I’m 58 years old. I’m a nice guy and a great lawyer. I have scores of trial victories. I don’t understand the problem. Where’s the business?

We really heard this. Verbatim. The truth is, we hear this sort of thing often and it never gets easier to hear. If industry veterans struggle with business development, what can we possibly expect of law students? The answer, of course, is concerning. Law students don’t sweat their futures as business developers because they don’t even know what’s coming down the pike—that client development will be a primary driver of, and a determinant factor in, their professional success. However, legal marketing is not a requisite component of the law school curriculum and it’s certainly not anything conventionally and meaningfully addressed in summer associate programming. In the broadest sense—and soon—we need to address the gap in the lawyer production line: We are manufacturing technical specialists in a world that puts a lot more emphasis on business savvy.