Attorney Biz Dev

She started with zero clients, zero money, and zero strategy. Eight years later, she's one of the most followed attorneys in Vienna, with an audience most law firm marketing budgets could never buy.

Bill Burns and Tobi Steinemann welcome their very first guest to the show: Therese Frank, an insurance litigator, yoga studio owner, speaker, and feminist from Vienna, Austria. After ten years at a major Austrian law firm ended without a partnership offer, Therese built her own practice from nothing, and turned to social media because it was the one form of marketing she could actually afford. 

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If you're waiting for the perfect strategy before you post anything, Therese has one piece of advice: stop waiting.

Every partner retires eventually. Every lateral hire leaves a firm behind. So why do so few law firms have a real plan for what happens to the client relationship when they do?

In this episode, Bill and Tobi tackle succession planning, a topic most firms treat as an afterthought until it becomes urgent. They dig into why the incentives are often stacked against a smooth handoff, what a good transition actually looks like in practice, and why this is as much a culture question as a financial one.

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If your firm doesn't have an answer for what happens when a key partner walks out the door, whether by choice or by clock, this is the place to start.

Digital marketing still feels like foreign territory to a lot of attorneys, something separate from "real" legal marketing, something they're reluctant to fully invest in. It isn't. It's the same game it's always been, just played on a different field.

In this episode, Bill and Tobi break down what digital legal marketing actually is, and why the fundamentals haven't changed nearly as much as attorneys think.

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Your digital footprint is working for you around the clock, whether you're in a client meeting or on the beach. The question is whether it's saying the right thing.

Acquiring a new client can cost upwards of $25,000 and take one to two years of work, with conversion rates as low as 2–10%. Meanwhile, increasing client retention by just 5% can boost profits by more than 25%.

So why do most law firms still treat existing clients with nothing more than a holiday card and an annual barbecue?

In this episode, Tobi and Bill dig into the traps firms fall into once a client is "won". And they discuss what it actually takes to keep them, and grow with them, over the long haul.

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Bill and Tobi end with a challenge: pick one client you haven't spoken to in a while, prepare two thoughtful questions, and schedule a 20-minute call with no agenda. No pitch, no project, just attention. It might be the cheapest, easiest piece of business development you do all year.

You've done the work. The matter is closed. Now what?

Many attorneys move straight on to the next brief. In doing so, they walk away from some of the most valuable business development opportunities they'll ever have. In this third and final episode on Bill's seven-step BD framework, Bill and Tobi complete the circle: from client debriefing and experience enhancement all the way back to step one.

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This episode is especially relevant for: attorneys leading client relationships at any stage of their career; BD and marketing professionals in law firms; partners thinking about compensation structure and its effect on client retention.

The framework won't win every pitch. But it will give you a mindset and a set of tools that shift the odds — and calm the frantic feeling that BD is somehow out of your control.

Your client is convinced they know exactly what they need. But what if they're wrong?

In this episode, Bill Burns and Tobi Steinemann tackle the second part of Bill's framework of the seven essential steps in attorney business development. It takes them to what may be the most important and most overlooked question: not just what clients want, but whether that assessment holds up under scrutiny. The answer separates advisors from order-takers.

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This episode is especially relevant for attorneys who feel they spend more time pitching than listening, and for anyone who has ever lost a piece of work and wasn't sure why.

If you want clients who trust your judgment, not just your fee quote, this one's for you.

Most attorneys rush to the pitch. They spot a company, picture themselves doing the work, schedule a lunch, and walk in ready to sell. Then they wonder why nothing comes of it.

In this episode, Bill and Tobi kick off a three-part series on Bill's framework for business development: the seven essential questions every attorney should be able to answer before chasing a client and when maintaining an ongoing a client relationship. Part 1 zooms in on Question One: "Who is your client?". Sounds obvious, until you actually try to answer it.

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If you've ever walked out of a "great" prospect lunch wondering why nothing came of it, this one is for you.

You've been told to build your personal brand. Your firm has its own brand. So which one actually wins clients? And what happens when the two don't line up?

In this episode, Bill and Tobi unpack how firm branding actually functions in legal practice: what it does for the individual attorney day to day, why visual identity is only the surface layer, and how to think about a rebrand without panicking the partnership.

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Branding isn't decoration. It's the stage your business development happens on — and built right, it does some of the selling for you.

Most attorneys know they should be on LinkedIn. Far fewer know how to actually use it for business development.

In this episode, Bill and Tobi break down LinkedIn not as a broadcasting tool, but as what it really is: a real-time networking environment where the same principles that work in a room full of prospects apply just as well on screen. They cover what the platform actually rewards today, what it used to reward (and why that changed), and what attorneys can do right now to stay visible and relevant to the clients and contacts that matter.

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LinkedIn is real life. The attorneys who understand that will use it very differently.

You know you should be doing more business development. The problem is finding the time between client work, billable hour targets, and, well, the rest of your life.

In this episode, Bill and Tobi tackle the number one excuse attorneys give for not doing business development and break down exactly how to work around it. Note, not all activities take the same amount of time, and knowing the difference is the key.

We also discuss the content marketing angle that will make you rethink how much you're already sitting on: how to source content effortlessly from your client conversations, how to turn one blog post into a month of LinkedIn material, and how a Swiss law firm started generating qualified leads from content they'd already written – with almost no extra effort.

Whether you have five minutes or a full afternoon, this episode gives you a concrete playbook for making business development actually happen, consistently, intentionally, and without overhauling your life.

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