Business development isn’t evolving in 2026. It’s resetting.

We asked more than 1,000 attorneys and legal marketers if business development would become substantially harder in 2026 than in 2025 – the same question we’ve asked for the past three years.

Business development rarely gets easier. Clients always treat today’s greatness as tomorrow’s expectation. This alone makes business development harder.

But – others believe the difficulty has already peaked. The numbers look like this:

• 2026: 50% think BD will get substantially harder
• 2025: 44% thought BD would get harder
• 2024: 53% indicated BD would be harder

Early 2025 saw a serious drop in those who thought business development would get harder. This reversed heading into 2026.

This marks a reset, not a continuation.

It’s an even split. And it’s a new starting line.

Here are the 4 major reasons why:

1. Winning feels harder because losing is faster
   Firms on the wrong side of the fault line aren’t slowly falling behind. They’re being eliminated earlier in the process – often before they know they were being considered.
2. Clients have less patience for pitches
   Clients aren’t rejecting business development – they’re rejecting wasted business development. Generic outreach, recycled thought leadership, and capability-driven conversations are filtered out faster than ever.
3. New decision makers are changing the rules
   Turnover inside legal departments is accelerating. New leaders bring new expectations. And little loyalty to incumbent firms. Past performance matters less than present relevance.
4. More firms sound the same
   As firms double down on content, alerts, and AI-assisted messaging, differentiation is collapsing. Clients hear more noise, not more insight. The bar hasn’t risen – it’s narrowed.

Why BD Will Be Easier in 2026:

Improving inbound lead flow

Inbound inquiries from both new and existing clients are growing – in some cases steadily over the last 2 to 3 years. This is an omen.

Expanded Business Development/Client Relationship Executives

Nothing is more effective than adding dedicated business development/client relationship managers to develop organic business. These firms continue to see big-time results – and expand their programs.

New CMO Programs Starting To Kick In

High CMO turnover has settled a bit – and now firms are starting to see the results of new programs. Optimism is high.

AI Tools

High hopes for growth from an AI-driven approach to pitching clients and learning more about them. These tactics are expected to overcome business development obstacles.

Training

Optimism abounds for the results of new training. These firms have invested in internal and external training. They report a large focus on process, LinkedIn, networking, soft skills, and behaviors. They see big near-term as a result.

Gaining Business Development Advantage

Corporate counsel feedback and preference point to the key advantages in business development for 2026 – and beyond. These include:

More Strategy And Precision Than Effort

Working smart has never been more important. Corporate counsel face more new and novel issues than ever – with big risk. Answers and insights are more important than the level of effort and prior work.

More Behavior And Less System

Clients want to see actions and opinions early. This means client are basing their decisions on behaviors. Firms with the best and most relevant behaviors generate more inbound leads than the best systems and processes.

More Future-Looking Insight And Less Interest In Past

Corporate counsel are starting to think firms emphasizing the past don’t have an interest in the new and upcoming issues. The firms pairing forward-looking thinking with their credentials will win more work.

The rewards only get bigger as the level of difficulty rises – and this is what drives the best rainmakers to stay at the top of their game. They know success demands they move faster than clients.

2025 rewarded a small group of law firms with disproportionate visibility – while the rest fought harder than ever just to be noticed.

The combination of Presidential Executive Orders, political volatility, law firm merger announcements and high-profile celebrity trials contributed to the trend.

Google Trends reveals immediate spikes in searches following the first Presidential Executive Order. Later EOs caused similar surges for firms affected by subsequent orders. In most cases, the most searched for firms were able to attract a steady stream of searches throughout the remainder of the year.

The firms outside Executive Orders managed to attract impressive search numbers – largely on unique thought leadership and high-profile clients and events.

Using Google Trends, BTI analyzed relative Google search volume across more than 200 law firms throughout 2025.

Please join me in congratulating the following 22 firms for attracting the most searches in 2025:

The Most Searched in 2025

Strongly Searched

Searched Standouts

Every change impacting corporate counsel has a multiplier effect on client service. Each change makes it exponentially harder to deliver excellent client service. And – it has been a record year for change. These drive the 5 new behaviors separating the BTI Client Service All-Stars 2025 from everyone else.

The 5 new client service behaviors are:

Corporate counsel find themselves in the middle of more matters impacting business operations than ever. This means they’re impacting revenue and profit more than ever.

Their CEO’s expect real-time response and practical insights. Corporate counsel input is now a critical input to decisions about market disruption and regulatory volatility. There is no time to waste.

This changes the corporate counsel equations for excellent client service. It makes it harder – a lot harder – to deliver. But – 240 attorneys hit the client service bull’s eye.

They earned the coveted nomination for delivering the best-of-the-best client service.

The Only Purely Organic Ranking

No submissions. No nominations. No suggestions. No payments. Only clients.

Every BTI Client Service All-Star is nominated by corporate counsel. We asked them to pinpoint these individuals by name – these are The BTI Client Service All-Stars.

This exclusive research – this report, and the online directory – serve as the gold standard to uncover the best. Used by corporate counsel and law firms alike – it remains the pinnacle of client service performance.

Clients single out 240 All-Stars firms from 134 firms.

Law firms may seem to move in lockstep. Not so when it comes to growth strategies.

CMO mandates prove just how far apart firms really are.

These marketing leaders are running point on their firm’s growth bet. Each mandate is a signal about where the firm is today, and where it thinks it’s going.

And it’s anything but uniform. Some are clear winners.

BTI’s survey of more than 140 law firm marketing leaders unwraps these mandates. Here’s what these CMOs are charged with accomplishing:

• • 37%: Support individual attorneys in business development
  • 32%: Grow firm revenue
  • 16%: Develop new strategy for growth
  • 15%: Raise the firm’s profile to win higher-rate work

These aren’t job descriptions. These are strategic bets. And – there will be winners and losers.

4 Big Law Firm Marketing Bets

The Decentralized Bet

37% of CMOs are going to get the best out of their attorneys. These CMOs are charged with supporting individual partners with business development.

This means supporting a plethora of individual strategies, tactics, and approaches. CMOs will often try to guide the attorneys to the most successful strategies – but these are largely opt-in.

The attorney-centric approach offers the path of least resistance – and is often the legacy approach.

The challenges include:

• • • Exceptionally hard to scale
    • Multiple approaches (and messages) to the market
    • One-by-one approach to developing rainmakers

A group of these CMOs finds the multitude of requests, demands, styles, skill levels, and expectations exhilarating – almost addictive. They especially love the success stories. But others describe it as an unending, unrewarding treadmill.

The underlying assumption here: the successful attorneys will bring in enough business for all – or more.

The Firm as Enterprise Bet

32% of CMOs are tasked with growing revenue at the enterprise level. They are betting:

• • • Sustainable growth comes from superior systems – combined with superior people
    • Institutional knowledge outlasts individual partners
    • Collaboration beats individual achievement

These firms invest more in thought leadership, partner training, client feedback, industry-facing groups and new business development metrics such as shared business development credit.

It works – when leadership backs it, measures it, and protects it from being derailed by one-off exceptions and legacy habits. And funds it.

These CMOs are not ignoring individual attorneys. They provide individual support in  2 strategic contexts:

• • • Drawing on enterprise efforts to generate inbound leads
    • Leveraging a set of strategically selected tools backed by the firm

The enterprise bet offers partners a potential differentiator – and a uniform message to the market.

The Reinvention Bet

16% of CMOs are reinventing their firm’s BD model. Incremental change won’t unleash the outsized growth they want. Most of these CMOs are operating under mostly partner-centric models.

The reinventors are moving closer to the enterprise model with deep investments and structural change including:

• • • Industry facing go-to-market strategies
    • Strategic account teams
    • Firmwide training at scale
    • Dedicated client development executives to support relationship partners and clients

This amounts to transformational change. And – transformation demands unequivocal air cover from leadership.

The Premium Work Bet

15% of CMOs are tasked with moving into the rarified air of the super-premium work.

They are after the big, complex, new, novel and prestige assignments. These CMOs play a role in lateral success, along with the institutional support, to gain credibility in key market segments. This is prevalent in M&A, Private Equity and Litigation.

But laterals are only part of the equation. CMOs are adding brand building, thought leadership, and new support systems to meet the unrelenting demands of both the top laterals and clients.

Success demands 3 components:

• • • Crystal-clear, unflinching market-facing message
    • Super-premium rate partner behaviors
    • Funding and discipline – well more than a fiscal year

The High Stakes Trade Offs

Every bet brings its own risks and rewards. The risks in these bets include:

• • Strategy gets overruled by partner preference
  • Firms dabble in these strategies by offering limited funding
  • Leadership silence on the strategy

But – the rewards can be substantial, including:

• • Mouthwatering profits
  • Outsized growth
  • Enduring growth
  • Improved talent recruitment and retention
  • Rate-setting leadership
  • Attracting new clients

Avoid the Known Landmines

CMO mandates are easily muddied up by partner requests, special initiatives, marketing emergencies, pocket vetoes and budget freezes.

Successful CMOs view building the leadership backing and commitment they need as an ongoing, dedicated part of their role – and never, ever let it lapse.

Pick your bet. Fund it. Back it. Protect it. Execute it. Growth follows.

Legal complexity isn’t just a fact of life. Add volatility and unpredictable regulatory changes, and you get chaos.

It creates jolting changes in client needs and expectations – with no notice. This is no trend. It’s life as a corporate counsel.

It’s an evolutionary leap in business and law. It’s irreversible, transformative, and already upending client demands and client-facing interactions. Nothing is as it was. There are currently 5 big consequences:

Legal Risk and Business Strategy Are Now the Same Beast

CEOs face challenges where legal and business issues are fully fused. No handoffs. No silos. Just one complex, fast-moving front.

CEOs want answers – now, not later. They demand real-time, strategic, practical advice. No theory. No fluff. They will pass on the legal memos. They want synthesis – fast, ready to act on strategic insight.

Corporate counsel – and law firms – are the support crew.

In-House Counsel Are Caught in the Squeeze

They’re managing compressed timelines, rising risk, and relentless pressure from above. They need law firms to deliver – fast, smart, and ahead of the curve. And always changing.

Top Firms Are Thriving on the Chaos

The best firms aren’t just advisors – they’re embedded in client decision-making and navigating the chaos by:

• Injecting insight into client issues in real time
• Translating complexity into immediate action
• Making client counsel look brilliant in front of the CEO

They don’t ask permission to charge premium rates. They earn them. Their superior value is clear and obvious.

Sticking to an Older Model? That’s Why Client Satisfaction Just Hit a 25-Year Low

Top-performing firms are adapting in real time. Others are still holding onto legacy models – waiting to be asked and losing out. Chaos can be a powerful force for positive change.

If you haven’t embraced the chaos, you haven’t adapted – there isn’t much time left.

Responsiveness Is Becoming Ice Age Behavior

• We’ve entered the era of anticipatory counsel.
• Top performing firms don’t wait – they deliver insight before clients ever ask
• The reactive model is no longer enough

Turning Chaos Into Harmony

Client service used to feed business development. Now, they’ve fused – driven by CEO impatience, blurred boundaries, and sky-high expectations. Top firms didn’t pivot. They jumped into managing the chaos. And their rates prove it.

BTI’s Client Service Trailblazers

Clients single out only 55 trailblazing firms best at turning chaos into solutions for clients and new business for themselves. Learn what they do and who they are. These new client service demands are confounding most law firms – but not these 55 firms who are best at delivering on all 5 right now.

The BTI Client Trailblazers are at the leading edge of client service – with 27 of The BTI Client Service 30 included. These firms are poised to leapfrog client service performance – and enjoy the business development benefits as a result.

These new client service trailblazing demands are:

• Act with lightning speed
• Include clients early in strategy
• Field the absolute best team
• Make it easy to work with their firms on every front
• Deliver ultra-practical, actionable recommendations

Congratulations to the 55 firms delivering on these 5 trailblazing demands as the chaos unfolds:

It’s every attorney’s dream.

Tackle complex, high-stakes issues. Help clients unleash success. Solve the thorniest problems.

These are all staring clients in the face as you read this.

Political volatility injects risk into every client deal and dispute. Client business models are transforming. GenAI is disrupting workflows. Large, midsize, and small clients are all reshaping their businesses in real time.

Every client’s goal is changing along with these factors.

And – every change in goals brings an equally profound change in what clients want/need and expect from outside counsel.

Our new research – based on insights from 350+ corporate counsel – reveals a whole new set of law firm behaviors clients want to see from you. These 10 behaviors are redefining what it means to deliver elite client service – and earn the elite rates to go with it:

Executive Orders. On-again, off-again regulations. 180-degree turns in enforcement. CEO demands. It’s chaotic out there.

Only 2 things bring order: problem-solving and exceptional delivery. Otherwise known as elite client service.

Think of these firms as the relief valve giving corporate counsel precious breathing room and thinking time.

Clients point to the 260 law firms figuring this out. Just over 1 in 3 – proving these firms are differentiated – and a rare breed in the client’s mind.

Join me in taking a closer look at the standout performers in the just-released BTI Client Service A-Team 2025 – the BTI Client Service 30.

DLA Piper Grabs the Number One Spot for the First Time

After moving up the ranks for 5 years, DLA is now number 1. It drives its elite performance through:

• Embracing dedicated client relationship managers to support partners and clients
• Offering clients innovative ideas – and including them in the process early
• Driving client centric dialogue among the attorneys
• Leading with robust industry groups backed by meaningful thought leadership
• Embracing client feedback at scale – and using the feedback to drive improvement

9 Firms Climbing Through Ever-Changing Client Demands to Debut on and Return to the BTI Client Service 30

We welcome the first-timers and returning firms who improved client service against a changing set of client demands and expectations.

Like DLA Piper – these firms have been able to move up in the ranks to crack The BTI Client Service 30. These firms are:

• Aggressive users of client feedback
• Providing tools and resources to boost performance
• Invest in industry groups
• Seek attorney input on how to improve
• Talk about client service as a part of the firm dialogue

A hearty congratulations to the newest members of  BTI Client Service 30:

It’s unusual for a single issue to redefine a law firm’s brand – but that’s exactly what Trump’s Executive Orders – and even the threat of EOs – did.

Firms challenging Presidential directives found themselves in an intense spotlight. So did those negotiating deals.

Branding wasn’t the goal – nor should it have been. They were facing urgent, existential problems. But intended or not, their choices became brand signals – loud and clear to corporate counsel.

Our just-completed BTI survey of more than 350 corporate counsel reveals exactly how clients judged these moves – and what it means for future hiring decisions. The results breakdown like this:

25% prefer firms who challenged the Executive Order. Primary reasons include:

• • • Valued an aggressive stance
    • Admired conviction and clarity in their beliefs
    • Saw it as defending the rule of law

23% prefer the dealmakers because they:

• • • Respected quick, pragmatic resolution
    • Valued heading off large-scale complex trouble
    • Liked the unfazed leadership in the face of existential threats

52% express no strong bias:

• • • “It’s just another day – they’ll do what they do,” said one CLO at a Large Financial Service Organization
    • Saw these as business decisions not political stands
    • Put problem-solving and relationships ahead of politics

These splits aren’t preferences. They’re filters – telling you who will invite you in and who won’t.

• • Clients with strong preferences are going to think twice before inviting firms with whom they disagree to pitch or work – in the near term
  • For the majority, relationships and problem-solving prowess rule – for now

The Strategic Takeaway

Every high-profile matter is a branding event – it’s an inescapable outcome.

The middle 52% expect you to be thoughtful. If asked about your stance – it’s no time to improvise.

Our advice: Rehearse and role-play your answer. Be ready. Be confident. Most of all – listen to what your client has to say. Clients still want to work with attorneys who listen – no matter what.

We’re at a threshold moment in law firm marketing.

This isn’t just a fantasy.

A select group of CMOs believes we’re entering a golden age – one marked by clear, recognized value, strategic impact, and a real voice at the leadership table. They see respect rising, job satisfaction soaring, and even compensation getting recalibrated to match their role in driving firm growth.

These CMOs have a conviction that fuels relentless efforts to elevate marketing – breaking down obstacles no matter how many times it takes.

But not everyone shares their vision. An equally committed group sees no golden age on the horizon at all.

Our BTI survey of more than 130 law firm marketing leaders details how marketing leaders see the golden age unfolding – or not – below:

• Absolutely: 25.0%
• Possibly: 29.4%
• Not Convinced: 24.0%
• No Way: 21.6%

While optimism narrowly outweighs pessimism (54% vs. 46%), the near-even split reveals a fundamental disagreement about the future of law firm marketing.

But look closely at that most optimistic 25%: They’re not just hopeful – they’re acting on their belief. They’re changing the game by:

• Going all-in on digital marketing: Targeting clients and industries with precision, engaging partners, and betting on ROI so large it’s obvious from all points of view.
• Performance-coaching partners: Helping them overcome obstacles (self-imposed and otherwise), build confidence, and improve their client-facing skills through confidential, trusted advice. Note: this advice starts with BD and quickly moves to success as a partner.
• Deeply connecting with partners: Making partner challenges their own, investing in individual success.
• Locking into leadership goals: Understanding them cold, supporting them fully, and providing private counsel to sharpen their market relevance.

Most CMOs want a golden age – and they want it now. The opportunity to create that golden age is just as enticing as being in it.

Aggressive law firms are harnessing this optimism. They are challenging (or hiring) their CMOs to define and deliver the attributes of this golden age. Firms can use it as a recruiting advantage, especially as lateral partners demand deep BD support.

Above all, recognize what’s at stake. It’s a firm victory – not a marketing victory – it’s a client builder and firm builder. It drives revenue. Strengthens client loyalty. Enhances partner retention.

Firms don’t have to wait for the golden age to arrive – they can start it now, one initiative at a time.

Ultimately, the market will reward firms delivering the golden age today. Those firms will be embedded with their clients and confidently expand into new markets, backed by resilient, informed leadership.

The rewards of the golden age dwarf the risks. 25% of CMOs think it is here.

Where does your firm stand?