The BD Catalyst

Rebecca Wenglinski, Founder & CEO of Lotus Business Growth Consultants, shares practical ways to put AI to work for law firm marketing and business development. We cover automated client intelligence, building agents for pitch research and RFPs, keeping confidential details out of the tools, and helping lawyers make their outreach more meaningful. This is all great framing for firms of any size.

Liz H. Sobe, Director of Business Development at Robinson+Cole, joins Kristo Sween to step through the universal BD progression: Contact to Connection to Relationship to Client. Liz shares that “a contact lives in your CRM, but a connection lives in your awareness,” and uses her definition of AI, Authenticity and Intentionality, to guide attorneys along the path of building relationships and trust. As her mother used to say, trust is built in drops and lost in buckets. Liz’s “AI” moves firms from selling legal services to helping people who trust their attorneys solve problems when the timing is right.

Lee Ashby Rogers, Director of Integration and Inclusion at Bass, Berry & Sims, joins Kristo Sween to talk about the connections between lateral partner onboarding and business development. Drawing on lessons from her waitressing days and a Ritz-Carlton approach to VIP guests, Lee explains how listening for what goes unsaid, pairing every new partner with a well-prepared sponsor, and mapping relationships from day one can turn onboarding into a cross-selling head start. Lateral integration, in the right hands, has business development written all over it.

For most prospective clients, business development starts before anyone picks up the phone. It starts on the firm’s website. Jason Lisi has watched that shift from the beginning. He’s a former tax lawyer who found his spark in the early days of the internet, and in the late 1990s he founded Legal Internet Solutions Inc. to translate between the people who build websites and the lawyers who need them. Today, a law firm’s website has to earn trust, position its lawyers as thought leaders, and even cross-sell, showing a visitor who came for one practice that the firm can handle their expanded needs too. That’s why content that reads as keyword-stuffed or AI-generated is a business development risk, not just a style problem. Jason makes the case for handing website development to people who know legal ethics and legal audiences, so lawyers can spend their time on clients and BD professionals can spend their time with the lawyers. Jason describes his work as helping lawyers turn their ideas for growing the business into action.

Ralph Cooper Jr., the very first guest on the podcast, returns to help mark 20 episodes of The BD Catalyst. Ralph came to business development from sports reporting, and admits he spent a lot of his early days feeling like an imposter. Ten months into his role as Business Development Manager at Benesch, he talks about how that changed. He approached BD the way he approaches football. He stayed curious, asked the obvious questions, and built a record of what works, ultimately coaching attorneys from his own experience and the experiences of others. He's currently helping associates build the same confidence through Benesch’s career advancement plans, a process where associates envision their future years before most lawyers start thinking about it and Ralph helps show how BD gets them there.

Sarah Delaney, Director of Marketing & Business Development at Hellmuth & Johnson, joins The BD Catalyst to talk about her role in the firm's extraordinary growth. Sarah views her firm’s 70 attorneys as 70 small businesses, each with its own clients, comfort zone, and path to growth. She shares the moment she saw the need for a mandatory firm retreat where a third of the day is spent speed networking and makes a strong case for advertising when other firms are pulling back. 

Kayla Fatica Himes, Marketing Manager at MacDonald Illig Jones & Britton LLP, joins The BD Catalyst to talk about launching her "Marketing 101" program for associates and law clerks, many of whom finished school during COVID and didn't have as much opportunity to practice how to work a room, start conversations, and commit to follow-up afterward. Kayla also shares how she builds events around what clients actually want. Outcomes range from a breathwork-and-cooking "rest before the rush" for women clients, an arcade night where associates build the guest list, and a family fall fest where event hosting builds succession planning. Kayla activates the formula: marketing creates opportunities, attorneys build relationships, and relationships create business.

In this episode, Kristo sits down with Sarah Hazel, Director of Marketing and Business Development at BCM Law, P.C., to talk about framing relationship attorneys as account managers. Sarah walks through her process for lawyers leading cross-functional client teams, defining clear expectations, building systems and fostering the kind of ongoing feedback loop that turns client service into client retention. Sarah's formula, Great Attorney + Effective Account Manager = Trusted Advisor, leads to clients asking for guidance beyond the current file. Finally, with a shared background on the stage, Kristo and Sarah discuss her observation that the theater-to-law-firm pipeline is strong and brings real value to creative collaboration inside law firms.

Mike Mellor, President and Founder of 742Advisors and a former CMBDO joins the podcast to share his C-Suite experience including the basic blocking and tackling of firm intelligence systems and processes to building trust and creating meaningful change inside law firms. Drawing on more than two decades leading marketing and BD functions at Big 4 accounting and AmLaw 200 firms, Mike talks about building coalitions of the willing and the use of data to expose gaps firms didn't know they had. At the end, Mike and Kristo discuss real, practical uses for AI to increase efficiency and effectiveness.

Livca Shin-Kim, MBA, Director of Marketing and Business Development at Donahue Fitzgerald LLP, joins the show and traces her path from an art museum internship to an MBA and nearly a decade in legal marketing. She explains how she's reframed BD for her attorneys as curiosity in relationship-building. A lifelong learner and creative problem solver, Livca shares some of the business development tools and approaches she has used to coach and train lawyers at her firm. Finally, she comes back to the museum with a sponsorship relationship she fostered that turned into new estate planning business for her firm. This is a conversation about the patience, value, curiosity and creativity that make Livca an ever evolving BD Catalyst.