I’m Heather Townsend, author of Poised for Partnership and co-author of How to Make Partner & Still Have a Life. I’m the leading global expert in what it takes to move from senior fee earner to partner . I created the How to Make Partner website and Progress to Partner Academy to help lawyers, accountants and consultants like you to realise that you need stop waiting patiently to get noticed, take control of your own career progression to get noticed as “one to watch” for partner-track and beyond in your firm.
Present yourself as the future partner they can’t afford to overlook. Click here and I’ll send you my FREE guide to creating a cast-iron business case for partner.
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How do you manage to delegate when everything is urgent?
An urgent piece of work lands on your desk and the client needs it today. You know you should delegate it, but by the time you’ve briefed someone you could have done it yourself. So you do it yourself, again. How do you find the time to plan and brief properly when the work can’t…
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12 gifts of Christmas from Progress to Partner Academy
12 gifts to make a great start to 2027 Give yourself 12 little gifts to make 2027 your year for career progress. The time between Christmas and the New Year can be a quiet time for reflection for many of us. Imagine receiving an email from me every day between 26 December and 6 January…
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How to get reluctant introducers to refer you
You’ve had the coffee, they said they’d keep you in mind, and months later not one introduction has come your way. Do they not rate you? How do you be the person who gets the referral That’s what this episode is all about. When an introducer spots an opportunity, they don’t sit down and weigh…
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Psychological safety: you think you have it, your team may not
You hand a piece of work to a junior, ask if they have any questions, and hear “of course I can do it”. Days later it comes back wrong, and you’re the one redoing it late at night. So why didn’t they tell you they were stuck? That’s what this episode is all about. Psychological…
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How to motivate the juniors you think are snowflakes
Your junior’s coat is on at the dot of five, just as the client’s comments land. You’re left wondering whether you’re stuck with a team who don’t want to work as hard as you did, and how you get them to put in the extra hours when the client needs them. That’s what this episode…
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How to make partner from a satellite or regional office
You’re on Partner Track in a small satellite or regional office. The partners who will decide your future sit together at HQ and see each other every day, whilst you’re one of the boxes at the bottom of the screen. There isn’t a lot of resource in your office, local clients push back on your…
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Why you struggle with pricing
You’ve scoped the job, you know what the firm needs to charge, but you are afraid of charging what it really is going to cost? So what are you actually afraid of? That’s what this episode is all about. You may not set your firm’s rate card. You do decide what goes into the scope,…
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The billable hour is breaking. What do you do if that’s still how you bill?
You keep seeing headlines about the billable hour dying, clients demanding fixed fees, consultancies setting the pace years ago, and you are still sending out invoices built on hours. The question is not whether you should start changing from charging by time, but how to move away from this billing model. Sorting out your own…
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Your client thinks AI should make you cheaper. Now what?
You are sitting across from a client who has just asked why you have not passed on the savings from using AI. It is an increasingly common question. So how do you answer it without either caving on your fee or getting defensive about it? That’s what this episode is all about. Whilst the presenting…
