Smart Growth in a Tight Market: A Playbook for Law Firm BD and Marketing Leaders
By: Jessica Goldberg
As law firms adjust to a more uncertain economic climate, one thing is clear: the pressure to do more with less is no longer temporary, it’s becoming the norm. With corporate clients tightening budgets, M&A activity slowing, and lateral hiring leveling off, firms are re-evaluating their internal operations, including how they staff and support marketing and business development (BD) functions.
A Shift from Expansion to Optimization
While there’s no widespread hiring freeze, many firms are treading carefully, delaying new roles, consolidating responsibilities, and focusing on positions that clearly contribute to revenue generation. Traditional support-heavy business development teams are giving way to leaner structures with an emphasis on strategic, data-literate professionals who can connect the dots between marketing activities and client growth.
This shift has created a new imperative: optimize existing talent, systems, and processes.
Redefining Resource Allocation
Instead of expanding their headcount, firms are finding new ways to stretch their resources by:
Cross-training team members to handle both strategic and execution-level tasks
Integrating attorneys more directly into the BD process, especially in early-stage outreach and client engagement
Prioritizing work based on impact, not just urgency or tradition
Relying on metrics and dashboards to track activity, cost, and outcomes
This last point is especially critical. Without accurate, real-time insight into how time and effort are being spent—and what’s generating real results, it’s nearly impossible to make informed decisions about how to allocate limited resources.
The Role of Technology in Sustainable Growth
Enter technology—not as a replacement for talent, but as a force multiplier. The most forward-thinking firms are using tools that provide a unified view of marketing and BD activity across teams and time zones, offering visibility into project timelines, ownership, and outcomes.
Platforms that allow for project-level tracking, time attribution, and activity reporting help CMOs and BD leaders answer tough questions:
Where is our team spending its time?
Which initiatives are driving revenue?
What’s our true cost of execution and what is that effort producing?
Equally important, many firms are turning to gamified engagement and behavior change tools to encourage attorney participation in business development. In the past, success often hinged on a small number of rainmakers. Today, firms are striving to engage a broader range of professionals, making BD more inclusive and sustainable.
Rethinking Success Metrics
Traditional success metrics, such as pitches completed, events hosted, or newsletters sent, are increasingly being replaced or supplemented by value-based metrics, including:
Contribution to pipeline growth
Acceleration of cross-selling conversations
Quality of follow-up and engagement
Strategic alignment with firmwide priorities
When firms have the infrastructure in place to monitor these more nuanced indicators, they’re better equipped to adjust tactics in real time and demonstrate ROI to firm leadership.
Building Resilience Through Smarter Operations
The current economic environment is challenging, but it also presents an opportunity for law firms to future-proof their marketing and BD operations. By embracing smarter tools, focusing on measurable outcomes, and aligning resources with strategic priorities, firms can emerge from this period leaner, stronger, and more agile.
While the era of automatic growth through headcount may be waning, the firms that adapt - by blending technology, data, and cultural engagement - will be the ones that continue to lead the market, regardless of economic conditions.