, you know, even before we interviewed. So, yeah, definitely.

Unknown: 25:38

And it, you know, the value on it too is, if you put pen to paper, nobody puts pen to paper anymore, but if you put pen to paper on anything, least I find if I'm putting pen to paper on anything, my ability to recall and to kind of have very smooth delivery on all of that is enhanced incredibly thinking that I can Make it up on the on the run is kind of leads to the hemming and hawing and the ums, a lot of ums and hemming and hawing, and you may get into circular arguments all the rest of it. But if you've, if you're if you've written it down and you've outlined it, you've thought it through, you kind of much better conversation, much more, much more beneficial conversation up front and you as you, as the, as the, as the candidate, will also have an understanding of whether this firm sophisticated enough for you to move your business over to it. Right? It's a two way street. Yeah, right, right. All right. Well, thank you, Steve, always a pleasure, and we will, we'll drop some information into the show notes, and as always, make sure also to get on to Steve's mailing list, the McCormack group, mailing list for their intelligence that's that's coming out. They've got some kind of they've got some very interesting intelligence in the in the pipeline right now, so you don't want to miss out and and until next time, Steve, take care.

Steve: 27:09

All right. Thank you so much. Till next time,