What Law Firm BD Programs Get Wrong - And What It Costs in the Lateral Market

Legal industry consultant Patrick Moran published a piece this week documenting four real cases of law firms that built well-intentioned business development programs and watched them collapse. The original reporting is worth reading directly - you can find ithere. The short version: a co-pay model that punished rainmakers, a reimbursement structure that killed fourth-quarter activity, a mandatory sales rep program that partners quietly refused to use, and an eleven-page application process that made BD funding feel more political than accessible. Four firms, four different structures, one consistent outcome.

Moran's conclusion is one we recognize: most law firms don't fail at business development because attorneys resist growth. They fail because the systems they build quietly teach attorneys to avoid it.

What we want to add is what that looks like from the lateral market side of the conversation.

The Damage Shows Up Later Than Firms Expect

By the time a BD program fails visibly, the cost has already landed somewhere else. Partners who lived through it carry that institutional history forward. The program gets scrapped, leadership moves on, and then months or sometimes years later the same experience resurfaces in a recruiting conversation.

The question we hear most often from partners evaluating a lateral move is some version of: will I actually have room to build here? Not in the abstract, but in practice. Who controls the BD budget? What does it actually take to access it? What happened to the last partner who tried to develop a new client relationship and needed support to do it?

These are not theoretical due diligence questions. They come from real experience. A partner who spent two years navigating a political approval process, or who watched a co-pay model signal that the firm did not trust their judgment, develops a specific set of things they need to understand before committing to a new platform. Firms that don't recognize this tend to be surprised by how much it comes up late in a lateral conversation, and how quickly a candidate can go cold when the answers feel vague.

What Firms That Attract Strong Lateral Candidates Do Differently

The firms that consistently attract BD-focused partners tend to share a few qualities that have nothing to do with budget size.

They can describe their BD support with specifics. Not "we invest heavily in business development" - that phrase has lost most of its credibility at this point - but here is how a partner accesses resources, here is who is involved in that decision, and here is what the timeline actually looks like. Specificity signals that the system has been used and thought through by real people, not just designed on paper.

They have recent examples. A firm that can point to a partner who joined two or three years ago, built meaningful new business since, and can explain concretely what support looked like is telling a much more credible story than one offering general reassurance about culture and resources.

The friction is low by design. Every additional layer of approval sends a message. Firms that have learned, often the hard way, that friction and distrust are functionally the same thing tend to close lateral moves faster and with less attrition after the fact.

If You Are Evaluating a Move

BD infrastructure deserves more scrutiny in the lateral process than most candidates give it. Compensation and client portability get significant airtime. What it will actually feel like to try to build at a new firm often does not.

The questions worth asking directly: How are BD resources allocated? Who has final say? What does the process look like for a partner pursuing an opportunity that is not already tied to an existing client relationship? What has the experience of partners who joined in the last two to three years actually been?

Firms that have good answers to those questions give them readily. The ones that answer in generalities are telling you something useful too.

If you want a more grounded conversation about what different platforms actually look like from the inside, you can reach us atonwardrecruiting.com.

This piece was informed by "How 4 Firms Accidentally Shut Down Business Development," Patrick Moran, BTI Consulting, May 27, 2026. His original reporting is recommended reading.