Market Areas > Practice Management > Client Development

Compensation for Client Development: How to Recognize and Track New Business Origination

Course Description:

Client development, or origination, is one of the most crucial factors for setting lawyer compensation. And proper tracking and measurement of success is one of the toughest compensation problems facing law firms today.

Industry experts have suggested that compensating for only origination encourages individual rather than firm focused behavior. How then can your firm make sure that client development compensation recognizes efforts made by all lawyers involved in the work?

Find out how to mold a client development compensation plan that’s fair and effective.  With this comprehensive resource, you’ll learn best practices and new methods for tracking and rewarding client development.

In this highly-rated audio program on CD, leading experts, James D. Cotterman of Altman Weil, Inc. and Evan Polin of The Training Resource Group, will guide you through:

• The importance of clearly defining origination at your firm
• Pros and cons of the most commonly used systems
• How measuring origination motivates lawyer behavior
• Alternative approaches to measuring and compensating for client development
• How to measure strengths and weaknesses of your own system
• Best practices for incentivizing across teams and industries
• How and when to set consequences for not selling
• Potential ‘gotchas’ when measuring the generation of client relationship

Featured Faculty:

James D. Cotterman, Principal, Altman Weil, Inc.

James D. Cotterman is a principal with Altman Weil, Inc. He advises clients on compensation, capital structure and other economic issues, governance, management and law firm merger assessments. Before joining Altman Weil in 1988, Mr. Cotterman was manager of acquisitions for a public company in the health care industry, where he developed, evaluated, negotiated and integrated merger opportunities.

Mr. Cotterman is the author of Cotterman on Compensation, a blog on lawyer compensation and law firm finance. He is a regular contributor to The Altman Weil Report to Legal Management, is the lead author of the ABA book Compensation Plans for Law Firms, and isa member of the Board of Editors of Accounting and Financial Planning for Law Firms. He has been the supervising author for Matthew Bender's loose-leaf text How to Manage Your Law Office. His writings have appeared in The American Lawyer, The National Law Journal, Law Practice Management, International Law Firm Management and many other publications.

Evan Polin, Vice President, Sandler Training, The Training Resource Group

Evan Polin, Vice President, The Training Resource Group, brings a wealth of training and coaching experience to the firm. He has spoken at national and regional conferences and has provided training programs for the Philadelphia Bar Association and Pennsylvania Bar Institute. Evan has written articles on business development for the Law Journal Newsletters and Burlington County Bar Association. Evan is a graduate of the University of Delaware and has earned a Masters Degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Polin provides consulting, seminar, and corporate in-house training that delivers on-going reinforcement training and coaching to growing professional service firms seeking an increase in sales, profits and productivity. He teaches attorneys a system of business development that includes modules on using a consultative approach to developing business, cross-selling throughout the firm, generating more referrals, targeting accounts, differentiating your firm from the competition, and a process of qualifying and disqualifying new business opportunities. Evan is currently the Programs Chair for the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce.

MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE:

Pricing:

Your CD recording includes the complete audio conference presentation, audience Q&A and presentation materials.

CLE:

CCM provides audio conference attendees with CLE credit processing services. To expedite CCM processing your CLE request, please complete and submit the evaluation form available from CCM at the conclusion of the audio conference. It will be necessary to enter the following information: name of each attorney requesting CLEs with full contact information, including e-mail address, bar number, and the state in which the attorney wants credits. Each attorney requesting credits must submit an evaluation.

Please be advised CCM audio conferences are subject to approval from each CLE issuing organization and approval is not guaranteed (state bar associations in Delaware, Indiana, Kansas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania do not grant CLE credits for audio conferences). The approval process takes approximately 6 - 8 weeks for most organizations but can take as long as 3 - 4 months. You will be notified via e-mail with the final status of your CLE application.

Any person applying for CLE credits must attend the audio conference from start to finish (attendance will be taken for compliance reasons). Requests for CLE credits must be received no later than two weeks following the conclusion of the audio conference or live conference. CLE credits are not available for CD recordings.

If you have any questions regarding CLE credits, contact Jill Adler at 631.368.2082 x 21 or jill.adler@meeting-matters.com.

Each CCM event presents a variety of information and is presented for each organization to develop its own approach and methodology.