My main practice areas covered corporate tax law and criminal law. I have gained experience – both legal and commercial – at leading corporate law firms such as Norton Rose Fulbright, Stibbe and DLA Piper. Working at these prestigious firms enabled me to learn from the best and brightest the corporate legal world has to offer.

I am passionate about acquiring new clients for your business as well as strengthening your already existing client relationships. I believe that anticipating your client’s future challenges and requirements is what makes a firm matter. To achieve this goal, it is not only important to be on top of your legal game but also to be aware of the latest market and sector trends and how they could impact your client’s business. And not just ‘obvious’ legal developments but also phenomena which seemingly might not seem relevant at the moment, but which might heavily impact your client’s core business.

To this end you need someone with a keen legal and commercial sense in addition to being on top of market and sector developments, and a thorough understanding of your client’s business i.e., a practice development specialist.

By incorporating these aspects in your interactions with your client, they will feel that their law firm – no matter how big OR niche – is fully involved with their day-to-day businesses. This level of involvement creates trust which will ensure that your firm will be the firm they turn to in the event of any required legal assistance.

What is it exactly that I do for international corporate law firms?
In a nutshell: generate and follow up viable and relevant leads for your firm. How do I do this? I obviously need some information about your business i.e. which legal area you specialize in, your current sector focus, your potentially target sector focus, and of course what you would like to achieve clientele wise. I usually need an hour (tops) to gather this information from you.

After this I will go about tracking down viable leads based on market and sector trends and anticipated and current (legal) developments. My method is knowledge intensive and is tailormade to fit the respective leads’ needs and interests. You are in complete control of reaching out to said leads for which I will provide you the content of the message you wish to send them. All you will need to do is copy and paste the tailormade message I will provide you with in your own email template and clicking on ‘send’. My goal is to hand you whatever you need on a silver platter.

Sectors
The sectors I focus on range from Industrials to Consumer Goods Food to Retail to Financial Institutions to Tech. The practice groups mainly involved were Tax, Corporate Litigation, Capital Markets, Energy & Natural Resources, and Intellectual Property & Tech.

Within these areas I pay special attention to ESG. As we are all witnessing, ESG is more relevant than ever. Climate change, societal impact and corporate governance issues have become inextricably connected and corporates are expected to comply with ESG rules and regulations.

Non-compliance may have far-reaching consequences in quite a few of these instances, not in the least reputational damage and potential fines or other sanctions.

Nowadays it pays to be a legal and commercial sparring partner and not just an advisor on the sidelines. My aim is to ensure that your client has complete trust in your ability to advise them on strategic decisions with a view to legal as well as commercial implications.

What is practice development?
We all have an idea of what marketing and business or practice development entails in general. Usually it means mass mailings, newsletters, organizing webinars – and now that the world has opened up again – seminars.

While these facets of reaching out to clients is an important part of your branding, what often seems to be missing and is at least as vital if not more, in differentiating your firm from countless other comparable firms, is connecting with (potential) clients based on market developments, financial current events which have a direct impact on their specific business activities. In a nutshell: research-based practice development.

This requires legal knowledge as you will need to know what type of legal advice (tax, corporate, competition, banking) is relevant, as well as a good understanding of the client’s business. My approach is tried and tested and is founded on these pillars.

What differentiates practice development from marketing and business development?
As I am sure you know, most – if not all – sizeable corporate law firms have a marketing and business development department. But the concept of practice development is fairly new to the corporate legal world, although the US is ahead as usual. Practice development lawyers are not necessarily lawyers by profession but are assumed to have a good working knowledge of relevant rules and regulations pertaining to a certain industry or practice group. Why? Because this knowledge combined with commercial prowess is essential for client acquisition and retention. Although, as already stated, marketing and business development departments play an important role too, the relevance of practice development lawyers cannot be emphasized enough, precisely because of their legal and commercial knowledge which marketing and business development simply cannot provide.

Services
Client acquisition and retention – concrete and actionable leads
My main services as a practice development lawyer consist of client acquisition and retention on behalf of you with minimum effort on your part. How do I go about this?

1. Understand your existing and potential clientele and which specific legal services you provide them with (tax, corporate, finance, etc.) and in which specific situations.
2. Research recent market developments which could have legal consequences for them although there would be no legal issues at this point in time. This is how you differentiate yourself from comparable firms: point out specifically which (non-legal) sector development could impact your client’s business and how you can help them before they are even aware of an issue. Proactivity is key here.
3. Based on steps one and two I will draft an email for you which you only need to copy and paste into your email to your client contact. In the email I will have clearly and concisely indicate the relevant development and how you as their corporate lawyer can assist.

General strategy of your corporate law firm
As the world is evolving at an unprecedented rate, so too are challenges for the legal industry and especially corporate law firms.

These challenges include the vast complexity of compliance requirements, higher performance expectations, growing talent tensions, the urgent need for tech-enabled efficiency, increased insourcing and outsourcing of work, new competition, the increased demand of emerging areas such as Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), just to name a few.

Especially the areas of tech, talent and competition, are undergoing changes at an accelerated rate. Corporate law firms need to respond to or rather anticipate these developments and use them to their advantage. Again, concrete actionable steps are required in addition to an overview of general developments, which will also be provided in the report based on your firm’s unique sector focus, clientele, talent pool and legal tech requirements.

Samples of my work
If you would like to get a feel for what I can do for you, contact me for samples of work I have done for international corporate law firms – fully anonymized of course.