Professional Services BD

[Professional Services BD @profservsbd]

What a few days over in Rotorua, New Zealand with the lovely people from Tompkins Wake.

Big thanks to Jon Calder for the invitation and Emily Forbes from Bird & Bird for joining me in the sector discussions.

The Maori Jade Toki gift was a touching reminder for the trip.

[Professional Services BD @profservsbd]

https://t.co/m9hkH4aswJ

[Professional Services BD @profservsbd]

Huge congratulations to Nick Abrahams on his sold out one man show last night at the Hayden Orpheum called the "Accidental Lawyer'.

[Professional Services BD @profservsbd]

https://t.co/DG8hHArwgX

[Professional Services BD @profservsbd]

Great to have Rugby legend Michael Hooper to join us at the Legal Suppliers and Advisers Conference as Guest Speaker on leadership.

[Professional Services BD @profservsbd]

Starting this morning with a little humour care of Roberts Crosbie Mortensen Lawyers in Newcastle.

[Ann Srivastava @helloparalegal]

A friend of mine from Harvard Law set up his own firm last year. Solo practice. No associates. No paralegals. Working out of a co-working space with a laptop and a coffee habit.

Last month a mid-size business owner reached out looking for outside counsel. Three firms were being considered. Two of them were 15-attorney shops. The kind with pitch decks, associate teams, and glass-walled conference rooms that smell like fresh carpet and overbilling.

My friend was a one-person firm with a WeWork membership.

He almost canceled. He thought there was no way he could compete with that.

I told him to try one thing before he walked away. Open Claude Code. Give it the owner's name, the company name, and 45 minutes. Ask it to build a complete intelligence report using only publicly available data.

He did not think it would work. He tried it anyway.

Claude came back with a 13-page report.

He read it over coffee. Took 28 minutes. By the time the Zoom started, this solo attorney knew things about the prospect's company that the owner's own in-house team probably had not assembled in one place.

The company was incorporated in Delaware but registered as a foreign entity in Texas 14 months later. That is expansion. A second member was added to the LLC in 2024. Claude pulled the operating agreement implications from the state filing and flagged what a new member meant for governance, profit distribution, and decision-making authority.

Three active trademark applications filed in the last six months. Two were in a product category the company had never publicly announced. Nobody on the website knew about it. The trademark filings did.

PACER hit. The company had been named as a defendant in a vendor dispute 18 months ago. It settled. But the complaint was public and Claude read every page of it. The core issue was a supply agreement with no termination clause. My friend now knew this company had been burned by a bad contract. They would care deeply about airtight vendor agreements going forward. He did not have to guess. It was in the filing.

State court records. The owner had a dissolved LLC from 2019 with a different partner. A business divorce. Which meant this owner would value clear partnership terms and buy-sell provisions this time around. People who have been through a bad breakup want a prenup for the next one. Same principle.

Hiring activity. Four job listings posted in 60 days. Head of compliance. Operations manager. Two warehouse roles. They were scaling fast and hiring operational infrastructure. That is exactly when companies need outside counsel the most and know it the least. They think they need a lawyer when they get sued. They actually need a lawyer when they start hiring a Head of Compliance.

Glassdoor. 11 reviews. Every positive one mentioned culture. Every negative one mentioned the same thing. "No HR. No handbook. No process." A company growing faster than its internal policies. An employment claim waiting to happen. And a business owner who probably had no idea what his own employees were writing about him.

Google reviews. 4.3 stars. But Claude flagged a pattern in the 1-stars. Three different customers mentioned the same issue. Product delivered late with no communication. The biggest operational liability was not product quality. It was fulfillment. That is a breach of warranty problem, a customer retention problem, and a potential class issue if the pattern scales with the company.

Then there was a section Claude titled "Founder Mindset." It pulled a transcript from a podcast the owner appeared on and analyzed his communication patterns. One quote stood out. He said "I have spent more on lawyers fixing problems than I ever spent on lawyers preventing them."

That one sentence told my friend exactly how to position his entire practice. Not as a litigator. Not as a fixer. As the lawyer who prevents the problems in the first place. The pitch wrote itself.

Claude also analyzed the owner's communication style across LinkedIn posts, podcast answers, and X replies. Based on patterns it flagged what mattered for the meeting: this person values substance over rapport. He distrusts anything that feels like a pitch. Lead with what you know. Skip the small talk. Show your work before you ask for the engagement.

My friend adjusted his entire approach based on that analysis.

The Zoom started. No pleasantries. No "let me tell you about my firm" warmup. The owner gave his overview. What the company does. Where they are heading. What they need.

Then my friend said "I noticed you filed two trademarks in a new product category last quarter. Is that the line you are launching in Q3?"

Silence.

"How do you know about that?"

A solo lawyer working from a coworking space just earned more credibility in one sentence than the 15-attorney firm earned in their entire pitch deck.

He walked the owner through everything. The vendor dispute and what it meant for future contracts. The hiring pattern and the compliance risk it signaled. The Glassdoor reviews pointing to an HR exposure. The fulfillment complaints that were one bad quarter away from becoming a warranty liability.

He did not pitch his services. He showed the owner his own blind spots using the owner's own public data. Then he said which ones he would fix first and why.

The owner said "the other firms sent me a brochure. You just showed me you already understand my business better than they do."

He hired my friend that week. A solo practitioner over two 15-attorney firms.

No associate team. No paralegal pulling research. No marketing department. One Harvard Law grad with Claude Code, a 13-page report, and 28 minutes of preparation that the other firms did not think to do.

This is what I keep telling solo lawyers and most of them do not believe me until they see it.

The advantage is not firm size. It is not headcount. It is not a fancy office or a partner track or a receptionist who offers sparkling water.

The advantage is showing up knowing things the prospect did not expect you to know. That is what wins the engagement. Every time.

And right now it is easier than it has ever been. Because almost everything about a business is public. It is just scattered across 15 different sources that no lawyer checks before a pitch meeting. Claude checks all of them in one run and hands you a report you can read before your coffee gets cold.

Secretary of State filings. Incorporation, officers, registered agents, foreign qualifications.

PACER and state court dockets. Every lawsuit, motion, and settlement.

USPTO. Trademark filings tell you where a company is going before they announce it.

LinkedIn job postings. What a company is hiring for reveals what is broken inside.

Glassdoor. What employees say when nobody from management is reading.

Google reviews. The 1-star reviews are where the legal risks hide.

Podcast transcripts. The founder's own words analyzed for how they think and decide.

UCC filings. Who they owe money to. What assets are pledged.

Property records. Leases, liens, ownership structures.

Communication pattern analysis. How this specific person talks, processes information, and makes decisions. So you know exactly how to show up.

All public. All free. One report. Under 30 minutes to read.

The solo lawyer who builds this into their pre-meeting workflow will win clients over firms 10 times their size. Not once. Every time. Because nobody expects a solo to show up that prepared.

And that gap between what they expect and what you deliver is the most valuable asset in your practice.

My friend is a Harvard Law grad. He has no team. He works from a coworking space. He is winning over 15-attorney firms because he spends 45 minutes doing what they never bother to do.

The playing field was never about resources.

It was about preparation.

And preparation just got automated.

[Professional Services BD @profservsbd]

What's your story? Why do you do what you do? Why does your organisation exist beyond making profit?

[Professional Services BD @profservsbd]

I just created a comic with AI in seconds! Check it out: https://t.co/CdU1JjxhIO Is this you?

[Professional Services BD @profservsbd]

Purpose. https://t.co/qxh0vsz1M3 via @YouTube

[Professional Services BD @profservsbd]

Had a blast emceeing at the Accounting Business Expo at the ICC. Big shout out to the 12 speakers I had the pleasure to introduce.

[Professional Services BD @profservsbd]

Check out the latest article in my newsletter: Law firms & AI: Rabbits in the headlights or architects of their future? https://t.co/UyohCT7u9i via @LinkedIn

[Professional Services BD @profservsbd]

Fantastic tour around Auckland, Hamilton and Rotorua with Jon Calder of @TompkinsWake .

Hosting the local chamber of commerce event was an unexpected bonus.

[Professional Services BD @profservsbd]

https://t.co/6i7Z1qhWEv

[Professional Services BD @profservsbd]

https://t.co/xK1vsp72Qu
Believe me, despite rumours to the contrary, the world of the Rainmaker is still very much alive and well.

[Professional Services BD @profservsbd]

Check out the latest article in my newsletter: How AI will support growth, not replace the behaviours that create it. https://t.co/1DZ3pFS4HV via @LinkedIn

[Professional Services BD @profservsbd]

Old school BD. It's NOT AI.

Who is on your lunch list this month?

Big thanks to @Cullen_P_Haynes & Jon Sermon.

[Professional Services BD @profservsbd]

In a December poll, two thirds of firms reported decreasing numbers of billable hours whilst nearly nine out of ten admitted to an increase in write offs.

Do you suffer from any of these common issues shared by professional services firms?

How will you grow your practice in 26?

[Professional Services BD @profservsbd]

Check out the latest article in my newsletter: Business Development in 2026: What to Rethink, Refocus & Ruthlessly Drop. https://t.co/Kd4woq9YjN via @LinkedIn