Why legal BD is like herding cats with Shiraz Gheyara

‍Shiraz Gheyara likes to say legal business development is a bit like herding cats. As a former corporate lawyer, she would know. Shiraz started her career as a corporate lawyer in Toronto, before moving down under. When the global financial crisis reshaped the market, she took a turn into legal recruitment, where she learned how to sell, which led her to build a career in legal BD. More than a decade later, now based in Toronto as Senior Director, Client & Business Development at Bennett Jones, Shiraz brings a dual perspective to legal growth.

You trained in law before moving into business development. How did that come about?

To be honest, there wasn't a crystal ball moment where I suddenly went, “I want to grow up and be in legal marketing.” I did start off as a lawyer, working as a solicitor in Canada and Australia, mostly in the corporate space (M&A). After a few years, around 2010 to 2011, the Australian legal market was being shaped by international economic factors, including the GFC. A lot of global firms came into Australia at this time and some of them merged with local firms, like King & Wood Mallesons (now separated), Ashurst, and Allens Linklaters. Australia is a really great legal market because it's a very highly trained common law jurisdiction, but the lawyers cost a fraction of what they would in London or Hong Kong. Those factors converged and led a lot of firms to let lawyers go, and I was part of that.

I moved into legal recruitment, which was good training in sales, especially as lawyers tend to find it really challenging to sell. I then transitioned into legal BD, which I’ve been doing for over 10 years now. After starting off in Australia, I moved back to Canada in 2019.

How has legal BD changed over the course of your career?

Legal BD is really different now compared with when I entered law. I can only speak to the Canadian legal landscape, but Australia was quite similar in that both have a number of high-performing, high-end firms. In Toronto, we call them the Seven Sisters, and historically they have controlled the legal market. They have worked on the best deals and have entrenched relationships with clients, so legal BD wasn't strong back then because firms didn't need it.

The landscape has changed a lot since I started my career, although far more in Australia than in Canada. Canada still has the concept of the Seven Sisters and didn't have the same entry of global firms that Australia did. Despite that, there were other changes, like a lot more movement and laterals, and the firms below the Seven Sisters started to make a move up and capture some market share.

Since the GFC, and maybe even before that, clients have been keeping more work in-house. They're no longer willing to outsource everything to law firms at the hourly rate. That's led to the growth of legal business development. Law firms are having to compete for work a lot more, and they have to strategically go after targets.

Getting lawyers on board with new ways of working is one of the hardest parts of the job. As someone who trained in law, are there any tactics you’ve found that work?

You need to have a really clear point of view and perspective. Lawyers are trained to ask questions and spot problems, so you need to be able to defend your point of view with a cohesive and coherent plan. Having facts and figures, and proven case studies of why something works, really helps. I also think fostering a little incentive or competition goes a long way.

Lawyers are risk averse because that's how they're trained. People think that when lawyers ask a lot of questions and spot problems, they're not interested. I've actually found the opposite. If people continue to ask you questions and push, it's because they are listening. The minute the room goes silent, you've lost them. I always make a joke when lawyers don't talk: “I've silenced the room, so I must have convinced you.” But most of the time, it's because you've lost their attention.

I did a LinkedIn post on this, about how legal business development is like herding cats. You have to know how to herd your cats, otherwise you get scratched.

How is AI changing your day-to-day right now?

It's changing everything. It's great at aggregating information, and I know the lawyers use it for things like due diligence and discovery. But I think what we have to remember with AI is it has no judgment. There's still critical and analytical thinking that any professional, whether it be law or business development, has to do. You can't just take your AI paragraph and leave it as is.

This is giving away my ancient age, but I liken it to data rooms. When I started as a corporate lawyer, we had data rooms, and when you did due diligence, you had to go into a room filled with boxes of documents. Then you had to manually look through and review them, and either type the findings on your laptop or dictate.

People still do due diligence now, but the way you do it is different. We moved from data rooms to digital data rooms, and now we’ve moved into AI being able to scrape data. You still have to review it, though, and add judgment. AI hasn’t replaced due diligence, but it’s changed how fast you do it. It’s the same way email changed communication. Lawyers no longer physically go and get signatures because you can do it all faster by email.

If you were advising someone stepping into a growth role at a law firm today, what would you tell them that you wish someone had told you?

I wish someone had told me to step outside being a lawyer. I still think with my lawyer brain, and sometimes that's helpful, but you also need to find a voice that's different. I’ve found mine, but it's taken me a while to get there.

The advice I give people who are brand new to legal BD is that it's a complicated environment. You don't have one CEO and a clear chain of command. You have 100, or in our case around 300, individual people who are all bosses. Understanding how a law firm and its partnership operate, and the politics behind it, is really important. It’s also really important to understand what lawyers do. Read up as much as you can, ask them questions, and understand the different matter types. Do lots of reading on the industry or practice area and be curious about it.

I started this interview by talking about how lawyers are trained to spot problems. Lawyers are time-poor. They bill in six-minute increments, and everything we give them is taking away from that. So when you bring something together for a lawyer, it's got to be as perfect as you possibly can make it. No formatting issues or typos, because appearance matters. Sometimes my team will say I'm pedantic, but God is in the details, and details matter. The finer things make a better product.

The last thing is a little secret. Lawyers hate drafting from scratch but love to mark-up. If you give them something to mark up, you will make their (and your) life a lot easier. If you're creating a document, a pitch, or a Chambers submission, don't put “please insert.” Put something in there as a placeholder, even if it's completely wrong and say, “I need your input.” They can then mark it up.