Every managing partner has at some point lamented the absence of ‘business skills’ in their lawyers, but do they all mean the same thing? Sometimes the phrase is linked to entrepreneurial attitudes: the need for lawyers to have the spirit of founding equity partners or the sole practitioner. At other times, it is linked to business knowledge: understanding the markets pages of the FT and key business drivers in client sectors, or knowing what is involved in running a business. It is worth looking at this more closely if we are to evaluate the return on investment for those firms running courses which purport to develop these skills.
What do we mean when we say that we want lawyers to be more entrepreneurial? Is business development ability the same as entrepreneurial ability? The two often go together, but there is no necessary link.