Women Lawyers Making It Rain: Building a Practice on Your Own Terms

Women Lawyers Making It Rain: Building a Practice on Your Own Terms

How do women lawyers build a practice—particularly in environments where access to relationships, expectations around visibility, and competing demands on time are not always equal?

The challenge is not just understanding that business development matters. It is working out how to approach it in a way that is practical, consistent, and aligned with how you actually work.

These dynamics—how relationships are built, how visibility is approached, and how time is used—were the focus of a recent discussion with Elise Holtzman, founder of The Lawyer’s Edge. A former practicing attorney, Elise has spent more than 17 years advising lawyers and law firms on business development, leadership, and career growth.

Her message was direct: business development is a discipline. It is not a byproduct of doing good legal work, and it does not develop on its own over time.

Strong legal work is expected. What shapes a lawyer’s trajectory is the ability to generate and sustain work—and that requires a deliberate approach from early on.

Elise framed business development around three core pillars: building and maintaining relationships, developing visibility in the market, and taking consistent action over time. Each requires a deliberate approach—and together, they determine how work is generated and sustained.

What Effective Business Development Looks Like

Lawyers who build sustainable practices tend to approach business development in consistent, practical ways.

They focus on a defined group of relationships and stay in touch over time. They make their work visible so others understand what they do and when to involve them, and they treat business development as part of their role—not something separate from it.

In practice, this is not about large initiatives. It comes down to small, repeatable actions: following up after meetings, checking in with clients and peers, sharing updates, and contributing to relevant discussions.

What distinguishes this approach is not scale, but regularity. These actions become part of how work is managed, not something added when time allows.

Where Lawyers Get Stuck—and What to Do Instead

Time gets prioritized toward billable work: Because billable work is immediate and clearly defined, it tends to take precedence, while business development is easier to defer. Lawyers who maintain momentum build it into what they are already doing—following up at the end of a matter, reconnecting with clients, or using ongoing work as a reason to stay in touch. This shifts business development from an added task to part of how time is used.

There is no clear starting point: Without a defined focus, business development can feel too broad to act on. A more effective approach is to narrow the scope—identify a small number of clients, contacts, or sectors and focus efforts there. This creates direction and makes follow-up more manageable.

Visibility feels uncomfortable or unclear: When visibility relies on self-promotion alone, many lawyers hesitate or avoid it altogether. A more practical approach is to make your work known in ways that feel natural—through conversations, internal collaboration, writing, or participation in discussions.

This often comes down to being more specific about what you do and who you do it for—not just describing yourself by practice area, but by the type of work and clients you support. For example, working with private equity sponsors on cross-border transactions, or advising technology companies on data-related regulatory issues.

The goal is not constant promotion, but ensuring others understand how you can help.

Adapting the Approach

Business development does not follow a single model. It needs to reflect how you work, your practice, and your market.

For women lawyers, this often requires making deliberate choices about where to focus. Access to informal networks may be uneven, expectations around visibility may differ, and time outside of work may be more constrained.

Rather than trying to replicate approaches that depend on informal networks—where relationships develop through unstructured or social settings—constant visibility, or significant time outside of client work, a more effective path is to choose methods that are workable and sustainable. This may mean focusing on a smaller number of deeper relationships, building visibility through writing or direct outreach, or using structured networks to create more consistent opportunities to connect.

The objective is not to expand effort indiscriminately, but to apply an approach that can be maintained over time.

Using Networks More Intentionally

Structured networks can accelerate business development by providing access to relationships that would otherwise take years to build. The value, however, comes from how those connections are developed over time.

The impact depends on what happens after the initial connection. Following up, staying in touch, and identifying opportunities to collaborate are what turn introductions into working relationships.

In networks like WLG, where access already exists across jurisdictions and practices, this follow-through determines whether connections translate into active collaboration.

Without that follow-through, any network remains a list of contacts. With it, those connections become active sources of collaboration and referrals.

Building a Repeatable Approach

Business development becomes effective when it is part of a regular routine.

For many lawyers, the challenge is not knowing where to start or how to make it manageable. Structure helps address both.

One practical approach is to block time for it—whether that is a short, consistent window each week or a set point in your schedule dedicated to outreach and follow-up.

That time can be used to reconnect with a small number of priority contacts, follow up on recent conversations, or share relevant updates. Keeping the focus narrow makes the effort easier to maintain.

Over time, these actions build momentum. The goal is not to do more at once, but to establish a steady pattern that can be sustained alongside client work.

A Shift in Perspective

Business development is often treated as separate from legal work. In practice, it shapes what work comes in, which clients you serve, and how your role develops over time.

What separates lawyers who build sustainable practices from those who struggle to gain traction is not capability. It is how consistently and deliberately business development is approached—through small, focused actions, a clear understanding of where to spend time, and a willingness to stay visible in ways that are sustainable.

Over time, that approach builds momentum. It strengthens relationships, creates opportunities, and allows lawyers to develop practices that reflect both their expertise and how they choose to work.