Busy Isn't the Same as Building

By Kelly Caldwell

In my work coaching lawyers on business development, I frequently encounter a deep sense of frustration. Many dedicated professionals invest significant energy into building a book of business – attending networking events, scheduling coffee meetings, maintaining a presence on LinkedIn, and nurturing referral ties – yet they often find themselves without tangible results. Despite their hard work, there’s a recurring feeling of stagnation, as if their collective efforts are failing to create any real momentum or lead toward a clear objective.

Sometimes the culprit is a simple lack of consistency or purposeful habits to support BD. But more often, when we dig into what's actually going on, the issue is something else entirely: diffusion.

What is Diffusion? 

Diffusion is one of the most common, least talked-about reasons why smart, motivated lawyers plateau in their efforts to originate.

The natural instinct – when networking and BD efforts aren’t working – is to assume you're not doing enough. You can’t just give up, so you throw even more at it. Another event. Another relationship to maintain. Another platform. The activity goes up, but still the results don't follow. The whole thing becomes equal parts confusing and demoralizing. At the root of it, the problem is that these efforts are spread too thin to compound. 

Think about what it actually takes to build momentum – with a client relationship, a referral source, or even a niche area of law. It takes repeated, meaningful contact over time. It takes enough consistency and specificity that people start to associate you with something. The problem? That kind of traction is almost impossible when your attention is divided across too many priorities at once.

Diffusion is costly, but it can be very hard to identify when you’re in the midst of it – after all, throwing effort at everything does lead to some progress. What diffusion costs you, however, is the depth of that progress. You’ll stay in motion – but you’ll never gain speed. 

There's a reason diffusion happens so often – and no, it’s not a character flaw. Most lawyers are genuinely curious people who care about a lot of relationships. When I coach clients on narrowing their focus, they tell me that it feels like they’re closing doors and writing off opportunities or people who might matter down the road.

So, everything stays on the table. Every relationship gets a little attention. Every direction gets explored just enough to keep it alive. The result? Breadth without depth. Movement without direction. A BD practice that feels like a second full-time job, without the results to match. 

Less is More

The good news is that there is a way out of this and it’s not about becoming more disciplined in the way you ‘do it all’, but rather in committing to do less and do it in a strategic and structured way.

What I find works is getting genuinely specific about a few things: 

• who you're trying to build relationships with

• what you want to be known for

• where should your time go over the next 12 months

I don’t mean just brainstorming or aspiring about these things. I mean: write them down, make them concrete, and commit to doing only these things for the next year.

When you narrow like that, something shifts. Actions start connecting. A conversation leads to an article, which leads to a speaking opportunity, which leads back to a conversation – but now with more credibility behind it. 

That is compounding and it’s what momentum actually feels like. It's the exact opposite of diffusion.

So often, we talk about the need to do more. Fair enough – law is a challenging and competitive field and it takes plenty of time and effort to build a book of business. So, yes: do more – but do more of what matters, and less of what doesn’t.  

Lawyers who build genuine authority in a space and a BD ecosystem that consistently sends them work aren't the ones doing the most. They're the ones who got clear about what they were building and protected that clarity over time. They successfully made the jump from activity to architecture and from scattered to strategic – and you can, too. 

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