Rainmakers Go The Distance

Law firms of all sizes are trying to cut down on travel expenses - except for those of rainmakers, in many cases. The reason is that these attorneys cram lots of work into their schedules while they're on the road and make business development a regular part of each trip.

In fact, the National Business Travel Association claims that the return on investment for corporate travel is $15 dollars for every $1 spent. Lawyers who travel are actually working virtually all the time.

For Richard Horning, the biggest challenge is making sure his trips have no significant chunks of downtime. "After seeing clients, I look for new prospects, make sure nothing is wasted," says the transactional and IP counsel at Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal in Palo Alto. Horning travels domestically and to Europe and Asia a dozen days each quarter (a week after we spoke, he was off to Stockholm and half a dozen other cities by plane and train).

David Cheng, a tax and corporate transaction partner in Nixon Peabody's China practice group, spends 80 percent of his work time away from his San Francisco base. "I take advantage of my time away to look for new business," he says. "And it's not necessarily for me - I look out for prospects for my practice group colleagues, because our firm stresses cross-selling."

"It helps to be with a large firm and its resources," says Julius Turman, a labor and employment partner at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius in San Francisco. Turman estimates that he spends 65 percent of his domestic travel time on casework and 35 percent making presentations to prospective clients.

Curtis Bajak, an entertainment and finance partner at Loeb & Loeb in Los Angeles, does a substantial amount of entertainment and transactional work in the New York area. But because he has a family home there, he saves his firm a pretty penny in hotel bills. The same goes for Robert Darwell, a Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton partner in Los Angeles and New York. Darwell stays in his own apartments on trips to New York or Buenos Aires.

Though most of their firms use a travel service (such as The Lawyers' Travel Service), most of these attorneys often prefer to book their own flights and train travel so they can precisely coordinate meeting times with clients.

Bajak sometimes uses videoconferencing but says, "For certain negotiations, face-to-face is invaluable." Cheng agrees: "Especially in China, the face-to-face meeting is still the traditionally preferred way of doing business."

Yet when they're on the road for one set of clients, rainmakers still face the challenge of staying connected to the ones back home. "I don't change my phone message greeting when I'm away," says Horning. "I want to be sure that I'm always available to my clients." -RC

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