Telling junior lawyers to “go and network” is negligent advice
Every firm does it. A client seminar goes in the diary, a few associates get told to come along, and somebody senior says the words: get out there and network. Then everyone is surprised when the associates spend the evening talking to each other by the drinks table and leave at half past seven.
That isn’t a confidence problem. It’s an instruction problem. “Go and network” isn’t advice, it’s a wish, and it puts the whole weight of a firm’s future pipeline on people who have never been told what the job actually involves.
What you’re really asking them to do
Think about what sits inside that three word instruction.
You’re asking someone to walk into a room where they know nobody, identify who is worth speaking to, open a conversation with a stranger who is more senior than they are, hold that conversation without either pitching or waffling, work out whether the person has a problem the firm could help with, close politely, remember the detail, follow up within a few days, and then keep that relationship warm for years without any immediate reward.
That’s not one skill. It’s about eight, and most of them are learnable. Nobody teaches them.
Compare it to how you’d handle any other skill in the firm. You wouldn’t send a trainee into a client meeting with “go and advise”. You wouldn’t hand someone a completion and say “go and complete”. You’d show them, sit with them, debrief them, and let them do a small piece before a big one. Business development is the one area where firms skip all of that and then judge the result.
What the junior lawyer hears
Here’s the part that does the real damage. When you tell someone to go and network and give them nothing else, they don’t hear a task. They hear a personality test.
The ones who happen to find rooms easy conclude they’re naturally good at BD. The ones who find it uncomfortable, which is most people, conclude they’re not a BD person and never will be. That belief is remarkably sticky. You’ll still be dealing with it when they’re twelve years qualified and telling you, quite sincerely, that they’re just not a natural at this.
You didn’t test their aptitude. You tested whether they could work out an unwritten process on their own, in public, in front of colleagues.
The bill arrives fifteen years later
This is why it matters commercially rather than just being unfair.
Look at where BD sits in most firms now. It’s reactive. It clusters around a handful of partners who built their networks by instinct or luck. Cross-selling is patchy because relationships are personal rather than institutional. Succession is a live risk, because when those partners retire the relationships go with them.
None of that starts at partner level. It starts at year two, when a group of capable people quietly decided this wasn’t for them and were never given a reason to think otherwise. By the time BD becomes part of the partnership conversation, you’re trying to build a habit in people who have had fifteen years of practice avoiding it.
You can’t fix that with a half day course the year before somebody puts themselves forward for partnership.
What to do instead
The good news is that the fix isn’t expensive. It’s mostly a matter of being specific.
Give them a job at the event. Not “network”, but something real. Look after the three people from that client. Meet two people you haven’t met and find out what’s keeping them busy. Introduce Sarah to the property team. A defined task removes the paralysis, and the networking happens anyway.
Teach the follow up, because that’s where the value is. The conversation is worth very little on its own. The note two days later that references something specific they said is what starts a relationship. Show them what a good one looks like, and give them permission to send it without a partner reviewing it first.
Count internal networking. Junior lawyers can’t realistically be expected to bring in work, but they can absolutely build the internal relationships that make cross-referral possible later. Knowing what the other departments actually do, and knowing the people in them, is proper BD. Treat it that way.
Make the time real. If BD time isn’t recognised anywhere in targets or appraisals, you’ve told your people exactly how much it matters, whatever you say at the away day. That contradiction is obvious to everyone below partner level.
Debrief. Ten minutes in the taxi or the next morning. Who did you meet, what did you learn, what happens next. This one costs nothing and it’s the single fastest way to turn an evening out into a skill.
Let them watch someone good. Most partners who are excellent at this can’t explain what they do, which is fine. Take a junior along and let them see it. Then talk about it afterwards.
Start earlier than feels necessary
The instinct in most firms is to leave BD training until people are senior enough to need it. That’s precisely backwards. By then you’re not teaching a skill, you’re trying to undo a belief.
Start when they’re analysts, trainees and newly qualified. The stakes are low, nobody expects them to win anything, and the habits are cheap to build. What you’re really doing at that stage isn’t teaching technique, it’s making sure nobody concludes that this is something other people are born good at.
Your future leaders are perfectly capable of this. They just need someone to tell them what the job is.
Need help?
If you would like help with your marketing and business development, bringing on a marketing consultant with a fresh pair of eyes can make all the difference. I work with B2B businesses and professional service firms in London, Kent, the UK, and Europe, specialising as a professional services marketing and bd consultant. Please get in touch or book a free 30-minute consultation.
