From Associate to Ace: Molly Hough’s Blueprint for Business Development

I want to get bigger and bigger , and this is not my thing , but I've heard this before is to create the space that you wish you were invited into , and this is the space that I wish I was invited into , and so that's the space that I'm trying to create for other women , and also just giving them permission to say , yes , I want business development , yeah , I

want a big book , yes , I want to make money . I think we often stop ourselves from saying those things , and I just want to create the space that , as attorneys and as associates , it's okay to want that .

I'm sitting down with the incredible Molly Half , who's not just a powerhouse in the legal world but also a champion for women and lawyers of color . We're going to explore how young associates can build their own books of business and take control of their careers .

Molly's got some eye-opening insights on identifying your ideal clients , networking like a boss and setting achievable goals that actually lead to success . Plus , we'll discuss why it's totally okay to want financial success and how creating a supportive space for business development can change the game .

So if you're ready to stop feeling lost and start thriving in your legal career , grab your headphones and let's get into it .

I truly wrote it once as a LinkedIn post and it just stuck and I truly just started becoming known as like your guide to becoming a kick-ass lawyer , which everybody wants to be right , and so trying to give as many practical tips and tricks and insights into how to actually do that and that's where my story comes in is I was really frustrated with this constant

being told what I needed to be without any sort of understanding how to get there , and that continued to happen in both training development in my life .

It came in how to build a book of business in my life , and so I just became really dedicated to trying to break down and understand how do attorneys actually get from point A to the $2 million book of business and then breaking that down so it becomes very actionable and not overwhelming for attorneys .

Cause I think that can happen very easily when you're looking at this partner who has the $2 million book of business and it's usually a male and he's saying something like just go out and network , and you sit there and you say , okay , I am going out there and networking .

That doesn't really help me , nor does it help me understand how you actually built a $2 million book of business . And also the world is just changing right and so what works for that attorney 15 , 20 years ago is probably not the same thing that's going to work for you and especially for women or attorneys of color .

There's just different barriers and different things that you have to keep in mind , and that's really where my passion comes from and how I see myself . Really adding to the legal profession is by putting as much autonomy , control , business and money in the hands of women .

It didn't come naturally to me but I picked things up and I experimented and some things work and some things didn't , and times have changed and so I have a really hard time articulating like here's the path , but it sounds like you've developed something of a path that you can teach young lawyers , and especially young women lawyers , about how to develop business .

So let's talk about that for a little bit . What are your primary like ? One to three to five things that a new lawyer should be thinking about when their partners are asking them to develop business but they have no idea where to start .

So who is my ideal client ? What problem do I solve for them and what unique problems does that client have , and what unique solution am I bringing to that problem ? That question in and of itself stumps probably 90% of lawyers .

But if you're in a general practice or in a broader employment law or criminal defense , criminal defense is maybe on the nose but , like in a more general practice , how do you go about identifying who am I looking for and what problem am I solving ?

Because they've stuck me in this like general let's just say general litigation , right , and I'm doing employment law and I'm doing IP and I'm doing I don't know bankruptcy and I you have all these sorts of buckets . I think you have to start asking yourself these questions of five years from now , who am I going to be excited to wake up and go serve ?

What sort of client am I ? Both in the law , like it's clicking for me . What is something that feels maybe a little bit more natural for me ? Because there's parts of the law that I think work for a lot of people that don't work for others , right ? So what area of law is clicking for me ?

How can I find people within that practice area , clients that I'm actually caring about ? That I see myself in these cases that I am empathizing with them . I want to help them .

I want to get them from point A to point B Again , so that five years from now you're not stuck with a bunch of clients that you're like I don't really care about these people and I'm not really excited to serve them , and that really is the core of what I believe is our profession , as we are serving people in some of their most vulnerable moments to get

them from point A to point B . So I think it's asking some of those questions and then it's just getting your hands on different types of cases right . So you don't know what . You don't know If you can go in and say , okay , these four areas of law interest me .

I'm going to go to this partner who I trust and say , hey , can I try out these different practice areas or these different cases . And you just have to start whittling it down right and then just asking yourself some very good questions through . I'm going to put my plug in here through coaching of how do I start to figure that out .

Ok , here's my list of things that I might like , and let me just go experiment with those different partners and see what I do and what I don't like . But number two , the responsibility is on the associate . So on the associate to reach out and to find those things .

If you are the one that's complaining about , these , things never come to me , but on the flip side , it's on the partner . Like , we can't sit back and go . My associates don't ever generate any business if we're not giving them the tools to go out and generate business .

So I think it's important for both sides of that equation to realize that , outside of servicing the clients , we have to be both intentional and and we are responsible for going out and running our own lives and running our own practices .

Your second year is similar , but you've got a little bit more confidence to you and so I think it can easily just happen to us where you have a partner say , hey , you did such a good job on this case , which means that you should be doing this practice area and that's wonderful and great feedback to get area and that's wonderful and great feedback to get .

But again you have to be in control of saying do I really like that ? And just because I'm good at something , does that mean I care about it and should I be doing that ?

And so it's just taking a step back from this really intense career that we have and starting to ask yourself those really good questions so that again in five years you actually have a practice that you're excited about and want to go into work for . You're not sitting there dreading just the billable hour and hate your life .

There's plenty of miserable lawyers out there , brian , and I do not want any more of them .

If you are good at doing a certain thing , you happen to get more of that certain thing , which is great if you like doing that thing .

But if you hate the clients that you're working for and you hate opposing counsel and you hate the subject matter , that can be really draining , and so that's what leads to burnout and depression and anxiety and people quitting the law and going and do other things .

But so once I've identified here's what I want to do , here's who I want to do it for , how do I go and find more of those people and more of those corporations ?

The next piece is let's do an assessment on your strengths , right ? So what sort of strengths-based networking are you actually working on ?

So if you are someone who is being asked to write articles every day from some partner who wants you to go do that , and you hate writing articles , that's not gonna bring you joy , it's not gonna work for you and it's also your clients are gonna know . Like these clients that are coming in , they're gonna know that you were not enjoying what you're doing .

So it's just a matter of figuring out what works best . Are you best one-on-one ? Do you like doing presentations ? Do you wanna go do the pitch if and when that happened , or are you the person that wants to sit in their office and write all day long ?

So we have to like again , take the step back and figure out what exactly works for me and let's start living into more of that rather than trying to force yourself into this box . That just isn't meant for you . So let's figure that out and let's try to go out and put some things in place around

that . From there , it's really identifying referral sources , right , and the sort of magic number that people throw around is 8 to 12 . And again , for someone who has no referral sources right now , 8 to 12 sounds like a lot . So it's just trying to say , okay , who serves my client ? Right ? What other three practice areas serves my client ?

Okay , let's write that down , let's go out and identify some people that we can work on that with , and there's a script that I help people in trying to close the deal on those referrals , cause that's another problem that lawyers have is they're like yeah how do I even go into this meeting and close the deal ?

And so it's just those things that they just haven't been taught that are . This is nothing new . This is not some brand new insight that I have . It's just putting the framework together to help a lawyer and completing these steps .

So it's that strengths-based networking , figuring out who your referral network is and also recognizing that I think law firms often have the narrative that any other lawyer in your practice area outside of this firm is your enemy , and I don't think that's true at all .

Some of your best referrals can come from other lawyers who are in similar practice areas that you trust , know and who get conflicted out of a case and give it to you .

I would much rather work with another transaction lawyer who I knew and respected than have a client or potential client go out and find like the meanest guy in town . So yeah , people outside of your practice who are in the same practice area are absolutely a source of mutual referrals .

In that regard , what I like about what you said is identifying not who are my future eight to 12 client , but who are the eight to 12 people who are in front of my future clients , Because it's a much more cost-effective way to network than trying to go one-to-one to the corporation that might actually hire you or the general counsel for the corporation .

But okay , how can I maybe get in front of the accountant who's got a bunch of people whose estate plans I might do ? I think that's a really smart way to think about how can I get in front of a broader network and eight to 12 sound high . But if you stack two a year , in four years you're at eight .

If you put together a marketing plan , often it's the year long marketing plan , right ? It's the thing you put together in January and you're excited about it for maybe two , three weeks and then billable hours , non-billable hours , office politics lots of familiar .

There's so many other pressures that can come in that just make you put business development at the bottom of your list , and nothing about a year-long marketing plan is going to motivate you . So I work with lawyers on how to break down . Let's identify three to five 90-day goals .

Then , within those three to five 90-day goals , we're going to break down weekly actions with due dates , and then we're putting systems and processes in your day-to-day life to get you to actually accomplish those things right .

So we're not trying to put barriers in their way , we're trying to make it as easy as possible for them to just put this into their day-to-day .

So that's things like whether it's a Monday afternoon for 45 minutes that you have blocked off on your calendar , that every week you go in and you send the email , you set up the coffee , you make the call , you go to the coffee , whatever it might be , you write the article , you do the presentation and you're checking off on your weekly goals that you were

actually putting this together . So that's a big part of it is just reframing for them how to actually accomplish their goals , which they get to the end of those 90 days and there's momentum behind them , and that momentum is so powerful to then say look at all you did in 90 days and we didn't flip your life upside down .

So what are the next 90 day goals that we can hit ? And it's just really powerful to watch that happen .

Number one , mass and accountability groups two and three is is you are addressing on a regular basis with somebody who you were paying handsomely often that you haven't actually done the thing that you said 14 days ago .

You said you were going to do , and so just the added cost of both financial and emotional cost of having to admit that you didn't do that thing , I think is a real motivator to make you actually do it . If more information was what we needed , we'd all be billionaires with six pack abs .

We need execution and we need somebody to follow us and somebody that we have to report to that we didn't take action sometime . So the group that you're running looks like a mastermind that you're running in cohorts . Tell me about that .

It helps you get clarity , it helps you create confidence in yourself and get this momentum that you need , all with that accountability of meeting with just like-minded associates who are unabashedly just saying , yes , I want to make some more money and , yes , I want to bring in business development , which there's nothing wrong with that Right .

And so being in a group of people that can hold you accountable , encourage you , see things that you can't , and just cheer you on and be in your corner is so powerful . So we meet every week for eight weeks .

There's teachings that go along with that , and then there's group coaching that happens once a week , in addition to some one-off one-on-ones that you get with me as we kind of work through this six-part framework in the eight weeks .

And it's so cool to watch someone start from gosh I know who my client is or I know what I want to do , but I just don't know how to get there . And at the end of the eight weeks they've got this very clear plan of what they're going out and how they're going to do it and how they're going to hold themselves accountable .

And it's really cool , it's really powerful .

So there was a woman in my first and she was a fifth or sixth year attorney , somewhere in that range , and she joined the cohort again without she didn't even know who her ideal client was at that point , which that's not a dig on her . That's like , I said , 90% of attorneys . So we went through the course , right .

She got this really big clarity around what she wanted to do and then from there she decided to stay on with me and do one-on-one coaching and we just had her , excuse me , close to our like one-year call and she is at her like $50,000 mark , which is awesome for one year of an attorney who went from zero to $50,000 .

And it's only going to increase and double and triple from there . And it's again just the power of meeting with somebody , being held accountable and finding opportunities that you might not normally have the confidence to go after because , again , you didn't have the language to go after it , right .

So when you have that in place , you have the confidence to go in and say this is my exact value and this is what I can give you and this is how I'm gonna get you from point A to point B .

business and none of them are your competition , and so you can be vulnerable and you can share ideas and you can not be worried that somebody is going to steal clients from you because they're halfway across the country and they probably weren't going to steal clients from you anyway .

But I think , just like the mental permission to share what worked really well or what didn't work really well , and I think , molly , one of the smartest things that you have on your checkout page is that , like , how do I get my employer to pay for this course ? Because for so many W-2 lawyers it's okay .

That's maybe a larger price tag , but I probably do have this educational budget and I don't know if you have this in the letter to the employer , but if somebody brought me a course description and it was about how you brought in a hundred thousand dollars as a third year associate . Hell yeah , I would pay for your course , for my team .

I think we often get to the fifth , sixth , seventh , eighth year and we're like , oh , I should just start now , and that's so much time compounded that you could have been building this book of business , and I'm not saying that as a second year you're going to get this huge case or get the $100,000 book of business .

But that compounded from second year to eight year , I think it's wild that we are not teaching that from the get-go .

I think there's also just still this sort of old school mentality of you work for me until I'm ready to give this to you , not this sense of , I know the attorney going out and having some early success , but again , to me that's a very bad business model .

I took courses , I bought books , I listened to podcasts until eventually I just started figuring out what worked for me and just started putting that in place . And then it was just a matter of communicating that and breaking that down for other attorneys .

And it was this sort of like light bulb moment when I was meeting with people all the time and they were saying how are you doing ? What does this look like ? And I would sit there and be like , oh yeah , I'm doing X , y and Z and you could do it too , and that's not helpful .

So it was really man , if I want to actually do this , I need to put some pen to paper and start working on this . Man , if I want to actually do this , I need to put some pen to paper and start working on this . And it's just been a huge passion of mine .

And again , truly how I think we can change some of the things about the legal profession that just need to be changed , and to me , that is again putting more autonomy , control and money into the hands of women . So , yeah , so that's the short answer .

And I was talking to somebody yesterday and they asked what the differentiator at our law firm is and I said you know , I think it's that we don't . I don't try to compete on . I'm the best lawyer in town because number one . How would you ever know what's the objective judge of that ? And nobody really in our space is trying to compete on .

How do I provide the best customer service and client experience ? Right , everybody is . I make the best objections . Who cares ? 0.5% of cases actually get to trial . Who cares how good your objections are right ? Everybody knows how you made them feel . Nobody knows whether the person down the street would have gotten them 10 or $15,000 more .

And God , I always have to say which is not permission to be a shitty lawyer Like you have . Being a good lawyer is the price to play the game . But you also , you're allowed as a lawyer to get good at business and to get good at client generation and taking care of clients and obtaining referrals Like we just don't .

We don't talk about that outside of courses like yours , and National Trial Lawyers has a business of law concert , concert , conference . That's a great concert . They're actually the music is pretty good . Like we don't as lawyers . We don't talk about that .

None of the CLEs that are put on by at least the Virginia State Bar have anything to do with running a better business . It's all how to be a better lawyer , which is , I think , silly , and law schools aren't teaching it either .

Like I took an entrepreneurship class in law school and it actually was how to be the lawyer for an entrepreneurial company , and it actually was how to be the lawyer for an entrepreneurial company .

When I was an associate , too , there was such a longing that I had , because not every attorney wants to do business development or talk about business development , and so I was really struggling with this .

This is all I want to talk about , because I have momentum and I want to keep doing it and I want to get bigger and bigger , and I need someone to help get me to that next level , and so there was a lot of desire there and this is not my saying , but I've heard this before is to create the space that you wish you were invited into , and this is the

space that I wish I was invited into , and so that's the space that I'm trying to create for other women , and also just giving them permission to again say , yes , I want business development . Yeah , I want a big ass book .

Yes , I wanna make money I think we often stop ourselves from saying those things and I just wanna create the space that , as attorneys and as associates , it's okay to want that , and there are so many resources available to you and that's part of what I give in my course , and one of the things that we talk about is how to provide an excellent client

experience , because Brian and I was very similar of . I'm not going to be the appellate lawyer . I'm not trying to compete to be the best or smartest attorney in this firm , because that's never going to give me momentum and that's only going to make me insecure . But how do I find out what I'm really good at and capitalize on that ?

They're like , what's small law ? I've never even heard of that . I didn't know that I could go and do that , like the only people that are coming to our campus to interview our big law firms and they don't understand how the money works in a small law firm . Because at a big firm the NALP data is available .

You can see what the base salary is for somebody year one through year eight , and you can go to above the law and look at what the bonuses were for last year and the hourly requirements . So all of that is out there . But in small law it's really a black box .

And so you and I were talking before we jumped on about like bonus and compensation models in small law firms and I think that there is a whole class of law students who are wondering if I go to a small law firm , what can I expect and what should I be asking in addition to my salary ?

Because most small law firm owners are not great business people and we're just figuring it out as we go along and there is no plan . For here's how you set up the bonus model . You had , I think , three ideas that you've heard most often for how compensation and bonusing works in small firms , so you want to dive into that ?

So let's say they get 10 , 15% of the origination credit that they're bringing in amount of hours billed . This is overall . How much did we get in on this case ? And you're going to get 10% of whatever that might be .

So I think that one is incredibly motivating , especially when you're sitting there and you're saying , okay , my salary might be lower than the big law right now , but if I don't accept that my salary is what my employer is giving to me , this is a great way for you to go out and increase your own I don't wanna say salary , but your own income is the word

I'm trying to say . So that's a great one .

The second one that I've heard of is just the subjective bonus model , which is not my favorite . I think we talked about that . It's saying , okay , you brought in all this money and and at the end of the year the firm is going to say I don't know , here's 20 grand or here's 50 grand or whatever it might be that they feel is appropriate .

Again , I don't like that one because it's subjective , right , and so I like very objective models where you know exactly how much money you're going to get .

Then there is the billable hour credit , so saying , okay , if you're going out and bringing in X amount of dollars or X amount of cases or X amount of clients , we're going to credit you this billable amount just to recognize that you're doing a lot of non-billable work by going out and networking .

So we want to give you that credit for your overall year of , say , you're billing 1800 hours , we'll make it 1750 or something like that , just to give people that credit and recognition that their work is being valued and outside of just the billable hour work . So those are the three buckets I've seen .

You're not asking for more , you want to . How do I make an extra 10 , 20 , $15,000, ? Make it as concrete as you can . And my suggestion to associates is find out what's out there and bring a suggestion to your boss , because , again , most of us are making this up as we go along .

And so if you came and you said here's three models , here's the one that I , what do you think about that ? And then give them some time to think about it , you're going to have better results than if you just wait around for them to dictate what the terms of of the bonus structure is likely to be .

But I put out a poll the other day on my LinkedIn , brian , that had asked the question of do you know if your firm financially compensates you or gives you credit for bringing in business ? And 50% of it was like hell , yes , love it , I know exactly what it is . The other 50% was I have no idea .

And so I wrote this other big post , like , if you were in this section of , I have no idea , you've got to go figure that out Because , again , that's such a powerful way you can take control of your career and go out , and especially with this might be going off the path a little bit too much , brian , but especially with this might be going off the path a

little bit too much , brian , but especially with our concerns over AI , business development is one of the biggest ways that you can squash that concern and show value to the firm that you're at .

The way that you can be an asset to the firm and provide job security and financial security to yourself is by having clients who think of you as their lawyer .

So it may be controversial , but I would say to somebody who's three to five years in , who's the associate on a case , who has a partner also on the case , like , what kind of maybe subversive things can you be doing to be a better liaison for that client than the partner is ?

Just so you create financial security for your family , so that you can't walk in one Monday and see that your job has disappeared , just to have the ability . And then in the back of my mind as a law firm owner , I'm like do I want my people doing that ?

And at the end of the day , that's the only thing that allows me to elevate out of the day-to-day operation in every single case . If I'm the one who has to be the touch point for all of the clients , we can only grow so far .

But if I have a place where everybody feels comfortable doing that and I accept the risk that some of these people might go with some of the clients , then it's my responsibility to make this the kind of place where you're not going to leave .

So I think and all of that is mindset , which I'm sure you go into very deeply in your coaches and in your mastermind course , all right . So I want to see if we can land the plane here . Molly , where can people find you ?

So those are really the two places that you can find me . Always feel free to reach out to

me . I think when people hear stuff like this , they're like I'm not going to reach out to that person . Just reach out , just say hi , start the relationship , see how I can help you . So I would encourage you to do that and those are the ways you can get ahold of me .