How to make partner lesson 5: develop your own referral networks

In summer 2016 Heather Townsend revealed the 10 lessons that every potential partner needs to learn to an audience of 200 lawyers and accountants. In this short 2 minute video clip, Heather talks through the fifth lesson – Where are you going to get your work from? Because if you’re going to make partner, your partners need to know that you can win work.  And that’s why it’s particularly difficult to make partner; you’ve got to do the day job and then you’ve got another job to start to win work, and that’s often why so many people don’t make partner. This is lesson number 5 out of a series of 10 lessons, that I’ve learnt from my clients on how they’ve made partner. The fifth lesson is, you need to have developed your own referral networks of introducers, people that can send you work. If you’re a particularly distressed service like litigation or insolvency, you need to have a wide network of people that can send you work.  But unfortunately many of us forget about our network, we just get involved in the day job, after all there’s always time later to build our network.  But that’s not the case, the sooner you start building your network the easier it becomes when you need to win work. After all, who’s more likely to send you work?  The person that you’ve known for five years, that you’ve hung out with, maybe sunk a few beers together and that you get on with, or somebody that’s just met you?  Somebody that’s grown up through the ranks with you.  That’s why it’s so important to build these referral networks, because they are the people that will send you work. So that’s lesson number 5, to save time and to build up your own portfolio, build your referral networks now.