---
title: "The Law Firm Partner BD Skills Matrix: What Partners Need to Win, Grow and Develop Client Relationships"
description: Discover the 11 business development skills law firm partners need and how to use the LBi Partner BD Skills Matrix to identify training needs.
---

[Legal Balance Institute Blog](https://insights.legalbalanceinstitute.com)

# [The Law Firm Partner BD Skills Matrix: What Partners Need to Win, Grow and Develop Client Relationships](https://insights.legalbalanceinstitute.com/the-law-firm-partner-bd-skills-matrix-what-partners-need-to-win-grow-and-develop-client-relationships)

 Written by [Scott Simmons](https://insights.legalbalanceinstitute.com/author/scott-simmons) | Sep 30, 2026, 8:35:17 PM

Law firms spend a lot of time telling partners they need to do more business development.

Build your network. Cross-sell. Get closer to clients. Bring in more work.

The problem is that none of those instructions tells a partner what they actually need to get better at.

If somebody told you that you needed to improve as a lawyer, you wouldn't expect the conversation to end there. You'd want to know what needed improving. Drafting? Advocacy? Negotiation? Technical knowledge? Client communication?

Yet when it comes to business development, we often treat the whole thing as one skill, when it's actually a collection of capabilities and behaviours that can be identified, practised and developed.

If law firms want more partners contributing to growth, they need to get much clearer about what those capabilities are. Instead of relying on rainmakers, we should be developing them.

## **What are partner business development skills?**

Partner business development skills are the capabilities lawyers use to identify, create, develop and convert opportunities to help clients and win work.

They include understanding clients, conducting effective sales conversations, developing relationships, recognising opportunities, cross-selling appropriately, following up, networking, presenting, using CRM effectively and deliberately developing new markets and relationships.

Some partners will be stronger in certain areas than others. That doesn't make BD an innate talent, and it doesn't mean we have to turn lawyers into stereotypical salespeople.

I'd argue that good business development is an extension of what lawyers should already be doing as trusted advisers: being curious, asking good questions, understanding the client's wider circumstances and working out where they or their firm can genuinely help.

The difference is that we need to teach lawyers how to do that deliberately. This is especially important when firms think about business development training. Before deciding what training partners need, you first need to define what you expect them to be able to do. Otherwise, “BD training” can easily become a collection of generic activities rather than development aimed at specific capability gaps.

## **The Law Firm Partner BD Skills Matrix**

We've developed the LBi Partner BD Skills Matrix to help firms move away from vague expectations about business development and towards identifiable capabilities and observable behaviours.

Drawing on our work training and coaching lawyers in business development, we've grouped the skills partners need into 11 core capabilities:

| **BD capability** | **What it means** | **Observable partner behaviour** | **Contribution to client/firm growth** | **Potential development need** |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| **Client discovery & commercial curiosity** | Understanding the client's business, objectives, pressures and wider circumstances before jumping to the legal answer | Asks questions beyond the immediate legal issue and explores what the client is trying to achieve | Creates deeper client understanding and helps uncover needs and opportunities that might otherwise be missed | Discovery skills, questioning, listening, commercial awareness |
| **Consultative sales conversations** | Helping a prospective or existing client explore their situation, options and desired outcome before recommending a solution | Leads a structured conversation rather than immediately pitching expertise or giving answers | Improves the quality of opportunities and helps clients make informed buying decisions | Consultative selling, listening, questioning, communicating value |
| **Relationship development** | Building purposeful relationships beyond individual matters or immediate opportunities | Maintains useful contact, creates value between matters and develops relationships over time | Strengthens trust, retention, referrals and future opportunities | Relationship planning, follow-up, client development |
| **Client expansion** | Identifying additional ways the lawyer or firm can genuinely help an existing client | Explores the client's wider priorities rather than waiting for the next instruction | Develops the relationship and increases the firm's relevance to the client | Client conversations, opportunity identification, account development |
| **Cross-selling** | Recognising a need outside the partner's own expertise and connecting the client with the right colleague | Makes relevant introductions based on a recognised client need rather than simply promoting another department | Gives clients access to more relevant expertise and creates opportunities across the firm | Internal knowledge, client discovery, introductions, collaboration |
| **Opportunity progression & follow-up** | Moving potential work towards a clear next step rather than allowing conversations to drift | Agrees what happens next, records actions and follows up consistently | Reduces lost opportunities and maintains momentum | Follow-up, pipeline management, next-step conversations |
| **Networking** | Creating and developing useful professional relationships rather than simply attending events | Prepares for events, starts meaningful conversations and follows up afterwards | Builds networks that can produce opportunities, introductions, insight and referrals over time | Networking conversations, preparation, follow-up, relationship development |
| **Presentations & pitches** | Communicating expertise and value in a way that is relevant to the audience | Focuses on the client's priorities rather than delivering a presentation about the firm | Helps clients understand why the lawyer or firm is relevant to their situation | Presentation skills, value communication, pitching |
| **CRM discipline** | Capturing and using relationship and opportunity information systematically | Records useful intelligence, opportunities, next steps and relationship information | Makes BD knowledge available beyond the individual partner and supports better follow-up and collaboration | CRM habits, pipeline discipline, relationship intelligence |
| **Target-market & new business development** | Deliberately building visibility and relationships within selected markets | Identifies priority organisations and people and develops a sustained approach to reaching them | Reduces dependence on chance referrals and creates new sources of work | Targeting, prospecting, positioning, outreach |
| **Mindset & sustainable BD habits** | Developing the confidence and consistency to keep doing BD alongside client work | Protects time for BD, takes action consistently and continues when opportunities don't produce immediate results | Creates a more sustainable pipeline and reduces dependence on sporadic bursts of activity | Confidence, habits, accountability, planning |

 

There is an important distinction running through the matrix between activity and capability.

Attending a networking event is an activity. Being able to start a useful conversation, understand the other person's world, spot common ground, create a reason to continue the relationship and then follow up is the capability you're trying to develop.

The same applies elsewhere. Putting something into the CRM doesn't necessarily mean somebody is using CRM well. Introducing a colleague doesn't automatically make it good cross-selling. Sending three emails after a proposal doesn't tell us whether the follow-up was any good.

If firms measure the activity without looking at the capability underneath it, they risk encouraging lawyers to become busier at BD without becoming better at it.

## **Understanding clients before trying to sell to them**

One of the most important BD skills for lawyers is also one of the easiest to overlook: curiosity.

Lawyers are trained to diagnose problems and provide answers. That's extremely useful once you're advising a client, but it can work against you when you're trying to understand one.

A prospective client explains a problem. The lawyer recognises it. They've seen it before. Within minutes, they're explaining what needs to happen.

The lawyer may think they're demonstrating expertise, but they've started solving a problem before they fully understand it.

Good discovery goes further. What's happening? Why is it a problem now? What is the client trying to achieve? Who else is affected? What are the commercial consequences? What would a good outcome look like?

That isn't about mechanically working through a list of sales questions. It's about being sufficiently curious to understand the client before deciding what they need.

A good consultative sales conversation works on the same principle. It isn't a pitch disguised as a conversation. You're helping both sides work out whether there is a problem worth solving, what the client needs and whether you or your firm are the right people to help.

For many lawyers, improving this area changes the nature of BD considerably because they don't need to learn how to become more "salesy". They need to learn how to become more curious.

## **Growing existing client relationships**

Client development, client expansion and cross-selling are often used almost interchangeably. They're related, but they aren't the same thing.

**Client development** is the broader process of strengthening and developing the relationship over time.

**Client expansion** means identifying additional ways you or the firm can genuinely help that client.

**Cross-selling** is one form of client expansion: recognising that the client has a need that could be met by somebody elsewhere in your firm and making the appropriate introduction.

That distinction is useful because telling partners to "cross-sell more" can produce exactly the wrong behaviour. Clients don't want to be passed around your departments because somebody has spotted an opportunity to increase revenue.

If you understand their business, plans, challenges and priorities, introductions to colleagues become much more natural. You've recognised something the client may need and happen to know somebody who can help.

The skill isn't simply making the introduction. It's understanding enough about the client to recognise when that introduction would be useful.

## **Turning opportunities into work**

Not every good conversation turns into work immediately, particularly in legal services where buying decisions can take time. A potential client may not be ready. Another decision-maker may need to be involved. Budgets may not have been approved. Circumstances may change.

That makes opportunity progression and follow-up genuine BD skills rather than administrative tasks.

One of the simplest things a lawyer can learn is how to finish a conversation with clarity about what happens next. Sometimes that's a proposal, but it might equally be another meeting, an introduction, some additional information or an agreement to reconnect at a particular point.

Where there is an appropriate next step, agree it.

Follow-up then becomes part of continuing that conversation rather than repeatedly checking whether the client has made a decision. Sometimes you have something useful to add. Sometimes circumstances have changed. Sometimes the right follow-up is simply doing what you agreed you would do.

The point is to stop potentially valuable relationships and opportunities disappearing into the vague territory of "keeping in touch".

## **Building new relationships and markets**

Networking is probably one of the clearest examples of why activity alone doesn't tell you very much about somebody's BD capability.

A lawyer can attend 20 events a year and generate very little from them. Another might attend five and develop several useful relationships.

What happens before, during and after the event is far more interesting than the number of events attended. Why are you going? Who would you benefit from meeting? Can you have a useful conversation when you get there? What are you going to do afterwards?

The same thinking applies to new business development more broadly.

Many partners build practices largely through reputation, referrals and existing relationships, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if a firm wants to develop a particular market or reduce its reliance on existing sources of work, somebody has to be more deliberate about it.

That means knowing where you want to build, who you want to build relationships with and why your expertise is relevant to them. Networking, content, presentations, introductions and outreach can then support that strategy rather than becoming a collection of unrelated BD activities.

## **Turning individual BD into firm-wide capability**

One of the problems with relying heavily on individual rainmakers is how much useful information can remain with the individual.

A partner knows the client. They know who they've spoken to, that a prospect may be considering a project next year, that somebody is moving role or that another part of the firm might be able to help.

If none of that goes beyond the partner, the firm doesn't really own much of that knowledge.

This is where CRM becomes a behavioural issue as much as a technology one. The system can only help if people put useful information into it and then use that information.

The aim isn't to persuade partners to fill in more fields for the sake of having a tidy database. It's to make relationship and opportunity information useful. Who knows whom? What have we learned? What have we agreed to do? Is there an opportunity here? When should somebody follow up?

That information makes it easier for colleagues to work together and harder for useful opportunities to be forgotten. It also reduces the extent to which the firm's understanding of an important relationship disappears when the person holding that knowledge moves on.

## **How to use the matrix to identify BD training needs**

The point of a skills matrix isn't to decide that every partner needs 11 training courses. Different lawyers will have different gaps, and the development should reflect that.

One partner may be excellent at developing relationships but poor at progressing opportunities. Another may know an enormous number of people but rarely turn those contacts into meaningful conversations. Somebody else may be very good in front of clients but do little to build relationships outside their existing client base.

Those are different development problems.

The matrix gives a firm a way of getting more specific about them. What do we actually expect our partners to be able to do? What would we see them doing if they were good at it? Where are we already strong? Where are people struggling? And, importantly, which of those capabilities are most relevant to what the firm is trying to achieve?

If a practice group wants to expand its work with existing clients, its priorities may be client discovery, relationship development and cross-selling. A team trying to enter a new market may need much more emphasis on targeting, networking and new business development.

That is far more useful than deciding that everybody needs "BD training" and putting the whole partnership through the same programme.

In practice, that means using the matrix in three stages.

**1. Decide which capabilities matter most.**

Start with what the firm, practice group or team is trying to achieve. Growing existing client relationships may require different capabilities from entering a new market or building a stronger pipeline of new work.

**2. Look for the behaviours that demonstrate those capabilities.**

Don't just ask whether somebody is "good at BD". Look at what they're actually doing. Are they asking good questions? Agreeing clear next steps? Following up? Sharing useful client intelligence? Making relevant introductions?

**3. Develop the gaps that matter.**

Once you know which capabilities are important and where the gaps are, you can make much better decisions about training and development. Not every partner needs the same intervention, and not every gap requires a training course.

## **Why partner BD training doesn't always change behaviour**

There is a limit to what training can achieve on its own.

A partner can learn how to have better sales conversations and follow up opportunities, but they still need the opportunity and time to put those skills into practice. Cross-selling becomes harder if partners are protective of client relationships. CRM training won't achieve very much if senior people don't use the system themselves.

There is also the simple problem of what happens after the training.

A lawyer might leave a workshop with some good ideas and every intention of using them. Then client work takes over. A few weeks pass and old habits return. That's hardly unique to lawyers, but the competing demands of fee-earning work make it particularly easy for BD development to get pushed aside.

One-off training can work well where the need is specific. If you're trying to change behaviour over a longer period, people also need opportunities to practise what they've learned, come back to it, discuss what's working and get help where they're struggling.

Leadership has a part to play too. If a firm says BD is important but everything about workload, incentives and behaviour from senior people suggests otherwise, lawyers will notice the contradiction.

None of that is an argument against training. It's an argument for being clear about what you're trying to develop and creating an environment in which lawyers have a reasonable chance of using it.

## **From relying on rainmakers to developing rainmakers**

Some lawyers will always find certain parts of business development easier than others. The person who enjoys walking into a room full of strangers may take to networking quickly. Someone else may be particularly good at developing existing client relationships or spotting opportunities.

We shouldn't confuse being naturally comfortable with part of BD with having some innate ability to generate work that other lawyers simply don't possess.

Once you break business development down into its component capabilities, you can have a much more useful conversation about why somebody is struggling and what would help them improve.

Perhaps they need to ask better questions in client meetings. Perhaps they have plenty of relationships but don't follow up. Perhaps they're good at spotting opportunities but uncomfortable progressing them. Or perhaps they simply don't have a clear idea of which clients or markets they should be trying to develop.

"Do more BD" doesn't help with any of those problems.

That's why law firms need to spend less time asking why more partners aren't rainmakers and more time looking at what their lawyers have actually been taught to do.

If you want more people contributing to growth, define the capabilities you need, identify where the gaps are and develop those skills.

That's how you develop more rainmakers rather than relying on the ones you've already got.

### **Developing BD capability across your firm**

If you use the matrix and discover that partners are being asked to generate more work without having developed some of the capabilities they need to do it, that's a training problem we can help with at **Legal Balance Institute**.

We work with firms, practice groups and cohorts to identify where the gaps are and develop the relevant BD skills, rather than assuming everybody needs the same training.

For individual lawyers, **The BD Breakthrough Blueprint®️** provides a structured way to develop the skills involved in selling legal services, including consultative conversations, relationship-building, follow-up, objection handling and pipeline development.

If you're looking at BD development across a firm or practice group, let's start with what you need your lawyers to be better at.

[View full post](https://insights.legalbalanceinstitute.com/the-law-firm-partner-bd-skills-matrix-what-partners-need-to-win-grow-and-develop-client-relationships)

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