The Legal Growth Table

Barbara and Andrew are joined by Scott Love, President of the Attorney Search Group and host of The Rainmaking Podcast, who has spent three decades placing partners and advising AmLaw 100 and 200 firms on how they grow. Scott makes a simple, contrarian case: lateral partner recruiting is the most effective form of business development a firm can do. When a partner joins with twenty to thirty trust...

Barbara and Andrew are joined by Thomas Vanhee, Founder of Aurifer, a boutique tax and audit firm with offices in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Riyadh, and Doha. Thomas spent a decade at tier-one tax law firms in Brussels and Paris before a secondment took him to the Gulf, where in 2017 he left the big brand behind and started his own firm. This is a founder's growth story told without the gloss. Thomas i...

Barbara and Andrew are joined by Chandler Lauzon, Chief Growth Officer at Cassels, a national Canadian law firm of about 400 lawyers with offices coast to coast. Chandler calls himself "a recovering lawyer." He practiced for about eight years before pivoting into proposals in the early 2000s, and has spent the last 20 years watching the BD and marketing function inside law firms evolve....

Barbara and Andrew are joined by Liz Sobe, Head of Business Development at Robinson and Cole, a full-service firm of 200 lawyers with a global footprint. Liz has spent 30 years in business development and client relations across professional services. She once took a sabbatical to help a national toy retailer launch a .com, but growth in professional services is where she has always returned. This...

Barbara and Andrew are joined by Robin van Keeken, Senior Business Development Manager at Buren, a mid-size international law firm in the Netherlands. Seven years ago Robin pitched his firm on an idea that still feels unusual in the legal sector: an outbound business development role. Buren gave it a go, and in his own words, "we have proven that outbound for business development can work.&qu...

Barbara and Andrew are joined by Mike Mellor, legal BD consultant and former co-head of proposals at Paul Weiss. Mike spent his early career in professional services marketing at the Big Four, including a formative stretch on a KPMG deal team, before moving into legal where he quickly realised a lot of people were "winging it" through an apprenticeship method. Over the last year and a half he has...

Barbara and Andrew are joined by Jean Muller, Executive Director of Global Markets at Khaitan & Co, one of India's leading law firms, and a former diplomat who served as France's youngest Foreign Trade Advisor in India and Singapore. Jean brings a rare perspective to this conversation. He talks about what it really takes to enter a new market, whether that means a new geography or a new focus...

Barbara and Andrew are joined by Chris Newman, who has led sales enablement at McDermott and Mintz, amongst others. This conversation is packed with the kind of hard-won thinking you rarely hear so openly shared. Chris walks through how he built pipeline management, ideal client profiles, white space analysis, and a dedicated new logo targeting team, and how he launched a digital products function...

Before the guests arrive, the hosts take a seat. In this opening episode, Andrew Hutchinson and Barbara Koenen-Geerdink introduce themselves, the podcast, and the moment the legal industry finds itself in. Why are we still in the early stages of a much bigger shift? What challenges are coming that most firms aren't ready for? And why does data, not technology, sit at the foundation of any AI strat...