By Barry M. Schneider 

Mr. Schneider is a principal with SAGE PDI, Inc. (www.sagelawyermarketing.com), and a veteran business development advisor for lawyers and law firms, as well as other professionals. He can be reached at bschneider@sageprofessional.com or 214-315-3212.

The winner of the Rainmaker award for the category “Partner – Transactions” is H. Patrick Callahan of Baker & Daniels LLP. Pat's winning entry got the attention of the judges as much for his role in developing the rainmaking capabilities of his colleagues as for his individual business development efforts. Indeed, the terminology “transactions” doesn’t well describe a person for whom relationships and relationship building are central to his rainmaking. Nor does the commendation for a particular year quite capture what truly has been an ongoing lifetime achievement in serving his clients and his fellow attorneys.

Pat has been individually honored already this year by Indiana Super Lawyers in Mergers and Acquisitions, and by Best Lawyers in America for Corporate Law. However, much like the soccer matches he loves to watch his son play, Pat truly believes that business development is a team sport. His ideal is to gather his colleagues in the same room and make sparks fly by sharing experiences and discussing relationships in order to improve service value to clients.

In the context of today’s law firm, Pat recognizes that all attorneys need to be involved in keeping existing clients and actively pursuing new ones.  Through his two guiding principles – relationship building and team play – Pat has helped make his firm truly sophisticated in its philosophy of client service and marketing strategy.

The Relationship Business: Are You Listening?

Pat sees himself in the relationship business: connecting people, incessantly building trust with clients, and through his mentoring helping other lawyers find their own style in doing the same.

Pat has mastered this effort so well that he appears to be a natural at it. A few years ago, he took Melanie Green, the firm’s new marketing director, to a local restaurant for lunch so they could talk about her new role. Just walking through the restaurant, Pat was greeted by many people he knew from the door to the table.

He’s plainly made himself well connected in the community, providing the firm with many opportunities to get on the short list. The key in building these kind of relationships, according to Pat, is not aiming for legal work, but finding something you can enjoy. “It is difficult to do something well if one doesn't care deeply about it – let alone volunteering your time to do it,” he explains.                                                                                  

Pat's involvement with a host of community groups, including the Greater Indianapolis Progress Committee and the Community Enhancement Fund of Indianapolis, speak to his passion for the City of Indianapolis and the importance of sustained economic development. His involvement with the Indiana Technology Partnership and his seat on the TechPoint board demonstrate the value he places on the growing technology community in Indiana. His interest in the state education system has pushed Baker & Daniels to work with institutions throughout the state, building important firm relationships in areas of research, venture capital, intellectual property and others.

Pat fosters these relationships with the same qualities he serves his clients: listen to what people are really saying in order to identify the issues at hand, and enjoy yourself while doing it.

Though it might seem natural now, Pat remembers what it takes to build one’s skills­ a sensibility that lets him help younger lawyers progress. “When I started out in the law, specializing in labor law, it was a small firm," he explains. "We grew that firm, and I then started another in the city. If you’re the one responsible for a 30 person payroll, it makes getting business so so much more personal and critical. The key was always understanding what your clients needed.  That’s how I evolved into a corporate lawyer, from my clients’ needing other things. That’s also why I moved eventually to Baker & Daniels since I needed a way to handle their diverse needs.”

Pat learned the power of these relationships early. “I had this epiphany early in my career as a labor lawyer, when everything right went wrong. I had just won a huge election issue for this company, and felt pretty good, that I was really something as a lawyer. But, at the celebratory lunch with my client, I sensed something was amiss. Turns out that the primary group of the company had a strong relationship with another firm, so my client was required to switch representation. That could bring you to tears,” he recalls wistfully. “I knew then the power of these relationships, and that excellent work notwithstanding, you could always lose your important clients.”

Now that’s how Pat starts his day: by finding items of interest and value to his clients in order to reinforce relationships: “I start by 5am with a few hours of quiet time, getting going early so I can keep nights free for the family. I typically review the local papers and Wall Street Journal. If I see things of value to a client, say about the tech sector, I alert them to look at the paper. They know that I’m always thinking about them and their industry. Of course, that starts by listening to them and getting to know their businesses really well..”

And listening still works: “One client got a notice recently about an antitrust suit, and was prepared to use D.C. counsel from another firm. I knew from other matters about individual defenses that could work for them and we had good lawyers to handle it. So it was really just about being there and listening, then thinking of what would be of value to the client.”

It may sound like a trick, but for Pat this listening comes from “enjoying people and trying to figure out what they’re all about. As a lawyer, I then just translate that into what they might need in their business life. For example, I serve now on the boards of several privately held companies ­ a real honor. One company wanted to build a new headquarters. In the meeting, I noted that many communities were offering sizable economic incentives, so I encouraged them to look into those possibilities in the communities.  They took advantage of one when it came to the decision. We did some work on the financing, but the satisfaction came from really helping them out.”

How do you build the right kind of relationship? “Great client relationships come from trust, and that starts with, first of all, good service; they aren’t paying good money for us to ruin their business. Then, it’s staying in touch with their business needs. So you keep in touch, see them often – lunches, breakfasts – a lot of talking and seeing. Over time, you grow into that trusting relationship; so they know they can rely on your imprimatur. And that means, at times, you need to handle the tough situations, the mishaps, and make them right. At times, it means you have to keep your mouth shut if you know they already have good representation. That’s also a key to good relationships: the support has to be reciprocal, not one way.”

Team play

Since he joined Baker & Daniels in 1988, the marketing of legal services has evolved from almost a "dirty word" in the profession to the heart of every firm’s strategic plan. Pat’s savvy has proved invaluable to his firm, but now it’s his extraordinary commitment to the enterprise that is impressive. His is a commitment of effort that includes mentoring/training, client service teams, and stimulating regional/practice expansion.

• Mentoring/coaching in business development

Pat's experience in relationship building and his understanding have made him a natural mentor for the firm's young partners and associates. He assists them in specific situations and helps them develop strategies for building their practices and getting connected to prominent business and community members.

Regarding mentoring, Pat says, “This is very rewarding, to give a strong start to a bright young lawyer. About a year ago, one brilliant attorney in appellate pulled me aside because he wanted to know how to get business. After some questioning, I learned that his wife’s best friend had become general counsel of a company. So I encouraged him just to find out what they do, what issues they were facing, what their concerns were, etc. I gave him some ideas so he could get started on business development and see what he could do to help. Now, after his outreach, it’s a big client for him and the firm.”

Even seasoned partners bounce ideas off of Pat in preparation for an important meeting or presentation, taking his respected advice to heart before meeting with even the largest of the firm’s clients.

Seeing the impact Pat's business development coaching had on individual attorneys, Baker & Daniels institutionalized mentoring and training at the firm. The firm organized a mentoring program which paired associates with partners in order to address business development questions and concerns. Pat was instrumental in developing the firm’s formal business development training. That program takes attorneys through a year long sales coaching curriculum that addresses the full circle of business development, from an introduction to building a relationship to closing the sale and soliciting feedback. Over 200 attorneys have gone through this training. The aim was to “make them more comfortable with sales and business development, while they also learn about the firm, and what it means to be a good lawyer.”

When asked what he tells attorneys about selling, he said he bases his recommendations on the fundamental principle of “understanding what the client needs, and then giving them what they need.” As an example, he tells about sitting around the table with parents when his daughter was in kindergarten. “I built a friendly relationship with several, but then lost touch. Five years later one of the mothers called me. She needed help with a large private company she now managed, and recalled some advice I had given at the time. Now, this is an extraordinary relationship for me and the firm. How did I convert this business? Listening and asking questions. And caring. They’ll know if you don’t care and are trying to sell.”

• Client Teams & Targeting Prospects

The emphasis on team play as well as relationships led to Pat’s becoming the managing partner of client service for the firm. Pat was heavily involved in creating and structuring Baker & Daniels' first client service team, now the model for the others, and continues to play a large role in the success of the program. “These client service teams were an outgrowth of my dislike for just being individually productive, and my relishing how well altogether a team can work.  We set them up for clients where we have a good relationship, and there might be other work. Then we assemble lawyers across practice group areas, for a nice mix of skills and experience, and include our internal marketing and business development professionals. We talk about what each of us is doing and thereby involve other areas that can bring value to the client. The team would not be very useful otherwise. For us, it’s about identifying service of value, exceeding how well we meet client needs, not about selling.”

Pat is also involved in a number of groups within the firm that work to target companies or individuals for whom Baker & Daniels is well suited to do work. Not surprisingly, his ability to bring senior attorneys around a table to discuss how to capitalize on existing relationships is notable, as is his ability to distill a target strategy tailored to maximize the value Baker & Daniels can provide in terms of industry, services and staffing. Pat recognizes here too that, while it may be a senior partner that gets the client in the door, less experienced attorneys can bring a great deal of additional value to the client and should be involved in the rainmaking process from day one.

• Office/practice building

Pat’s influence is striking even in the way the firm handles growth into new areas.. Consider his approach to the firm’s expansion into a Chicago office this year. Pat's abilities to cultivate relationships and mentor other attorneys through the business development process made him the ideal person to oversee that initiative.

To Pat, this was a challenge for a few lawyers out there in Chicago; rather, “it was a full-blown firm issue. We did the research. We had to understand what their practice was, and then within the firm how to matrix them in. So, we identified our firm clients that had needs in Chicago. We corralled those who went to law school in Chicago. We assembled the rainmakers of the firm, and got them talking about their relationships and specific opportunities for the firm lawyers in Chicago. And then we built a matrix of relationships, aiming to connect people.” In this way, he has ensured that the firm would actually launch an office, not let it evolve slowly on its own.

To complement this approach, just as he does back in Indiana, he coached the Chicago team “to identify targets and pursue engagements with those targets by building local relationships and then developing a Baker & Daniels case for each target's business.”

Pat remains in the forefront of other growth areas for the firm, stirring up multiple new practice areas as the need among the firm clients becomes apparent – including recent areas such as advanced manufacturing and logistics; recreational vehicles; captive insurance; motor sports and private capital.
 

Pat’s Bottom Line Advice:

This award honors Pat Callahan for his efforts in the last year and for his excellence in the category of “Partner-Transactions”. As should be obvious, though, it truly honors him for a lot more - his tireless relationship building and business development efforts throughout the years, as well as all the initiatives through which he has advanced the firm’s abilities.

Pat is also being honored for his clear-eyed view of the fundamentals of rainmaking, as reflected in his bottom-line advice to other lawyers:

“Spend time getting to know your clients as individuals, and know their business. Make and take opportunities to interact whenever you can, both early on in your career for the health of your own practice and later on for the benefit of the overall firm.

“Admittedly, business development is not natural for a law student loving those intellectual challenges of the law. But you can build your abilities and let it evolve. If you have any ability to connect, people will want to talk to you. You just need to be interested in what they’re saying and doing, because listening is the fundamental business development strategy. Listening allows you to hear the client's real need. Attorneys often assume they know the solution to a client's issue without really understanding the problem in the first place. Listening allows you to understand the heart of the matter and make the client feel that he or she is actually being heard.

“Finally, play a team game and be open to the power of relationships. Try to make magic by conversing with others in the firm, and connecting with those that generate sparks together with you. Each of you will gain legal work from those kinds of connections.”

That’s what Pat does; and that’s why he considers every day at the office ­– no matter how full – ­"a really fun trip."

© 2008 PBDI/SAGE PDI. This article comes from the September 2008 Issue of ORIGINATE!, the online monthly newsletter (with ongoing support resources) dedicated to helping individual lawyers develop business successfully in order to build their careers. The contents of this anniversary issue are complimentary; otherwise articles are usually available to subscribers only. Find out more about subscribing at www.pbdi.org/originate.