Clients aren't looking for a rehash of your qualifications during a pitch—that much is clear. So what do they want?: To learn something new. They want you to tell them something they don't know.

Goals matter. Without them we’re adrift. They’re particularly important when it comes to building a legal practice, because without a business development goal at the forefront of your mind it’s easy to default back to spending all your time billing hours.

By approaching business development as a two-way evaluation process, you can differentiate yourself, build stronger relationships, and ultimately achieve greater success in growing your practice.

Building trust with clients and referral sources requires a long-term commitment. This journey requires patience, dedication, and above all, consistent delivery on your promises.

It takes courage to face the fear and move toward it. But the more you face it the more it becomes a habit. You learn that taking the plunge is not as scary as you thought so you leap again. And again. Pretty soon, you can’t help but stretch yourself in new and exciting ways.

Constantly stretched for time and resources, lawyers must shift from the scarcity mindset that constraints are an impediment to progress to an abundance mindset that they are, in fact, a catalyst for success.

I believe that every lawyer who is interested in creating content for their clients should have a similar objective in mind—to build a platform (a blog, newsletter, podcast, book) of their own—but the best place to start is still social media, generally, and for most lawyers, LinkedIn, specifically.

The lesson here for lawyers is that expanding your practice through business development isn't simply about adding more contacts and clients; it's about continually ascending the value chain.