Turning your practice-group summits into BD engines

When was the last time one of your client events generated new business?

When did a practice-group summit lead to an expanded client relationship or strategic introduction that turned into a new engagement?

And even when you do get positive signals after your events, how do you know they’re working as hard for you as they should be?

If you struggle to answer any of these questions, you're in good company. Most practice-group leaders and BD professionals I talk to can't draw a clear line from their event spend to business growth.

Here's the problem: most events are designed to maintain brand awareness, not to generate business. And your clients have moved well past that.

Your firm's marketing probably sounds like everyone else's: "Client-focused." "Innovative solutions." "Global expertise; local roots." Firm-wide messaging is typically broad, safe, and undifferentiated.

Same goes for your general-interest events. Sure, client dinners, one-off trainings, and sponsorships all help maintain relationships and visibility. But these events don’t demonstrate your substantive edge or why clients should choose you.

Real differentiation happens at the practice-group level. Your in-depth summits are where your distinctive methodology and ethos come alive. This is where you show instead of tell.

But most practice groups waste this opportunity. During my years as in-house counsel, I attended summit after summit: windowless conference rooms, back-to-back lectures, and binders full of PDFs I'd never reference. I'd leave exhausted and unconvinced the firm understood what I needed.

The in-house lawyers I talk to now confirm the same experience. They're inundated with information, exasperated with standard CLE lectures, and hungry for events that meet their level of sophistication, vision, and ambition.

When designed the right way, your summit becomes a working preview of the client experience. Attendees see how your team facilitates conversations, helps people think through complex issues, and creates value beyond technical knowledge. These are the capabilities clients hire you for. So seize the opportunity to demonstrate them.

More importantly, summits build relationships at scale. A carefully-designed two-day summit creates dozens of connections between your partners and prospects, between existing clients and new practice areas, and among attendees themselves.

The outcomes are directly measurable: new matters, expanded relationships, and strategic introductions that position you as connector, insider, and collaborator.

If you want your summits to build relationships, then build interaction directly into your agenda instead of keeping attendees at arm’s length. The best sessions shouldn’t feel like lectures; instead, they’re moments when you pose questions that inspire new approaches or help attendees solve problems together.

Rather than following the outdated lecture playbook, prioritize guiding attendees through a high-stakes challenge relevant to everyone, building in ample time for facilitated discussion, scenario analysis, and hands-on practice, with you as a resource and sounding board. That’s what clients hire you for. So use your events to preview what that actually looks like.

Most events promise connections but do little to create them. Instead of assuming that relationships will form themselves during coffee breaks, make connection the centerpiece of your events: facilitated roundtables, small-group workshops for scenario work, warm-up exercises that create immediate common ground.

When you intentionally build client-to-client connections, you showcase your team as savvy insiders who deeply understand the dynamics of the field. That's a rare positioning you can't buy.

Most summits leave attendees more overwhelmed than when they arrived — a result that actively undermines the trust you’ve set out to build.

But the best summits deliver new ways of thinking and practical tools, and attendees leave re-energized and excited to implement what they learned. So instead of simply transmitting more of the same information they can get anywhere, design your next summit around one clear outcome: what's the one thing you want attendees to do differently when they leave?

The practice groups that concentrate investment on strategic summits demonstrate their value instead of merely describing it.

In today’s market, every firm's pitches, newsletters, and events are variations on the same theme. So to ensure that your events transcend the noise, stop delivering more of the same, and start using them to showcase the way you deliver value to clients every day.

Your next summit could be one of your highest-return BD assets, but only if you design it to illuminate what makes you different.

Val Madamba is a former U.S. regulatory lawyer turned law-firm event strategist and presentation consultant. She helps firms, practice groups, and individual attorneys package their expertise into high-impact summits, trainings, and keynotes that build authority, generate opportunities, and position them as the go-to voices in their field.

Her proprietary report, “What In-House Counsel Want and Need from Law Firm Events,” provides a practical, modern framework for designing high-impact events, based on survey data and interviews with 60+ in-house lawyers. For complementary access, send a message to [email protected].