Become a better lawyer: running a case, doing a deal, moving in-house and other tips from the top

Network little and often. I try to make networking a part of my everyday activities. Which isn’t to say that I spend hours dreaming up business development plans before trudging off each evening to a marketing event. Mostly it’s just doing small things like pinging across an email to a client with a link to a newspaper article that they might find interesting.

Always look to see how you can help. I was asked to do a talk at a bank that I’d heard was on the look out for a good employment law barrister, so I brought along a terrific chap I know who specialises in this type of work. The bank got to assess him — and me — and they’ve since instructed us both. It may not even be work related: I once introduced a client facing a childcare crisis to an excellent babysitting service.

Keep in touch with former colleagues. Who knows what they might go on to do? One former associate in my team is now working in-house at a leading investment bank, where she’s responsible for selecting law firms to assist on major litigation matters. We’ve stayed friends; I’ve been in to give some free training; and it looks like we’re on the cusp of winning some business.

Share and share alike. Colleagues specialising in other areas of law are a similarly good source of work. Sending some business in their direction does no harm to your promotion prospects. A few months ago, I hosted a marketing cocktail party at Claridge’s, where I successfully introduced one of my contacts, the head of legal at a top FTSE 100 insurance company, to several members of the Jones Day corporate team.

As a lawyer you only have so much time, so don’t waste it. Once you speak at a couple of high profile events, it tends to snowball. If I agreed to speak at all the functions to which I was invited, I’d be spending 60 per cent of my time writing talks. Choose the ones with the right target audience. Talking to other lawyers in your field is useful in terms of raising your profile but it won’t bring in much business. I’m a tutor on an employment law course for HR professionals run by Industrial Relations Services (IRS). It’s a major time commitment — I lecture every week during term time — but it’s worthwhile as it gives me regular contact with key figures at some major companies.

Pre-event research is crucial. If you walk into a room of 120 people and have no idea who anybody is, you’ll either spend hours indiscriminately working the room or end up whiling away the evening chatting to someone who is not going to be at all helpful to you. Identify who you want to speak to beforehand. Then Google them and read up on what’s going on in their organisation. That way rather than launch in with inane chat — or worse, immediately try to persuade them to instruct you — you can ask about the redundancy plan that they’re in the middle of, or whatever it is that they’re working on at the time.

Keep a record of new contacts. Like most firms, Jones Day has a fairly sophisticated record keeping database, on which contacts are logged. Just be careful what you write: you never know who could end up reading it.

Follow up quickly. It has got back to me a couple of times that I’ve been a little slow in getting in touch after training courses. So now if I do an event, rather than fatalistically sitting back and thinking, “I’ve done my bit — they’ll either instruct us or not”, I’ll send an email gently inquiring as to whether they found it useful and asking if there’s anything else that I could do for them in the future.

Remember that you’re also part of other people’s networks. So be ready to take advantage of any opportunities that come out of the blue. Recently one of my contacts at Merrill Lynch happened to mention my name while chatting to a guy she knows at another bank. It turned out that he’d been at school with me. A couple of weeks later we all went out for a few drinks together and I’ve since done some training for his bank.

Networking, at its core, is just about getting on with people. The secret, if this qualifies as a secret, is not to treat it as something more complicated.

Lisa Mayhew is a partner in Jones Day

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