< PreviousTHEN, OVERNIGHT, THE WORLD SHUT DOWN. Now the conversation turns to how partners are going to grow their books of business in this new normal. It has been a bit challenging to shift into this new space of business development. And the truth is that business devel- opment may not shift entirely back to the way we used to do things—ever. What does that mean for you as a law firm partner trying to develop your book of business? The following steps may help you create your own business development path—2020 style. 1. BE YOURSELF. Oscar Wilde tells us that “imita- tion is the greatest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” Oftentimes, in law firm settings, part- ners with smaller books of business find themselves trying to look like, sound like, and use the same strate- gies that more senior partners with larger books of business use in hopes of replicating their success. What 2020 has illuminated is that this is a flawed strategy. Connection and au- thenticity are required to thrive now. So where does that leave you? We all have strengths, unique at- tributes, approaches to problem- solving, and interests that set us apart from others. It is important for you to take time to understand what differ- entiates you in the marketplace. What strengths do you have, and how can you use them to maximize your im- pact on increasing clients’ short- and long-term viability? Being yourself instead of an imitation of someone else is key to expanding your book of business. 2. GET A CLEAR VISION. To be successful in any area, you must know what you want and why. Ask yourself: Based on my strengths, how do I add value to clients? What kind of clients do I want to work with? Why do I want to work with these types of clients? Answering these questions for yourself—and not rely- ing on others to impose the “what” and “why” on you—will help you clarify your vision as it relates to your business development plan. 3. MAKE YOUR GOALS BIGGER THAN WHAT YOU CAN SEE. Set a big business development goal that stretches you. The goal should not be based on firm speak (such as, “There aren’t that many clients in the market,” “The senior partners are the only ones who will ever get the huge revenue-generating clients,” or “Said partner does not like me, so I will not inherit his or her clients.”). Rumi the philosopher reminds us that “it’s your road and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.” Your business devel- 7 STEPS to Create Your Own Path to Business Development IN 2020 BY RHONDA M. WARE In these challenging times, law firm partners may feel completely rerouted. In January and February, they were meeting with current and potential clients for lunch and coffee, flying across the country to participate in client pitches, attending national conferences, and going to happy hours with the hope of meeting GCs from Fortune 500 companies and making new connections. If you were like them, you had big plans for this year. 2020 was going to be the year that you grew your client list exponentially. ATTORNEY AT LAW MAGAZINE · DALLAS· VOL. 7 NO. 3 10opment goals should inspire you to bring your whole self to the endeavor. Remember, there are no limitations except the ones you choose to accept. 4. START WHERE YOU ARE AND CREATE A BLUEPRINT. Once you have a clear vision regarding business develop- ment, take the steps to make your vision your reality. Start by creating a business development blueprint. Understand- ing your goals will help you make better decisions regarding where to spend your time. There is only so much time in a day, and you need to make sure that you are focusing on what is important to accomplishing your goals. Major areas to focus on in order to grow your book of business include personal networks, professional organizations, current cli- ents, cross-selling, and social media. 5. READY. SET. GO. Now that you have created the blueprint, it is time to begin the work. Create a calendar for yourself and include some accountability benchmarks that allow for executing parts of your plan and checking in to see if they are leading to business development. One way to do this is to set daily or weekly goals for yourself and then once a month, check in to see what has resulted from your effort. 6. SUSTAINED COMMITMENT TO ACCOMPLISHING YOUR GOALS. Achieving the book of business you desire will take con- sistent action over an extended period of time. That said, since you are building your book based on your authentic strengths, value adds, and differentiators, it should not feel like the heavy lifting that comes with imitating other’s road to success. The goal is for business development to become a way of life, instead of some- thing you do not enjoy. If it starts to feel inauthentic and not in alignment with your goals, revisit your “what” and “why,” as well as your blueprint to see what changes need to be made to regain your business development momentum. 7. REJOICE. RESET. REPEAT. Once you start gaining momentum and growing your book of business, take some time to enjoy your suc- cess. Be proud that you are making strides to build a book of business in an authentic way. After you celebrate, understand that at some point down the road, you will enter into a season where your goals expand. When that season arises, reset and then repeat steps 1–6 to continue to grow your business development network. RHONDA WARE, A DIRECTOR IN THE PARTNER PRACTICE GROUP AT MAJOR, LINDSEY & AFRICA, THE WORLD’S LARG- EST LEGAL SEARCH FIRM. for being named Attorney of the Month. You are a game changer and the recognition is well deserved. 214.346.0750 howard-cpas.com C ONGRATULATIONS JASON FREEMAN At Howard, we’re more than just CPAs. We have more than 70 passionate advocates of client collaboration. Our clients consider us a full-service partner committed to their growth.OUT on the TOWN – RUN TO THE POLLS The Dallas Women Lawyers Association (DWLA) hosted a Run to the Polls event this summer. The Dallas Trial Lawyers Association (DTLA) participated and their 5K team included: Krisi Kastl, Shelly Greco, Pat Montes, Kila Bobier, Marissa Maggio, Stefanie Bradshaw, Rosalyn Tippett, and Anya Lucas.law firm The A Nationwide Practice Dedicated to Vehicle Safety 221144--332244--99000000 We Didn’t Invent the Word; We DEFINED it. CCRRAASSHHWWOORRTTHHIINNEESSSS:: Every vehicle accident case you handle has the potential to be on one of the 235 racks at our Forensic Research facility where we continually study vehicle safety through the use of engineering, biomechanics, physics and innovation. If you have any questions about a potential case, please call us. There may be vehicle safety system defects that caused your client’s catastrophic injury or death.All of our legal careers begin with someone giving us a shot. A firm hires us. We get a clerkship. Or some person actually takes their hard-earned money from their pocket, and hands cash and a problem of im- portance over to a lawyer who’s never seen the inside of a court- room. There are shots and there are SHOTS. There are moments and opportunities that have the op- portunity to launch or change the trajectory of careers. From the plaintiff’s side at least, those are the types of cases that can im- pact millions of people, get news coverage, generate significant in- come, garner respect from your peers, and/or open the door for an entirely new area of practice. So how do we cash in on these moments? First, invite them. Develop a substantive knowledge base, and market it. You can market to the outside world via blog posts, news articles, scholarly articles, CLEs… Maybe someone is giv- ing you your first case, but you control how smart you sound on a subject. If you’re in a firm set- ting and really want to work with a prominent medical malpractice partner, go read through your State’s practice series on medical malpractice. Ask to look at some complaints and expert reports. Be proactive. Be smart. Second, understand when they arrive. As a contingency fee law- yer, one could make analogies to fishing all day. Each contingency fee lawyer is pretty much look- ing for the biggest fish they can land on their boat. And if neces- sary, they call a friend with a big- ger boat. For the large majority of cases we take, no matter how hard we work on them they’re not go- ing to move the dial in our own lives. But you must have a sense of the game changers. Contin- gency lawyers often get a SHOT because a different lawyer, inside or outside their firm, failed to rec- ognize the significance of a poten- tial case. Have your antennae up. Be creative. Take calculated risks. Finally, sacrifice. People should have balanced lives. There, I said it. But I maintain there are certain cases that are worth sacrificing most of your time for. The rest of your life can benefit from 2 – 5 years of extreme effort. Success in that big case can be the launch- ing pad for your own law firm or could give you the financial comfort to build a more balanced practice into the future. You might also just feel really good about the people you helped and what you accomplished. If you’re already sacrificing and are not having any of those feelings or re- alizations, then it’s a good time to ask if you’ve positioned yourself to get your shot. JEFF STORMS IS A PARTNER AT NEW- MARK STORMS DWORAK LLC. HE HAS A DIVERSE LITIGATION PRACTICE WITH AN EMPHASIS ON PLAINTIFF’S CIVIL RIGHTS AND SEXUAL ABUSE LITIGATION. JEFF IS A PERENNIAL SU- PER LAWYER AND HAS TWICE BEEN NAMED AN “ATTORNEY OF THE YEAR” BY MINNESOTA LAWYER. On Your Own Don’t Throw Away Your SHOT BY JEFF STORMS From the plaintiff’s side at least, those are the types of cases that can impact millions of people, get news coverage, generate significant income, garner respect from your peers, and/or open the door for an entirely new area of practice. ATTORNEY AT LAW MAGAZINE · DALLAS· VOL. 7 NO. 3 14PASSIONATELY HELPING INJURED PEOPLE GET JUSTICE Kristina N. “Krisi” Kastl Chosen to 2014-2020 Super Lawyers Kristina N. “Krisi” Kastl is the founder of Kastl Law, P.C. and has been successfully representing victims of negligence and recklessness for more than two decades. Her focus is personal injury, including wrongful deaths, trucking accidents and burn injuries, and has tried over 100 cases to jury verdict. Krisi currently serves as fi rst vice president of the Dallas Bar Association, board member of the Dallas Trial Lawyers Association, and advisory board member of the Dallas Women Lawyers Association. She is the past president of Texas Women Lawyers and past chair of the American Association for Justice’s Women Trial Lawyers Caucus. She is a graduate of UTEP and Texas Tech School of Law and a current member of the law school’s Foundation Board. Krisi’s leadership within the legal community and her dedication to bettering the legal practice for women and young lawyers are just some of her many passions. Her intuitive strive for excellence keeps her pushing toward justice. 4144 N. CENTRAL EXPRESSWAY | SUITE 1000 | DALLAS, TX 75204 PH: (214) 821-0230 | kastllaw.com © 2018, Angels of Blue Protective Services, PLLC. All Rights Reserved.Jason Freeman MAKING MUSIC IN THE COUR TROOM BY DAN BALDWIN HA TLEY S TUDIO S 16 ATTORNEY AT LAW MAGAZINE · DALLAS· VOL. 7 NO. 3It’s clear that Jason Freeman loves being a lawyer. He loves the courtroom. He loves the strategy and the challenges. And he really loves repre- senting an underdog. But ask him about his passions outside the law and soon Freeman is talking about his deep appreciation for music and the piano. It also doesn’t take long before he brings that discussion— and passion—back to the practice of law. Music and law, it seems, have more in common than meets the eye—or ear. “In a way, I guess I started my legal career through the lens of music. I actually wrote my law school personal statement about my journey on the piano. Believe it or not, I only applied to one law school, so I guess it worked. “I actually began playing the piano in college, and just became obsessed – spending hours every day. I taught myself and was completely absorbed with it.” Freeman entered college as an athlete playing baseball. “So much of my life to that point had been focused on baseball. But I eventually realized that I’d really taken it about as far as I could. When I gave up baseball, piano somehow became my new obsession. I just picked it up and literally couldn’t put it down.” “I have this personality where I just go all-in.” “Music,” Freeman says “provides a window into deeper connections. There’s clearly an emotional, subconscious element at play, but there’s also an un- derlying set of rules and principles that guide what’s going on. “In a lot of ways that interplay provides a useful model for approaching problems and under- standing how and why different arguments resonate. When you break music down, when you really con- nect with how it flows and how it fits together, you discover there’s an art and a science there. When you get into that analytical side of music and start to think about it conceptually, you find that there’s a hidden language underneath that’s both logical and artistic at the same time.” The same holds for practicing law. “I’m a trial law- yer. That’s really all I ever aspired to be. As a lawyer, your job is to persuade decisionmakers, to tell your client’s story in an impactful way. That requires a willingness to really understand people – to look be- yond this idealized conception of the law, of a blind lady justice, to see that there’s something deeper go- ing on. Like it or not, judges and juries are guided by emotion and reason. They’re human. And the law is ultimately a human thing. As a trial lawyer, I think you ignore that at your peril. You know, I don’t think you can truly understand the jury system – and, I would say, the law – until you appreciate that.” Much of his practice focuses on tax law and white- collar litigation. In those areas in particular, attor- neys are often navigating uncharted territory in the law. “That’s where it’s most fun. In the process, we’re often dealing with dense statutes, dissecting their meaning and searching for support for our story or interpretation. You have to break it down, parse sen- tences, and really take a philosophical approach to language and its meaning. The ability to command written language, to tell a compelling story – it’s one of the most important aspects of our role. And it’s amazing when you can infuse emotion and color into black-and-white words and just emphatically express your view of an issue in a compelling way. It works a lot like music does.” ACCOUNTING AND LAW Freeman is the founding member of Freeman Law, PLLC. He’s also a CPA. The combination has served him well in his career. Next year, he will serve as the youngest chairman in the history of the Texas Society of CPAs, a role that he is very excited about. He is also the current president of the North Texas Chapter of the American Academy of Attor- ney-CPAs. Jason Freeman MAKING MUSIC IN THE COUR TROOM BY DAN BALDWIN A TT ORNEY OF THE MONTH HA TLEY S TUDIO S AttorneyAtLawMagazine.com 17Freeman never had aspirations to be a CPA or an ac- countant, but he was intrigued by several accounting courses in college. “A lot of times I look back and recog- nize that I am not the prototypical CPA – or tax attorney for that matter. I wanted to be a trial lawyer. I’m creative and try to approach everything from a novel perspective. But my CPA background has been instrumental in my practice. I use it every day and it gives me a perspective that has often been the difference in finding that winning angle in a financial dispute. While I sometimes look back and wonder how I ended up taking that route, it’s turned out to be one of the best professional decisions I’ve ever made.” Freeman graduated with a joint Bachelor of Business Adminis- tration and Master’s degree in Accounting from the University of Texas at Austin. He earned his Juris Doc- tor with high honors from the University of Texas School of Law. He says there was no “Aha” moment that led him to a ca- reer in law. It was something that he knew he wanted to do from a very young age. There were no lawyers in his family. “I grew up in a very small, rural town. Believe it or not, the first house we lived in was condemned and a church let us live there rent free – so it was a pretty humble start.” His father was a pharmacist and rancher, as was his grandfather. “They were entrepreneurs, created small businesses that grew from very little. That had a lot of in- fluence, I think, on my taking the risk of starting some- thing myself.” His younger brother became a well-respected neurolo- gist. “He and I have always loved to talk about neurosci- ence and the human psyche – how it works and what makes people tick. I think that mindset has been helpful in terms of thinking about how to influence a jury or a judge. I had absolutely zero interest in medicine. I just knew that I would be a lawyer.” His family has had a significant influence on his ca- reer and philosophy – particularly his father. “My dad was killed about 10 years ago in a tractor accident on our ranch in the hill country. I remember that morning I got a call from my mother saying they found him under the tractor. He was in his early 50s and his death came out of nowhere. Events like that really shape your life.” As the oldest of his brothers, he delivered the eulogy, a process he found therapeutic. “It made me really think about what he stood for and how he had shaped me. The theme of that eulogy was a principle that he had told me hundreds of times – ‘Whatever we are given, we leave bet- ter than we found it.’ I think that left me feeling a respon- sibility to maintain and grow that ideal.” Freeman’s firm has seen incredible growth in the nearly five years since he founded it. “I have committed every- thing I have to building something really special with this firm. Though it started out as just me, in the end, I want this thing to be something much, much bigger than me. I tell everyone who joins our team that we are committed to building the best law firm in the world in our areas of prac- tice. It’s important to set goals high – really high. And we have to have their buy-in or they just won’t be a good fit, and I make sure everyone knows this from the beginning and is committed to the level of work that it takes to achieve a goal like that.” Freeman deliber- ately wanted to create a boutique and fo- cused firm. He fore- saw changes coming in the legal market and a shift that was putting a lot of pres- sure on the middle market in particu- lar. He felt that the model he was creat- ing would provide a competitive edge and was the best niche to deliver truly exceptional legal representation. He says his management philosophy involves fostering a creative and diverse team of talented people, putting them in positions to succeed and letting them do the job. “I let people grow into their capabilities and to test out what those capabilities are. That’s frankly the opportunity that I was given as a young lawyer, and it made practicing law very fulfilling.” DRESSED FOR SUCCESS Freeman says, “Believe it or not, tax law, of all things, can provide for some pretty interesting litigation oppor- tunities. I’ve actually tried criminal tax cases to a jury down in the U.S. Virgin Islands and had appeals and oral argument with the Third Circuit Court of Appeals when it travels to St. Croix. You could find some worse locales I suppose. Every case and every client is so important. But one sticks out to me in particular.” Mii’s Bridal and Tuxedo served customers in the Gar- land area for decades. The small company was owned and operated by an elderly couple from Thailand. One day agents from the IRS arrived and confiscated the firm’s entire inventory of wedding gowns and dresses, sewing machines, and other equipment to settle the company’s al- leged debt. The inventory was sold at auction that same day for pennies on the dollar. The couple was never accused of committing a federal HA TLEY S TUDIO S ATTORNEY AT LAW MAGAZINE · DALLAS· VOL. 7 NO. 3 18crime. In fact, Freeman says the al- leged tax debt, which was just over $30,000, wasn’t even correct in the first place. Freeman says the case exemplifies the reason he became an attorney. “Here was this elderly couple. They spoke broken English. They didn’t have any money. They were, well, destitute and had literally lost ev- erything. Imagine, your life’s savings and livelihood being seized by 20- plus armed government agents and sold off within four hours.” “I’ve seen a lot of crazy things with the IRS, but this particular situation was about as bad as it gets.” Although his firm was in its early stages, he took the case on—acutely aware that it was something of a fi- nancial risk with limited financial upside. His firm was up against a powerful, and well-resourced op- ponent – the Department of Justice. “You just have to love that kind of challenge.” In this case of David vs. Goliath, there was a happy ending to the story. He adds, “Regardless of the odds, the case was fun and just so incred- ibly important to me. I viewed the case as precisely the reason I became an attorney, and I felt lucky they somehow found me. I never had any motivation to work for the govern- ment – I don’t think I could ever see it. I was always interested in protect- ing the little guy and kind of relish having the odds against me. I re- member thinking that this case just seemed so important to me, or right- ing the wrong just seemed so impor- tant, that I felt like if I could just win this one case, I’d be happy with my career, whatever happened after that. Cases like that really are why you go to law school and become an attor- ney.” And cases like Mii’s played a part in Freeman’s recognition as one of the leading tax controversy attor- neys in the nation. LEARNING BY TEACHING Freeman serves on the law school faculty at SMU’s Dedman School of Law, where he teaches a course in federal income taxation. “Teaching has shaped my trial and advocacy skills - perhaps more than any other training,” Freeman says. It’s such an honor to have the opportunity to practice law and to represent my clients. It’s something I’ll do until the day I die.” HA TLEY S TUDIO S AttorneyAtLawMagazine.com 19Next >