What's in a business case?

Summary

Cecilia Poullain shares insights on crafting a compelling business case for women lawyers aiming for partnership, emphasising market positioning, financials, and leadership. Learn how to leverage past results and strategic thinking to stand out in competitive environments.

You can download the free guide on How to Make Partner in a Law Firm on  www.ceciliapoullain.com/free-guide

Key Takeaways 

• Anchor potential claims to concrete, quantified past results.
• Start your business case with a market overview to demonstrate strategic thinking.
• Focus on a few key activities rather than trying to do everything.
• Use SWOT analysis to understand your market position and opportunities.
• Regularly review and refine your business case to adapt to changing circumstances.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

My name is Cecilia Poulain. Welcome to the Pathway to Partnership Podcast, where we talk about what it really takes to succeed as a woman lawyer in a law firm. The projections are particularly important for women. This is because women tend to be judged on the past, on their achievements, and men tend to be judged on their potential. Of course, this isn't fair and it's not how it should work, but if you understand that bias, it means you can work around it. And your business case is a powerful way of doing that. As a woman, you need to make the link between the two. You need to use your past achievements as evidence of your potential. So every potential claim in your business case should, to the extent possible, be anchored to a concrete, quantified past result. Welcome to the Pathway to Partnership Podcast. My name is Cecilia Poulain. I'm a former finance lawyer and I now work with women lawyers on everything related to partnership. In this podcast, you'll get clear on whether partnership is really what you want, you'll build your confidence, and you'll master client development in a way that feels sustainable. Let's get you walking into the office every morning clear on why you're aiming for partnership, free of imposter syndrome, and confident in your ability to bring in clients without burning out. When you're setting up a business, any sort of a business, you'd normally draft a business plan. But when you're going for partnership in an established firm, it wouldn't make any sense to draft a full business plan. Instead, you very often need to provide what's called a business case. What is a business case? At its simplest, it's a whittled down version of a business plan. It's the document that is intended to prove to the current partners that you will be a strong addition to the firm. In this episode we're going to be talking about business cases, what they are, how practices in relation to business cases vary from firm to firm, the various sections that you include, and finally just three of the mistakes I see women lawyers making in relation to their business cases. Okay, let's jump in. Before you open up a blank document and name it business case, you need to understand how it's going to be used and how important it is. And that varies enormously from firm to firm. Some firms don't require you to draft a business case at all, and they don't even expect you to bring in much client business in the first few years. In others, although you're expected to provide a business case, the reality is that the decision is made on personality, on sponsorship, on relationships, on your fit within the firm, on whether the existing partners want to develop a particular practice area, whether there's a gap for a new partner, etc., etc., etc. And in some firms, especially the bigger ones, there is a very formal partnership selection process, and the business case matters a lot. So in those firms, you want to spend plenty of time on it and you need to get it right, because you are going to be expected to bring in very high billables even in your very first year of partnership. And in some firms, the figure I've heard is as much as 1.5 million euros. So if you can, before you start typing, it's worth talking to as many partners as you can, and particularly the younger ones who've just been through the process to find out what the expectations are and how the decision is really made. And in your firm you may or may not be able to speak to the actual decision makers, and you may or may not get a straight answer from them. Only you know who you can approach to have this sort of discussion. Once you understand what's expected in your firm or the firm you would like to join, you can then start thinking about content. Some firms provide a template and give you guidance on how to fill it in. And if that's your case, you're lucky because lots of lawyers are left to work it out on their own. If you don't have a template, you basically want to showcase what you've already achieved as a lawyer otherwise, and provide detailed projections of what you expect you will be able to achieve in the first few years of partnership. Those projections are particularly important for women. This is because women tend to be judged on the past, on their achievements, whereas men tend to be judged on their potential. Of course this isn't how it should work, but if you understand that bias, it means that you can work around it, and your business case is a powerful way of doing that. As a woman, you need to make the link between the two. You need to use your past achievements as evidence of your potential. So every potential claim in your business case should, to the extent possible, be anchored to a concrete, quantified past result. If your business case is driven by that dynamic, then I'd like to share a structure that you might want to play around with. The first section is all about starting from the big picture, the market you're operating in and your position in that market. Can you see just how powerful it is to start with a wide vision of the market rather than starting with, say, a mini CV? It's much more interesting, and also you're demonstrating from the get-go that you're already thinking like a business owner, not like a lawyer. Let's take an example. Say you're a corporate lawyer in France. Say your mum is Greek, you speak fluent Greek and fluent French. And your ideal client is a Greek corporate working in France. You could start your business plan by giving an overview of that market. How many Greek corporates do work in France? How big are they? What sort of businesses are they? What sort of legal problems do they need help with? How successful are they? You then want to show why you specifically would be ideally suited to work for that market on the basis of your skills and your past experience. What have you already achieved for clients like that? Who are your existing clients and what's in the pipeline? Give examples of business development activities you have already done, give proof that they're working, and then show how you intend to develop those activities. In that way you're moving from past, your past business development activities, to potential. And depending on your particular practice, you will probably need to include three types of business development activity. Marketing activities, which are all about simple name recognition, top of funnel activities, which are all about making personal contact with potential clients who have never heard of you before. And middle of funnel activities, which are all about keeping those relationships warm. Regular listeners will recognize the marketing funnel, which is all about conversion rates. I just like to divert quickly on conversion rates. So for many businesses, the typical conversion rate is around 1 to 2%. That means that you need to contact roughly 100 completely cold leads to convert one or two into a client. And that's why you need to have a highly specific market, because it means that you need to contact far less people and are much more likely to convert them into clients. So say you contact 10 potential clients and one of them becomes an actual client, then you have a conversion rate of 10% instead of 1%. And a higher conversion rate is important because it means a whole lot more clients for a whole lot less work. Okay, so back to your business plan. You've included the market, your place in it, and how you intend to build your client base. You may then want to include a section on your main competitors and how you distinguish yourself from them. And ideally, you'd like to demonstrate that there's a gap in the market that only you can fill. Maybe you are the only Franco-Greek corporate lawyer, in which case your focus needs to be not on your competitors, but on proving that your market is large enough to be viable. But if you do have competitors, which is the case for most of us, you want to show where you overlap with them and more importantly, where you differ from them. And in doing this exercise, you may even realize that there is a particular problem that those clients have that no other lawyer is covering. And that give then gives you the opportunity to move into that market. Again, this section will really help you stand up from your peers because you will demonstrate that you're thinking like a business owner rather than like a lawyer. In the third section, you need to cover financials. So this is where you include figures about the clients you've already brought in, the revenue per file, and use those figures as projections for the future. You need to give your billable hours for the past few years and how you project that those billable hours will develop. And if you're going for partnership in your current firm, you may need to talk to the partner you work with about what will happen with existing files and clients. Will they stay with the partner? Or will they share some of them with you as you grow your own client base? And you might also want to ask questions about cross-selling. Who gets what percentage if you bring in a file? And when you've dealt with all the financials, you then need to include a section on leadership. You write about your experience so far in managing teams and projects and talk about how you'd like to develop those skills. Now I talk to many, many, many women lawyers about their experiences in law firms. So I know, I really know, the good managers are very rare in firms. What women say to me so often is he is an absolutely brilliant lawyer, but he's an awful manager. So if this is an area that you're interested in developing and are good at, what you want to demonstrate is why it is such a huge asset to the firm. And the reason it's such a huge asset to the firm is it means that if you're a very good manager, you can be getting so much more out of the talents of your team. So that's it. A suggested structure for your business plan. Start with the market and your current place in that market. Look at how you want to develop that positioning in relation to your competitors, add some finger figures, and finally talk about your experience and aspirations in terms of leading teams. And now I'd like to talk about just three of the mistakes I see women lawyers making in relation to their business cases. The first mistake is not being realistic. People expect they will be able to do far too much, especially in terms of business development, that they will be able to write the book, write articles, be on boards, run a podcast, attend conferences, run round tables, post on LinkedIn three times a week. Instead of trying to do everything, it is much more powerful to focus on a few key actions that you enjoy and do them really well. And then in your business case, choose a few highly specific targeted activities for each level of the marketing funnel. Again, this will help you stand up from your peers because they are all likely to include exactly the same wide, messy, smorgasboard of activities. The second mistake is related to the first, and it's all about not thinking enough about your positioning in the market. I've spoken about this at length in previous episodes, so it's questions like who is your ideal client? What is your market? Who are your competitors? What do you offer that distinguishes you from them? You might even want to include a SWOT table, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Let's take an example of how a SWAT table might apply to, say, an arbitration lawyer in Paris. Because Paris is the seat of the ICC, the International Chamber of Commerce, arbitration lawyers here are a dime a dozen, and almost every second lawyer I meet is an arbitration lawyer. So if you can provide a SWOT analysis in your business case, that will help to show you understand the market and your position in that market. Your strengths might be, for example, that you have an unusual language or jurisdiction. Say you speak fluent Mandarin or Arabic, and you have a track record advising clients from China or the Gulf. Maybe you've got a dual qualification. Maybe you have deep sector experience in energy construction infrastructure. Maybe you have experience before a specific institution or under specific rules. Your weaknesses might be that you're not yet ranked in chambers or the Legal 500, or maybe that you have a limited independent client base, that you don't have much experience sitting as an arbitrator, that you have a thin network outside Europe. An opportunity might be new EU due diligence or ESG rules, which are likely to generate supply chain disputes. It might be the energy transition driving disputes in renewables or battery supply chains. It might be sanctions-related disputes, growing demand for diverse arbitrator appointments which could open up arbitrator rules. A threat might be, for example, competition from other arbitration hubs, London, Geneva, Singapore. It might be an economic slowdown reducing MA activity. In-house teams might increasingly handle smaller disputes for themselves or push for fixed fees. Very few lawyers go into that level of detail in their business case and it will really help you stand out. The third mistake is submitting your business case and never referring it to it again. And that is a huge waste. If you've spent a lot of time thinking about it, about how you're going to bring in clients, about your future position in the fern, about how you're going to develop yourself and your team both as lawyers and as business people, then your business case can be an amazing tool. Whether you make partner or not, it's good practice for any business owner to block out time in their calendar at least every quarter to review their business. And if you have a well-drafted business case, this can be a fantastic tool to use in those quarterly reviews. You can check how you're measuring up to your projections and your goals, and you can adapt and refine it over time. So that's it for this episode. We've looked at what a business case is, we've looked at checking out how the business case will be used in your firm, we've looked at what you should include, and we've looked at just three of the mistakes I see women lawyers making in relation to their business case. Before you go, could I suggest that even if you're not drafting your business case right this second, you take ten minutes to think about what's working in your practice today, whether it's in terms of business development, in leadership skills, in strategic thinking, whatever it might be. Then think about how you might double down on each of those things. In other words, start thinking about how you go from your past experiences to increasing your potential. Thanks so much for joining me on the Pathway to Partnership Podcast. As always, I really appreciate it. And I hope that this episode has given you some guidance about drafting your business plan. If you found this useful, please share it with a colleague so that together we can help more women make it to partnership and thrive when they get there. Until next time, remember, you don't have to do this alone. And you get to define success as a woman lawyer on your own terms. Thanks so much for listening.