I recently had a meeting with a couple of brilliant lawyers. These are the kinds of people who can outlast almost anyone—working late into the night, sharp as a tack, precise to the letter. But when I asked them about their business development (BD) strategies, I was surprised by how sheepish, for the lack of a better word, their answers were. They said the economics of their profession began and ended with “billable hours.” To them, the math was simple: billables = money. But as any economist or business owner with a long enough horizon would tell you: they have it exactly backwards.
