After spending over 30 years inside law firms—including a decade as COO at a global AmLaw 30 firm—I’ve had countless conversations with managing partners about what keeps them awake at night. Increasingly, one concern comes up in almost every conversation: how to equip more partners with the skills and habits to become effective business generators in a legal market where client loyalty can no longer be taken for granted.
This isn’t just another operational challenge. It’s fundamental. The legal services market has transformed dramatically, with client loyalty plummeting from 76% to 53% in just five years. Procurement-led evaluations have replaced relationship-based selection processes, while buying decisions that once rested with a single executive now require consensus from stakeholders across client organizations.
The Two-Tier BD Challenge
Recent research analyzing 1,800 partners across professional and financial services firms* identified five distinct business development profiles: the Expert (focused on technical excellence and assuming their expertise will naturally attract clients), the Confidant (the traditional trusted advisor who believes excellent service will lead to a continuous stream of repeat engagement), the Debater (bringing innovative but sometimes confrontational solutions), the Realist (emphasizing transparency and expectation management as a means to earn client trust and loyalty), and the Activator.
Among these profiles, Activators—partners who commit to consistent business development, build broad networks, and proactively drive value creation—emerge as the clear leaders in today’s market environment, generating up to 32% more revenue through systematic relationship building and collaboration.
This creates a critical two-tier challenge that law firm leaders must solve simultaneously:
- Partners who aren’t natural Activators: Many excellent practitioners simply don’t have innate business development instincts, and many find it easy to deprioritize BD activities when managing client demands. They need incremental improvement strategies and structured support to develop consistent BD habits.
- Natural Activators: Your strongest business developers need resources to amplify their impact without burning out. These partners drive disproportionate revenue but risk exhaustion when trying to balance intensive BD with practice demands.
Addressing both groups effectively strains leadership resources and attention. Without clear visibility into who falls into which category, firm leaders struggle to deploy resources effectively or implement targeted development strategies.
Seeing Beyond Billable Hours
The balancing act between achieving substantial billable and non-billable requirements and finding time for strategic business development creates an ongoing challenge that affects nearly every partner. This difficulty intensifies as client expectations expand far beyond legal expertise.
Today’s clients demand we understand their business, market dynamics, and strategic challenges—not just their legal issues. This fundamental shift from being practice experts to business advisors requires significant additional time and attention from partners already struggling with competing priorities.
Traditional BD tracking systems compound the problem by focusing on lagging indicators. As leaders, we often don’t see problems until billings drop and it’s too late for meaningful intervention. By then, opportunities have been missed, and relationships may have weakened beyond repair.
Technology as the Growth Enabler
Having spent years overseeing operations, directing cross-functional teams, and driving strategic objectives at a global law firm before joining Intapp, I’ve seen both sides—implementing technologies within firms and now guiding firms in adopting these solutions.
Technology solutions have emerged as critical enablers in addressing these challenges.
The right platforms can support both partner groups while respecting the realities of their workload:
For partners who aren’t natural Activators, structured reminders and strategic “nudges” reinforce positive BD habits and provide timely prompts for client engagement or for internal collaboration on client opportunities. These behavioral triggers help maintain consistent outreach without overwhelming attorneys who already feel stretched thin.
For natural Activators, streamlined workflows that respect billable time constraints can amplify their successful approaches. By reducing administrative burden and automating routine tasks, technology helps these high performers focus their energy where it creates the most value.
Beyond individual support, technology enables more effective collaboration by delivering targeted information about firm activities in industries partners care about. This contextual intelligence helps identify relevant opportunities within existing relationships while making cross-practice expertise discoverable when client needs arise.
Intapp DealCloud Activator: Empowering Lawyers
Intapp DealCloud Activator seamlessly integrates into lawyers’ daily workflows, providing smart assistance that helps attorneys manage client relationships without disrupting billable work. The platform offers several key benefits that address the challenges facing both individual lawyers and the firm as a whole:
For individual attorneys, DealCloud Activator provides:
- Intelligent nudges that prompt specific actions like following up with clients, scheduling check-ins, or staying in touch with a high-priority contacts.
- Strategic relationship signals that highlight informational insights such as relevant client news, market developments, or potential opportunities attorneys might otherwise miss.
- Zero-entry relationship data capture that eliminates administrative burden while maintaining comprehensive relationship intelligence.
- Tailored market and client insights delivered right when they’re needed, helping attorneys understand clients’ businesses and anticipate needs.
- Cross-practice collaboration tools that make it easy to bring in the right expertise at the right time.
The platform helps partners maintain consistent client engagement by automating routine aspects of relationship management, allowing them to focus their energy on high-value client interactions rather than administrative tasks. This is particularly valuable for both developing business generators and accomplished Activators looking to maximize their impact.
For firm leaders, DealCloud Activator also provides valuable visibility through customizable dashboards that align with the firm’s strategic priorities. These insights allow leadership to:
- Recognize and celebrate partners who are engaging in business development activities that are proven to lead to increased revenue generation success.
- Identify opportunities for targeted coaching and support.
- Recognize emerging service gaps within the client base.
- Monitor cross-practice collaboration to ensure clients receive comprehensive service.
- Align business development activities with firm-wide strategic goals.
The ability to customize these dashboards ensures they reflect your firm’s unique cultural priorities—whether that’s emphasizing cross-selling, client satisfaction, or development of new business from target industries—while respecting the autonomy of individual partners.
DealCloud Activator functions as a supportive platform that helps both attorneys and leaders work together toward the common goal of building stronger client relationships and driving sustainable growth. The focus is on providing valuable tools and insights, driven by firm and market data, which empower everyone in the firm to be more effective in their client development efforts.
A Vision for Growth
The vision that motivates firm leaders is straightforward yet powerful: a firm where every partner contributes incrementally more to revenue generation by adopting proven Activator behaviors, supported by intelligent technology.
This transformation shifts business development from reactive to proactive—where partners anticipate client challenges and initiate meaningful conversations about implications and opportunities, rather than simply responding to expressed needs.
In today’s consensus-buying environment, the competitive advantage belongs to firms that embrace data-informed leadership. By understanding exactly which partners need which type of support, leaders can allocate resources more effectively, develop targeted coaching strategies, and transform their firm’s growth trajectory.
The future belongs to firms that successfully blend human expertise with technology-enabled insights. By embedding Activator behaviors into firm culture and technology infrastructure, we can build more resilient client relationships and capture greater market share.
To learn more about how your firm can develop and support more Activators—and how Intapp DealCloud Activator technology enables their success—download our comprehensive white paper.
*Research conducted by DCM Insights, sponsored by Intapp and published in the Harvard Business Review.