Preliminary results from LSSO’s 2008 Women Lawyers Study were revealed at the ABA Women Rainmakers Conference in Tucson last month. This LSSO study focuses on the work lives of women lawyers and is intended to assess the professional experiences and working lives of female attorneys, with specific focus on their business development practices and performance. The survey remains open until 12/31/08 and is supported by the ABA Women Rainmakers among other organizations.

LSSO’s prior study, conducted in 2003, was the first to explore sales and business development issues for women lawyers and allowed us to identify keys to business development success for them. Four guiding principles emerged:

1. Have the Right Attitude
2. Invest Time Wisely,
3. Take the Lead (leadership roles) and
4. Know the Power of Client Service.

One of our goals is to gather important data points for the legal industry to study and understand as well as better anticipate the needs of women lawyers, and to support their success. For example, preliminary key findings from 2008 include which business development activities work best and how women are supported by their firms, along with how much time is dedicated to business development, and which kinds of activities contribute to results.

Along those lines, it is interesting that, at this stage in the survey, nearly three quarters of respondents say that their firms have no minimum requirements for marketing and business development hours. Perhaps this lack of requirement contributes to the explanation of why the majority of early respondents report investing only 1-4 hours weekly on business development activities.

By comparison, successful women rainmakers in LSSO’s 2003 survey reported spending between 8-10 hours on business development activities each week. While quality of activities, not quantity, is what counts, there appears to be an amount of time invested that yields demonstrably better results.

At this early point in the survey, the responses indicate that Legal Associations, Seminars & Events, Leadership Positions, Business Associations and Networking are the top activities, in that order, in which women lawyers engage to meet and develop relationships with clients, prospects, and referral sources. However, they also indicate that the activities that produce the best results are, in order, Networking, Legal Associations, and Speaking Engagements. This invites the question: “if networking produces the best results, why is it not the activity in which women lawyers are most frequently engaged?”

Time will tell if these trends hold in our 2008 survey. We encourage all women lawyers to participate by visiting www.legalsales.org so that we may have good data on which to report our findings and thank the ABA Women Rainmakers for supporting our work. Once the survey is concluded, an executive summary containing our findings will be available at no cost.