Rainmaker.AI applies sophisticated machine learning algorithms to automate the law firm business development process. The mobile phone and PC-based App automatically handles the entire process from introductory communications, automated email interactions with prospects, learning about prospects’ businesses and personal life events, and ultimately proposing necessary legal services. Rainmaker.AI even has built-in conflict checking functionality and an automated client engagement letter execution process. With Rainmaker.AI, law firm attorneys now can just sit at their desk and watch Rainmaker.AI bring in the business and then press the buttons on their AI-based litigation tools and contract automation tools as needed by the newly generated clients.
The good news for associates about Rainmaker.AI is that it will not eliminate any of their hours and put their jobs at risk because most associates aren’t spending any time on business development anyway. The better news about Rainmaker.AI for associates is that in the words of Billy Joel, “….it’s just a fantasy, it’s not the real thing.”
But the fantasy of Rainmaker.AI begs the question, “Why are associates not spending time learning to develop clients at their firms, and why are most law firm partners not focused on teaching and mentoring associates to become rainmakers?”
The answer to the problem of artificial intelligence (which as we have suggested before is the law firm industry’s term of art for all legal technology) reducing law firm associate billable hours is GROWTH. In our legal services business, we implemented legal technology year after year, reducing the amount of time associates spent on specific tasks by anywhere from 20% to 50%. But we kept increasing headcount because we kept growing with new clients and greater quantities of work from our clients. We put our associates on the phone and in meetings with clients from a very early stage and client relationships was a key component to their promotion in our corporate ladder. Perhaps getting associates out of the office to participate in industry conferences, lunches, and happy hours to develop their networks would enable them not only to contribute to their firms’ growth but also secure a brighter path to partnership and ensure that they are productive, profitable partners from day one.
We have seen some bright spots. We have seen some partners who talk with associates about networking and then finesse developing relationships before moving into comments about law firm representation. We have seen partners who take their associates out to business development lunches and after-hours drinks to show them how it is done. These same partners guide their associates to engage in telephone and email correspondence directly with the partner’s clients and then take them to meetings where they pitch for new work or address a problem.
But these are just bright spots; for the most part, law firm partners are keeping associates in the background assigning them work so the partners can then turn around and email the work product to the client in their own name. Worse, even when associates have extensive client contact, they’re not trained in how to develop new business from existing clients, or how to find and land new clients. Likewise, associates are often so focused on the billing code, and billable credit, that they miss opportunities to learn how to develop business from seasoned partners because they want to bill for that time. Many partners would like to train associates in business development, but not if that means writing off time because the associate wants to bill that time to a client. Having been there ourselves, we know the pressure to meet minimum billable requirements. But both of us were able to meet our billables AND bring in new clients, learning how to do that on our own time, much like salespeople don’t get quota relief during sales training days.
Ultimately, the notion that law firms can grow and even survive with these kinds of practices is as much a fantasy as Rainmaker.AI.
The reality is that the only way for law firms to successfully grow their practices profitably and sustainably over time is teach and mentor associates from day one to build their network, build personal relationships and bonds with client prospects, and ultimately how to generate business from those prospects and themselves becoming real live rainmakers.
David Perla and Sanjay Kamlani are co-founders and managing directors of 1991 Group.