Service provider to strategic partner
Last week we talked about rhythm, protected time and 90-day cycles. This week is harder. Here’s the uncomfortable question:
“If your main contact left tomorrow, how exposed would you be?”
If the honest answer is “very”, you don’t have a relationship. You have a dependency.
Here are three ways to change that. Enjoy.
#1. Relationship matching
Here’s the pattern we see again and again:
The senior partner has a strong bond with the GC. Below that? A thin layer of operational contact.
That’s not resilience. That’s concentration risk.
Proper client planning means mapping influence, not just hierarchy:
- Who controls the budget?
- Who shapes procurement decisions?
- Who runs legal ops?
- Who’s politically rising internally?
- Who influences the board?
Then match your people accordingly:
- Associate ↔ in-house counsel peer
- Senior associate ↔ divisional counsel
- Partner ↔ GC or business sponsor
- Sector lead ↔ business unit leader
- Your pricing, project management or innovation lead ↔ their legal ops team
Relationships should definitely not be solely constrained to lawyers. If they have a legal operations function, introduce yours. If efficiency is a pressure point, bring the pricing team into the relationship. If they are investing in tech, involve your innovation team.
If one resignation at the client would materially damage your revenue, the structure is wrong.
Depth across levels protects you when people move. And people always move.
#2. Stop being the “matter lawyer”
Transactional lawyers talk about the file.
Strategic advisors talk about the business.
If your last three conversations were purely about live matters, you are competing on competence and price.
To move up the value chain:
- Ask about budget cycles, not just instructions
- Discuss regulatory and market shifts before they land
- Share patterns you’re seeing across the sector
- Connect their challenges to what you’re observing elsewhere
The pivot is subtle.
When they start asking, “What are you seeing?” rather than “Can you draft this?”, something has shifted. You are no longer just executing work. You are shaping thinking.
And that is much harder to replace.
#3. Don’t wait for work
If all contact is instruction-led, your relationship is reactive. Proactive client teams build rhythm beyond live matters.
Two mechanisms work particularly well.
Forward-looking briefings.
Run tailored horizon-scanning sessions. What’s coming in regulation, funding, enforcement, technology? Not generic webinars. Specific to them. You become the early warning system.
Bring them into the tent.
Invite key clients into conversations about what you’re building as a firm.
Sector priorities. Investment areas. Talent strategy.
Ask them:
- What are you planning for this year?
- Where are you under pressure?
- What do you wish external advisers understood better?
When a client advises you as much as you advise them, the relationship changes.
It becomes mutual.
If your client only hears from you when there’s a live matter, you are invisible between invoices. And invisible suppliers are easy to replace.
Chat to Tina by voice, when you’re between meetings, on the commute to/from work, or heading into something you’d rather avoid.
Final thought
Client planning is not about managing work.
It’s about increasing relationship resilience, commercial intimacy and strategic positioning.
Hours protect this year. Depth protects the next five.
We’re building a team of voice enabled AI assistants to support you with BD activities and allow you to spend more time being human. Interested? We’d love to chat.
