Continuing our five-part article on business development from FICPI Practice Management Committee’s Business Development & Marketing Group, we hear the experiences of a large firm.
Dima Litvak shows where repeated investment in business development can lead. He is a partner and head of technology practice at Reinhold Cohn Group in Israel. His perspective comes from a large firm environment: a substantial organisation with approximately 200 professionals, a long history and a leading position in its market. Dima’s focus is not on building a firm from scratch, but on transforming an established one, so that it can continue to grow in a changing environment.
The significance of Dima’s experience lies in the fact that business development (BD) is sometimes assumed to matter less for firms that are already market leaders. His journey suggests the opposite.
“A strong legacy can create complacency. A large firm with a powerful reputation may still lose ground if it relies too heavily on history, personal partner networks or passive inflows of work while competitors become more agile and more targeted,” he warns.
For Dima’s firm, the turning point came when it recognised several obstacles to growth: resistance to change, inefficient processes, underused data and excessive passivity. The issue was not that the firm lacked expertise or standing. It was that it needed to modernise the way it pursued opportunities and organised itself around growth.
In 2017, the firm made the strategic decision to create a dedicated business development function. That first attempt did not fully succeed. Rather than abandoning the effort, however, the firm re-evaluated and adjusted.
In 2020, it took a different approach. It appointed a younger attorney with BD experience as head of business development and introduced a professional chief executive from outside the partnership, with the BD function reporting into that role. Over time, the business development team expanded to include analytical and intelligence capabilities, creating a more complete growth engine within the firm.
The four pillars of business development strategy
Dima describes the current analytical and intelligence-based strategy as built around four pillars.
The first is a clear vision. The firm wanted to be seen not only as highly professional, but also as versatile and accessible. This was important because some smaller clients and startups perceived the firm as too large or intimidating. The response was to rethink how the firm presented itself, from outreach to marketing materials, so that it could retain its authority while becoming more approachable.
The second is strategic partnership-building. As a leading IP firm, the organisation sits at the centre of a broader innovation ecosystem of inventors, investors, startups and established companies. By viewing itself within that ecosystem, the firm could create value and relationships beyond the narrow confines of traditional legal service delivery.
The third is client-centred service design. One example Dima gives is the development of business and technology intelligence services. These were not merely internal support tools. They became client-facing offerings that helped clients map competitors, identify technology trends and make better strategic decisions. In this way, business development helped create new value, not just promote existing services.
The fourth is data-driven decision-making. CRM systems, market analysis tools, detailed conference preparation, annual business plans and KPIs all became part of how the firm organised and measured BD efforts. That level of structure is especially important in a large organisation where opportunities can otherwise become fragmented or poorly coordinated.
Culture at the core
Yet Dima is equally clear that systems alone are not enough. The real challenge is cultural. In many firms, the contribution of business development professionals continues to evolve as teams refine how these roles work alongside attorneys and support client relationships.
“BD professionals should not be seen as replacements for attorneys in client-facing trust-building,” he says. “Rather, they serve as enablers who help identify opportunities, coordinate outreach, gather intelligence and create the conditions for attorneys to engage in higher-value conversations.”
This distinction is critical. In Dima’s model, attorneys remain the face of the relationship, especially in a technical and trust-sensitive field such as IP. But dedicated BD professionals create leverage. They open doors, gather insight and support execution in ways that busy practitioners often cannot manage alone.
His perspective also highlights resilience. In recent years, changes in the wider environment led to a reduction in foreign-origin filings into Israel. The firm’s investment in growing local work became an important buffer against that external pressure. Business development, in other words, was not just about growth. It was about stability and adaptability.
Read on
- In part one, read the business development consultant’s view
- In part two, read the small-firm viewpoint
- Part three brings the medium-firm perspective
- Part four reveals the larger-firm experience
- Part five brings the essential lessons and takeaways every firm should master
(links become live as pieces are published)
Next steps
Find out more about FICPI’s PMC Committee and how to get involved at: https://ficpi.org/organisation/committees/practice-management-committee
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