It's been a long hard slog for business development professionals to win some kind of acceptance in the legal industry. Charlotte Edmond profiles the mad men and women who strive to sell law

"Procter & Gamble may have been created by soap makers, but their brands have been built by running them as a rounded business," argues Mishcon de Reya's iconoclastic business development director Elliot Moss. "You would have never heard of P&G if they had left just the soap makers in charge. Law firms are no different."

Welcome to law firm marketing 2.0, a world away from the primitive version that emerged in the mid-1990s, when a rag tag of admin staff, bored PAs, and marketing staff whose careers had mis-fired attempted to drum up business amid the inhospitable environment of distrustful partnerships.

Certainly, if you told the deal do-ers back then that by the time their junior associates made partner they would be accompanied on pitches by non-lawyers, who would not only advise them on how and which work to pitch to for, but would often have direct interaction with the clients themselves, most would have been dubious.

After all, the initial breed of business development (BD) staff were deployed primarily in an administrative capacity helping to plan occasional events and coordinate rudimentary marketing efforts. And for several years after law firms woke up to the fact that in other professional services practices this function was viewed as more than an ad hoc activity, it was – and still is in some firms – very much focused around the comms, PR and marketing aspects, rather than concrete efforts to win clients or expand on the work the firm receives from existing clients.

In contrast the modern breed of BD professional – as typified by Mishcons' Moss – cuts a rather more confident figure, thanks to the influx of staff with established backgrounds in marketing and sales. Some even boast experience in pure advertising and the more sophisticated world of consumer marketing, a field where branding and creating differentiation via your pitch is the be-all and end-all.

These days leading law firms can globally field teams of as many as 200 staff encompassing a wide range of disciplines such as PR, comms, pitch support, industry research, client relationship management (CRM), pure branding and events. Annual budgets can be in excess of £30m.

And while there are plenty of partners that remain sceptical of the contribution of BD, or see their role as merely a support function for the client-winning efforts of their lawyers, it is clear that the role of BD has won far more acceptance in recent years.

A Legal Week survey of partners last month found clear evidence of the rising status of BD in law, with 75% of respondents saying that the quality and contribution of their own team had improved over the last 10 years, including 44% who said their team was now 'much better'. Furthermore, 39% said their BD team was 'effective' or 'very effective' at helping the firm win new business.

As one business development manager puts it: "BD definitely has more prominence at board level and we have a close relationship with management. The days when it used to be 'yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir' are mostly a thing of the past."

Aside from the wider drive towards professionalising the business of law, other forces have played their part in bolstering the position of BD teams, including the gloomy state of the global economy since the banking crisis of 2008.

As Jomati founder Tony Williams observes: "We have gone from a system where in 2006-07 there was a 5-10% under-supply of lawyers to now a 5-10% over-supply. So you need something extra."

Aside from increasing competition for work, the advent of the legal panel, a model under-pinned by regular tenders and formal pitches, played a role in creating the need for structured business development efforts. The globalisation of the most coveted blue-chip clients and the related efforts by law firms to foster far more sophisticated client relationship programmes have also played their part, as has the increasing drive to forge and project distinct legal brands that have potency across borders.

Richard Grove, director of marketing, BD and communications at Allen & Overy (A&O), comments: "Gone are the days when the marketing plan equated to instructions barked down the corridor from a partner. Now we expect BD people to be professionals with specialist skills; we've moved on from pitches and party planning being our main activities: we are effectively internal consultants."

If the bean counters can do it…

Like so many attempts to modernise, the legal industry's initial experiments in business development were borrowed from the large accounting firms, which had begun investing in BD and marketing in earnest in the 1980s.

This saw law firms repeat some of the mistakes of the accountants, who initially over-recruited in BD, resulting in excessive staff, duplication and annoyed accountants. It was not until the early 1990s recession that accounting firms were paring back their teams and, having learned through trial and error, began to build marketing and BD functions more tailored to their professional services businesses. In particular, accountants became more adept at feeding their BD efforts into sophisticated CRM programmes, and putting client research to use in terms of identifying potential services to cross-sell.

It took some time for such trends to be seen in law, which most BD veterans believe remains five to 10 years behind the accounting profession in terms of marketing sophistication.

There was an original band of believers who tried to bring religion to the heathens, among them Maureen Jones, Barry Jackson and Richard Oakes on the BD side. Tom Rose's efforts at Clifford Chance (CC), then at the height of its global influence, were also effective at popularising the need and role of a sophisticated PR and comms function at a major law firm.

Jackson (pictured), now a founder of Review & Consult after stints working in BD for CC, A&O and Herbert Smith, believes much of the change was driven by the clients themselves: "Lawyers are still sceptical about the need for formalised BD – even though many firms have had BD teams since the late 90s."

"Clients had a big impact on how the BD functions evolved in the Big Four accountancy firms. And BD is an integral part of client service now. Most lawyers can't see how this can add value – which is a real shame for the clients of law firms."

The legal industry was to find more success with BD as it strove in its own regard to modernise – as witnessed in the late 1990s' drive to build international legal giants. And if this environment was to prove more hospitable for BD, law firms also had more success as they began to adapt BD to their own ends, rather than aping accounting firms. This process also meant borrowing ideas from a wider array of industries, notably banking and even to a certain extent consumer products.

The impact of respected writers like former Harvard Business School professor David Maister, whose influential 1993 book, Managing the Professional Service Firm, advocated a more structured and well-funded approach to managing clients, cross-selling and marketing, helped win acceptance.

Having got off to a slow start, what started out as marketing and events operations were swiftly growing to encompass a wide variety of skill sets, from communications, marketing and branding to CRM, tender writing and 'pure' BD work. Certainly, professionals are now recruited into more discreet disciplines within the overall catch-all title of business development, and there has been a move away from generalists doing a mix of jobs. And although different firms manage the function in different ways, it has undoubtedly professionalised, with many of the heads of BD reporting directly into the managing partner.

A&O's Grove says: "In the old days the head of marketing was a partner with a title like 'partner with responsibility for marketing', then we went through a phase of recruiting BD people strictly from within the little club of law firms. Now big law firms are bringing in professional services heavyweights at board level."

A lot of early recruits came into BD having transferred across from other support functions, or having become disenchanted with practising law, and while this still makes up a significant proportion of people within the group, a large swathe have also joined as specifically-recruited BD professionals from outside industries. This outside influence has certainly helped bring in new ways of thinking within law firms.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer's chief marketing and business development officer, Libby Chambers (pictured), comments: "There is a general expectation on the client side that law firms should be more professional and more pro-active managers of the relationship. The BD function as a whole has professionalised and is increasingly populated by people with strong marketing careers behind them, often from other industries.

"That said, the former solicitors on my team are invaluable, and have a particularly good eye for where we need to translate marketing speak into language that will resonate with our lawyers."

With the larger law firms keen to emulate the generally more well-rounded BD functions of their clients, banks and financial institutions in particular have proved a fertile hunting ground for marketing professionals.

Chambers was previously chief marketing officer of Barclays' global retail and commercial banking division and Barclaycard; CC's global head of business development and marketing, Karim Klaus Emara, joined the firm from Deutsche Bank having been global head of client marketing in the corporate and investment bank, while Graham Leigh, Linklaters' director of marketing, previously had stints at American Express and Barclays.

Being worth it

However much BD has evolved though, there is still a battle with some sectors of the partnership to win respect. Although most lawyers are happy to have help working on directory entries and external communications, there is often still a reticence to allow BD professionals in front of clients or even drive the marketing efforts.

The Legal Week survey that found growing respect for the efforts of BD still noted considerably less support for putting them in front of clients and 30% of partners still thought their own teams were either 'not great' or 'awful'. And clients themselves are often wary of law firms' drive to cross-sell, meaning some general counsel resist meeting non-lawyers.

Helen Mahy (pictured), company secretary and GC of the National Grid, believes that while BD is important, it should still take a background role: "I'm not really interested in the BD people," she admits. "If they turn up at panel reviews, I tend to get a bit cross."

"I suppose it's interesting when firms organise big discounts, and if that's the BD team's work, then I suppose that's of use. But all the negotiations I have are with the people doing the work, and that's who we want to be seeing when we deal with firms."

There is certainly a feeling among the BD community that they are often still viewed as an optional support function – a little added extra that is nice to have but not indispensable.

BD professionals, of course, refute this but the current environment has increased the pressure to demonstrate value. With many firms spending between 2.5% and 3.5% of turnover on BD and marketing all in, these are considerable investments, with many of the top positions commanding salaries of several hundred thousand pounds. For elite firms, packages can go as high as £500,000 for the top BD job.

And with even junior recruits and graduates with limited experience at City firms brought in on salaries around the £30,000 mark, there is no denying that BD is an expensive resource.

This does mean that there is often a certain defensiveness and feeling of the need to justify themselves seen among the BD community – which is not helped by the fact that BD was one of the first functions to face the chop when the market turned in 2009 at many firms. Even researching this article, there was considerable unease among staff at some firms at disclosing staff numbers for fear that partners would be unsettled at the size of their own marketing teams.

BD teams can also suffer from the fact that it can be hard to quantify contributions. Placing a monetary value on winning business and activities which directly contribute to the bottom line is one thing. But much of the role involves more nuanced work like managing client relationship programmes, which is harder to put a value on.

Although many BD professionals are measured against business-building targets, without a clear link to money brought in there is wide-spread frustration that their role is misunderstood and their value not appreciated.

And for all the talk of current sophistication, it is striking conducting interviews for this piece how little consensus there is about how to measure the contribution of BD or about how BD staff should be incentivised.

Many concede that the quality across BD functions is still uneven and in certain disciplines the standards can vary wildly. Some BD staff who bemoan the conservatism and lack of support of partnerships in which they work privately admit that, while good BD staff are worth their weight in gold, there are still too many poor performers in the game. The caricature of the over-paid second-stringers regularly hopping between law firms is one that still has some basis in reality.

BD professionals at law firms also still rarely resemble commercial staff in many other industries, who are typically paid on commission and expected to get in front of clients as much as possible and consequently are usually much more personally assertive.

In law, the expectation that partners will themselves sell has left a fundamental ambiguity about the role of BD which has yet to be resolved. Law firms still baulk at the idea of a direct sales function, paid on the basis of new business, despite the costs of using expensive lawyers as their primary sales resource.

It is also striking that, despite claims regarding the importance of marketing and BD and arguments that law firms vary hugely in how good they are at it, working out the star teams from the laggards is a challenge. Some firms regularly cited as strong performers on the BD front have been indifferent performers in recent years in terms of growing their overall revenues (though that could be the fault of the partnership).

There have been steps to improve the measurement of BD's efforts but it remains ironic that a group of professionals that frequently use the buzzword ROI (return on investment), often seem wary of being measured themselves.

Greg Bott, director at consultants Ohten Group, comments: "Firms don't monitor BD in a consistent way. With tenders if a firm is successful and gets the work then there is an obvious link, but with key account programmes it is harder to attribute the cause. A good BD team will not use this as an excuse for inactivity though."

Jomati's Williams adds: "The challenge for law firms is that they have never had to think about the metric of sales: how much does it cost to get this piece of work? Supplying value for money is not an optional extra. Doing a bland job and just answering questions won't get you anywhere. You need to be competitive on price but convince the client that you are giving extra value."

It is broadly acknowledged that most top firms have grasped the PR and comms elements of BD, but one of the areas that comes under fire most – both from the in-house community and the BD profession itself – is tender documents and writing directory entries.

Jackson says: "Pitches and directories are the bane of the BD professional's existence. Directories ought to be really easy. All you need is a simple process to capture significant work on a monthly basis – when it's still fresh. That way you can just pick the best deals and relationships to showcase. But because lawyers are paranoid about sharing information nothing is formally recorded. And trying to collect this information retrospectively is a nightmare."

"Pitches are best managed centrally by support lawyers or professional pitch writers. The relationship team should be using the opportunity to get to know the prospect and their particular needs – not sitting in a back office drafting documents as though they were legal advice. If you have a good process it can be quite a painless activity. But that's a dream for most BD people today."

In conclusion, Jackson makes a telling contrast: "Investment bankers love pitches – and see it as 'the best bit'. But their documents are usually PowerPoint presentations on the deal idea. Which is very different from the average law-firm pitch."

This comparison with investment bankers is a recurring theme, with many frustrated BD professionals holding their client and business-building skills out as the antithesis of your average lawyer.

Jackson continues: "Overall I have to say that the progress in law firm business development is disappointing. Lawyers are hugely intelligent people and very stimulating to work with on a one-to-one basis. But the collective partner mindset is still one of 'don't do it unless we have to…especially if it involves spending money in any shape or form'. So while BD people make progress with individual partners that is usually more than offset by the collective negativity and often results in a 'two steps forward and three steps back' environment."

Chambers comments: "As a profession, we are moving from primarily having local relationships, to something much more global. A client's relationship with us will always be mostly about the one-on-one, often through senior partners they have known for many years. But a typical partner needs some help to sell the firm, and our global track record, even if they don't need help selling themselves. One role of the BD and marketing team is to orchestrate this and help join the dots behind the scenes, moving knowledge and experience around the firm."

In addition to recruiting a band of skilful marketeers, the law firms that have been the most successful at BD have backed this up with what are essentially strong administrators and project managers. For as much as lawyers want new ideas and new ways of winning business, managing a demanding bunch of important clients takes coordination.

Alex Charlwood, a senior BD manager in the capital markets team at Herbert Smith Freehills, says: "One of the key things for a BD person is getting their head round the partnership. A key skill is being able to tread the political tightrope and build consensus. There is an increasing trend for people to come in from other professions outside of the law – they come in with lots of ideas, but they won't necessarily get them through in a law firm. Sometimes they are too revolutionary."

The good, the big and the ugly

The firms that have been most successful on the BD front are not necessarily the ones with the most money to throw at it. Those within the profession accuse magic circle BD teams of trading on the strength of the brand rather than doing any cutting edge business development itself.

The competitive mid-tier is seen by many as the leading edge of BD efforts in the sector, with firms such as Mishcons (see box), Olswang, Addleshaw Goddard, Burges Salmon and DWF all cited by other BD professionals as punching above their weight thanks to some innovative projects.

Addleshaws for one has worked hard on the CRM aspects, creating a unit within the firm known as the Client Development Centre. Through this, Addleshaws' BD team provides training and support to GCs in the form of seminars, mentoring and research, for example, to help the in-house team improve their business leadership skills, commercial acumen and overall standing within the firm.

Off the back of a sizable study into challenges facing in-house teams, due to be published shortly, the firm earlier this year launched a five day leadership training course with the aim of "[supporting] top talent and future leaders within in-house teams [to] prepare for their next significant leadership roles".

Recognising this direct and independent interaction between the BD team and clients is not commonplace, BD rivals believe it has helped the firm make substantial headway with targeted clients such as Barclays.

Olswang is another firm that has put a particular emphasis on support to in-house teams, as well as trying to integrate client feedback into its business. The firm recently held its first ever fee-earner retreat, where over 400 people spent a significant amount of time listening to what five selected clients had to say about their businesses and the way they liked to work. Last year the firm ran a 'client listening week' and is shortly due to publish a "deliberately provocatively named" Little book of client infatuation – a guide, edited by clients, for client relationship partners on how to manage their relationships and conduct their business.

Jo Witham, head of client relationship management at the firm, comments: "The role of a business development professional is to work alongside the legal transactional team. BD can engage with clients independently from the legal team…they also share insight as to what different in-house teams are doing in their own sectors. For BD to continue to evolve, direct client access and sharing market intelligence remain critical."

CRM is an area that has been a particular focus of investment – both in terms of time and money – from law firms in recent years.

A&O is one such firm, having rolled out an internal database of experience and contract management dubbed EPiC (Experience, Pitches and Contracts) around a year ago. Marketing and BD people are able to access information about experience in particular sectors, countries or with particular clients from around the firm's offices. The database is integrated into the firm's financial system and when lawyers input information it automatically triggers updates of other internal processes.

Grove (pictured) comments: "Historically there would be a clumsy manual process where we would have to ring or mail loads of people to find out what experience we have on mining projects in the Congo. Now people can find this out much more efficiently; it's important we get this right – our experience is our key asset. Globalisation has arrived; if we are investing in a broad network for global clients then we have to have a truly globally coordinated marketing and BD function to support the partnership."

A&O's efforts in BD illustrate one interesting shift in the dynamic over the last 10 to 15 years. While there are plenty of mid-tiers that punch above their weight when it comes to BD, the cliche of the complacent City leader no longer holds to the extent it once did. Recent years have seen top City law firms increasingly commit to the idea of proactive marketing and branding, where once they would have largely left it to their own partners and the firm's storied reputation to do the heavy lifting.

Freshfields' sponsorship of the Olympics is one striking example, but all of London's big four have made efforts to improve not only their CRM, as you would expect, but also their wider performance in branding and marketing. The creation of A&O's Global Law Intelligence Unit, a research and thought leadership team, is one example of law adopting the kind of models seen in consulting like McKinsey & Company.

In contrast, some of the larger national and regional firms, which 10 years ago had some of the most proactive and impressive marketing professionals and a greater willingness to aggressively push their brands, now appear to have withdrawn somewhat.

The next wave

The role of BD stands at an interesting point in the legal industry. Having improved substantially from its initial beginnings, its level of acceptance has grown hugely in a relatively short space of time.

Given the significant changes likely to face a still globalising legal industry, in theory at least, BD should become a far more central element of what the modern law firm strives to excel at. The drive to commoditise products; pressure to win market share in a low-growth environment; moves to reduce the work handled by expensive lawyers – all these forces should give BD a chance to take a larger role.

But how that plays out is open to debate. For one, the cause of BD staff – or at least the better BD staff – will be aided if law firms get better at measuring the contribution of their efforts.

To be frank, this kind of transparency is something that some senior BD professionals have yet to entirely reconcile themselves to. It is one thing to preach openness and communication for your firm's partners, another to practise it yourself.

A key area in which BD could evolve would be in more sophisticated approaches to branding – echoing perhaps Moss' approach at Mishcons or some of the pioneering efforts at the pre-merger DLA, which launched a much-admired campaign based on its difference to the classic City adviser.

Certainly, there should be a demand for such services. As one senior BD professional jests, if you covered up the branding on a law firm's website, you would struggle to see the difference between them, such are the similarities between what they promise to offer clients and the way they package their services.

Historically, law firms have been terrible at making themselves stand out, instead churning out indistinguishable messages (admittedly, banks and accountancy firms haven't been much better at playing the USP card).

Applying more sophisticated, sector-focused research and client support is another potential route, and one that several firms have begun experimenting with.

Given the obvious rewards of getting it right and the number of firms struggling to position themselves in what remains a relatively fragmented industry, it appears that the tide of momentum is with the BD community.

As Jackson concludes: "I believe it's time for one firm to bite the bullet and totally invest in their BD (principles, leadership, commitment, measurement and the resource).

"Lawyers have to own the day-to-day activity but a well thought-through BD platform could transform a firm's client culture, performance and client satisfaction."

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Selling the City – the low down on BD teams at London's top firms

Linklaters

Firm-wide BD head: Graham Leigh, director of marketing

Background: Recruited from Mercer (HR consulting industry) where he was global chief marketing officer. Prior to that, career spent in retail financial marketing with spells at American Express and Barclays

Reporting to: global chief operating officer and chief financial officer

Other key staff: Graeme Parrott, head of UK business development and sectors; Joanne Gray, head of marketing & business development, Asia; Rita DeCaria, head of marketing & business development, New York; Marcus Willamowski, head of marketing & business development, Germany

Total number of BD staff: 80-100* estimate 

Allen & Overy

Firm-wide BD head: Richard Grove, director of marketing, BD and communications

Background: Has been with A&O for around five years and has a background in marketing for IT and consultancy firms

Reporting to: Senior/managing partner

Other key staff: Michael Michaelides, associate director BD; Stefanie Hoogklimmer, associate director of marketing 

Total number of BD staff: 150-200

Clifford Chance

Firm-wide BD head: Karim Klaus Emara, global head of business development and marketing

Background: Joined CC from Deutsche Bank where he was a managing director and global head of client marketing in the corporate & investment bank. Before that he was a partner at Accenture

Reporting to: David Childs, managing partner and Amanda Burton, chief operating officer

Other key staff: Stephen Arnold, global head, sector and client development, financial institutions; Claire Offord, global head, strategic clients and opportunities; Roger Wagland, global head, marketing operations; Lynette Williams, global head, sector and client development, corporates

Total number of BD staff: 120-150* estimate

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer

Firm-wide BD head: Elizabeth (Libby) Chambers, chief marketing and business development officer

Background: Before joining Freshfields, she was chief marketing officer of Barclays' global retail and commercial banking division and Barclaycard. She has also worked as chief marketing and strategy officer at Bingham McCutchen, and held senior marketing and business development roles at Bank of America and the Reader's Digest Association. During the first part of her career, was an associate and then partner in the financial institutions and organisation practices at McKinsey & Company 

Reporting to: Ted Burke, managing partner

Other key staff: Jon McClay, head of clients and industries; Christian Marroni, head of global media relations; Lucy Murphy, head of marketing and business development, London

Total number of BD staff: 180 globally, with staff in all offices of significant size and about 80 in London

Hogan Lovells

Firm-wide BD head: Serena Simmons and Jolene Overbeck, co-chief marketing officers

Background: Simmons has been at Hogan Lovells since 2006 and prior to that she was at CC as head of BD for the finance & capital markets practice for nearly 10 years. The US-based Overbeck joined Hogan Lovells two years ago and was previously at DLA Piper for two years and before that Shearman & Sterling

Reporting to: David Harris and Warren Gorrell, co-chief executives

Other key staff: David Craigen, head of BD & PR for Asia and the Middle East (based in Hong Kong); Yaniss Aiche, head of marketing & BD for Continental Europe (based in Brussels); Adam Soames, head of clients & markets (based in London); and Chris Hinze, head of corporate communications (based in London)

Total number of BD staff: Just under 100

Herbert Smith Freehills

Firm-wide BD head: Paul Bonomy, chief marketing officer

Background: Prior to joining legacy Freehills in 2007  ran his own consultancy, providing a range of BD support to leading professional services firms including Ernst & Young and Freehills. He has previously held director and leadership roles within organisations such as Citibank, Diners Club and Bovis Lend Lease

Reporting to: David Robinson, joint COO and Mark Rigotti, managing partner, industries and clients

Other key staff: Cathy Trow, based in London, oversees branding and campaigns in the firm; Darren Milo, based in Melbourne, oversees the firm's BD function in Australia

Total number of BD staff: 147

Slaughter and May

Firm-wide BD head: Alison Hahn, head of business development

Background: Qualified as a solicitor at Slaughter and May, she moved to the non-fee earning side of the practice in 1999/00 to work with the partners involved in the implementation of the firm's international strategy  

Reporting to: Paul Olney, practice partner

Total number of BD staff: More than 25

Norton Rose

Firm-wide BD head: Laura Shumiloff, group director of marketing and communications 

Background: Shumiloff has over 15 years' experience of advising on business development, marketing and communications in the professional services sector. She was previously a financial journalist

Reporting to: Peter Martyr, Norton Rose Group chief executive

Other key staff: Paul Beattie, head of business development, Europe and sectors; Sean Twomey, head of business development, Asia; Lise Monette, chief marketing officer, Canada; Lisa Thomas, head of marketing, South Africa; Rachael Younger, head of business development, Middle East, Africa and Central Europe; Caroline Waldron, chief marketing officer, Australia

Total number of BD staff: Around 60-90 

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Oz does it better – the international outlook

If the quality of BD around major City law firms is variable, by consent it remains leagues ahead of the sophistication achieved in virtually every other major international market. While the UK – and London in particular – has proved to be a hub for some innovative BD projects, most City firms' international BD teams are way behind, with different local attitudes and understaffing hindering much of the development. On a more basic level, the extent to which UK law firms have adapted corporate-style governance models provides far more support for formal BD in the UK than in the more traditional partnerships that dominate in other countries.

This holds even in the US, despite the size of the market and the fact that a handful of chief marketing officers have reportedly been paid $1m (£621,000) packages. The reason is simple: the far stronger emphasis on partners' own business-winning and eat-what-you-kill pay models give non-lawyer BD teams far less room to move.

One major market that has consistently produced sophisticated marketing and branding efforts is Australia. The robustly commercial outlook and sophisticated governance of Australia's leading law firms has helped support such efforts. In addition, the intense competition between the country's evenly-matched top firms has seen firms investing in formal BD to gain market share.

It is notable that Herbert Smith's tie-up with Freehills has seen many of the Australian law firm's BD team adopt senior roles in the merged firm, with Freehills' Paul Bonomy becoming chief marketing officer for the combined practice. Similar dynamics have also seen marketing professionals punch above their weight in other Commonwealth jurisdictions like Canada and South Africa. But for now London remains probably the key hub for cutting edge legal BD.

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Breaking the mould: Mishcon de Reya

Keen to get away from an image of being a celebrity divorce firm, Mishcon de Reya has been investing significant time and effort in its business development function. The firm brought in Elliot Moss (pictured)  as its new director of business development in 2009 from a 15-year career in marketing. Moss, who sits on the firm board and is paid comparably to an equity partner, has overseen a rebranding of the firm under a new tag line 'It's business. But it's personal' as well as launching a number of collaborations outside the legal sector to build the firm's name.

The firm has tied up with the Financial Times, in a six figure deal, to produce supplements and a microsite promoting entrepreneurs and deal makers. An agreement with luxury lifestyle group Quintessentially sees the firm offer concierge services to clients, while the firm is also one of the patron members of the London Chamber of Commerce.

Moss himself presents a show on Jazz FM called Jazz Shapers, sharing music from "risk takers, leaders and influencers of jazz, soul, funk and blues, alongside interviews with their equivalent in the business world".

Moss says: "Most firms spend money on the wrong things and what the partners want them to spend money on – that's not the right response. It's about professionalising the running of a law firm and the problem is most firms don't give business development professionals the authority they deserve.

"Lawyers are used to telling BD people what they want. When I joined the firm the BD function was not well thought of. If firms continue to not invest in proper BD and marketing professionals, then websites, pitches – everything – will continue to be dull.

"My role is to articulate the 'voice' of the firm. I have given the firm a clear strategy, and focussed on consistency and coherence in everything we do. This approach has not been delivered to the degree we are delivering it in the legal world – yet. In the post Legal Services Act environment I am sure it will become more common." 

With the business on track to grow from £47m to £80m in three years, it must be doing something right.

• For more, see Sale of the 21st century – where now for law firm BD?