Building a World-Class Litigation Practice from an AmLaw Fab 50 Lawyer

By Michael Cummings

Most of our business development coaching and training clients call us because of their difficulties in growing their litigation practice. The litigators at these firms are typically facing one or more of the following challenges:

• The firm rode a particular wave of litigation that is drying up.
• The “one-shot” nature of litigation leads to big peaks and valleys of work.
• Litigators were overly dependent on their corporate, industry and other practice partners to generate work (and not generating their own stream of work or cultivating ongoing relationships).
• Only a few, veteran litigators are big rainmakers and the rest of the practice services this work (and these litigators may be retiring or moving on in some fashion).
• More disputes are being resolved in alternative ways.
• Too many of their litigators, especially younger attorneys, are not viewed as pro-active business advisors by their clients (instead they are pigeon-holed as narrow specialists).

Well, if you are a litigator who aspires to achieve superior results in business development in the face of these challenges, then read on.

In this article, I am thrilled to profile a young litigator who is a true entrepreneur and builder of a world class practice: Juan Morillo of Clifford Chance. His story essentially provides a blueprint of the best practices in business development for litigators.

Here is some quick background. As part of some research I was doing, I recently re-read the January 2007 issue of The American Lawyer. This issue profiled the top 50 litigators in the US under the age of 45 (Mr. Morillo was 37 at the time).

I was naturally drawn to the section on entrepreneurs, where Mr. Morillo was profiled. And I could immediately see he was the prototype of a litigator that applied an entrepreneurial mindset, daily business development discipline and client relationship excellence to put his success under his own control. Everything we coach and train litigators to do, Mr. Morillo was excelling at -taking the lessons we teach and applying them at the highest performance levels.

So, I called him up the other day. He agreed to be interviewed for this article and be the subject of our web-seminar on Sept. 26th. For more on that, see www.sagelawmarketing.com/webseminar39.

Here are the lessons that you can apply from Mr. Morillo to grow your own practice.

Lesson 1: Think and Act Like an Entrepreneur

Morillo didn't hesitate: "In my early days, I could see that there were a lot of talented people at the associate level at Sidley and Austin. I became determined to build my own practice since this was the fastest and surest way to make partner. I started developing my own clients early on and haven’t slowed down since."

In fact, his entrepreneurial ambitions led him and his team to join his current firm as a partner in 2007: He noted, “About 60% of my work is defending white collar clients from government investigations and conducting internal investigations, and 40% comes from defending clients from class actions often related to these investigations. At my previous firm, almost all of this work was US-based. And I had a strong desire to do this work on an international level because I find this cross border work to be fun and interesting. Also, there is a great need for this service among clients I serve; so it represents a strong practice-building opportunity. And there is far less competition for this work; it is almost a vacuum.”

"Since there were some obstacles to doing this international work at my previous firm, I decided to join Clifford Chance as a partner in 2007 (along with a team of 2 other partners). They were excited about the possibilities of this practice and committed to quickly integrating this capability into the firm. They also have a leading position in Europe, so it was a natural fit,” Morillo said. "All of my clients followed me to my new firm. So, this expanded international service capability offered by Clifford Chance has been a big boost for me in terms of serving these clients on a cross border basis. We have a depth and breadth of international coverage that is hard to beat."

Lesson 2: Avoid Being a One-Trick Pony in the Eyes of Your Clients

Morillo said, “Most of my white collar competitors focus largely on the white collar defense from various government investigations or the internal investigations – since many are former prosecutors and not business lawyers. So, once these investigations are ended, they move on – and lose the benefit of both understanding the client’s business and leveraging the personal connections at the client, as well as failing to take advantage of the goodwill created from a successful result.

"This is why I got into the class action defense arena -- many of the white collar defense matters evolve into some form of class action matters."

"I also stay attentive for implications across all the areas I work on; so the client knows that I offer a broad scope of services,” he said. “These areas include accounting, financial, securities, and tax fraud; bribery; antitrust, environmental, FCPA, OFAC, FCA, and immigration violations; Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), fraud, tort, contract and other civil claims.

"I also team up with partners who offer closely related services and cross market them intently to these clients. For example, often corporate governance issues arise in the course of my work so I introduce corporate partners to address these issues. Also, the client often needs the help of partners who are expert in regulatory matters – or perhaps a fraud specialist.

"With this broader set of solutions for clients, I am better positioned to be a business advisor with ongoing value that I can provide to the client, rather than being pigeon-holed as solely a white collar defense guy. And it differentiates me from the other litigators trying to land and serve the client."

Lesson 3: The Purpose of the Current Matter is to Find Follow-on Opportunities and Launch an Ongoing Relationship

Morillo said, "When I am working on white collar defense or class action suits, these are crisis situations for my clients. And in these engagements I am often working with board members and a range of the senior executives at the client. While I am focused intently on solving the problem at hand, I am also reflecting on what I am learning and what the broader implications are for the client. I also think about what I learned about each of the individuals I met.As the matter progresses, I keep a running list of value-added ideas that I can leverage to benefit the client and extend the relationship. And, as the matter wraps up, I make sure that I have an action plan to immediately follow up with the right people at the client."

Lesson 4: Seek to Institutionalize Client Relationships

According to Morillo, "I see myself as being in the relationship building business. When I land a matter with a new client, my whole goal is to institutionalize the relationship – which means that we want to earn the right to have an ongoing and expanding working relationship with those clients. So, what does this look like?

"Let’s look at a large insurance company we serve. I started off working with them on a high profile matter related to a hurricane claim in 2003. In a dispute with a customer, a criminal investigation was initiated against the company and senior executives in Mexico. After the matter was resolved successfully, I started to proactively expand the relationship by offering value-added ideas and made myself available for advice/counsel -- not all of which I charged them for.

"For example, I attended their internal legal retreats; found opportunities to meet the senior executives in a number of their business lines; and encouraged them to call me for informal consultations on internal investigations and other matters. I monitored their business and picked up the phone when I saw a business issue that I could address.

"When they engaged me for a small matter in a new area, I treated it like a big engagement (within reason). In other words, I invested in the relationship, proactively provided value added service (often free) and persisted in cultivating personal connections within the client’s organization. As needed, I introduced my fellow partners to the right people at the client. Over the years, I have invested hundreds of hours in this fashion, but the payoff in terms of long-term, profitable and business advisor-based relationships has been profound."

Lesson 5: Intensely Market Internally and Enthusiastically Cross Sell (and be at the right firm)

Morillo said, "My work basically comes from 3 sources. Most is generated from selling additional work to my existing clients. The second biggest source is from my fellow partners and the rest from referrals from attorneys outside the firm.

"Since my fellow partners are so important to my practice, I basically treat them as if they were clients. This means that I market, sell and manage relationships with them just as I do with clients. I follow up enthusiastically on any opportunity they refer. I look for all opportunities to integrate my business development thrusts with other practice groups and client teams at the firm.

"Clifford Chance has been exceptional at integrating us into the firm. I was immediately introduced into 14 of our largest institutional clients and invited to speak/network at numerous firm-sponsored client conferences, as well as practice group and partner retreats. They have provided us with a generous budget to facilitate meeting with firm clients and meeting with partners to define mutual business development initiatives. In fact, I traveled more extensively internationally in the last year and a half that I did in my entire career previous to joining Clifford Chance.

"As I mentioned earlier, all of my clients followed me to my new firm – and these relationships are still very vital. However, 50% of my business comes from clients where this work was facilitated by one of my fellow Clifford Chance partners.In turn, I work very hard to reciprocate by introducing my fellow partners to new contacts for them -- it’s an ideal situation that benefits the entire firm and -- importantly -- the clients we serve."

Some Parting Advice From Juan Morillo to Fellow Litigators

I wrapped up the interview by asking Mr. Morillo for the bottom line advice that he would have for fellow litigators, especially for younger attorneys looking to make their way in the profession. Here are the tips he provided:

• Treat any introduction from your partners or colleagues outside the firm as high value: "Since I consider these referral sources as clients, I follow through enthusiastically with their referrals; even though the payoff may be long term. In fact, maybe only 10-25% of these will be good opportunities, but I want to keep the referrals flowing."
• Everything begins with producing good results for clients through excellent work and service: "But the relationship building effort only starts there. Finding direct follow-on work, looking for business issues where you can add value and investing your time and attention on the client over time is equally important."
• You have to earn your clients' business and ongoing loyalty. "For example, I never market myself as a minority or diverse attorney. I earn their business on merit, hard work and pro-activity. If my international perspective, cultural knowledge or bi-lingual capability is an asset to a client, then it matters."