Name: Danielle “Dani” Vanderzanden
Firm Name: Ogletree Deakins
Address: One Boston Place, Suite 3220, Boston, MA 02108
Phone: 617-994-5700
Nominated by Catherine Alman MacDonagh
Practice area: Labor and Employment Law; Litigation

Dani Vanderzanden is a shareholder in the Boston office of Ogletree Deakins, specializing in the area of labor and employment law for more than 15 years. Her practice involves representing employers in a wide range of employment-related disputes, as well as providing counsel to employers in other employment and labor matters. Dani is a strong proponent of taking ownership of your legal career from the start, and was happy to have the opportunity to share her rainmaking advice in the interview below.

Most successful/favorite rainmaking tip:

My biggest source of new business comes from existing clients who refer others in their industry to me. If you ensure that the results you obtain for your clients are top-notch, they will recommend you to their peers and colleagues in other companies as well as within their own company. Being very responsive is also critical. In this fast-paced society, clients expect an immediate response, often within one hour. Of course, it’s not always possible to have the answer they’re seeking quite that quickly, but it certainly helps if you or someone else from your office can still respond promptly. This provides an opportunity to let the client know you received the message, understand its importance, and will get back to them soon.

Best career advice:

Don’t put off business development activities—start early in your career. As a junior associate, that often means that your clients are the partners in your firm, so always be responsive and available to those partners. Also, make an effort to keep in touch with college and law school classmates, because they will be your future clients and sources for referrals. Keep your Rolodex; never delete older contacts, and keep adding to them. You never know when a former classmate will need your services.

Percentage of time devoted to marketing:

I would estimate I spend perhaps 15 to 30 percent of my time marketing. It does take a good amount of after-hours time to market your practice effectively.

Knowing what you know now, if you were starting out as a lawyer today, what would you do differently?

As I mentioned earlier, it’s important to stay in close contact with your former classmates. I did stay in touch with my law school classmates, but I didn’t adequately keep up with many people from my undergraduate days. Now I notice when going through my alumni magazine or directory that some of my former classmates have ended up doing impressive things with their careers. Had I stayed in touch with them, I would be able to more easily reach out to them as potential clients.

In addition, I probably should have been more strategic in balancing my personal life with work. There were many occasions earlier in my career when I abruptly cancelled vacations and personal obligations to put client matters first, when, in retrospect, I didn’t always need to do that in order to fulfill my responsibilities to my clients. I should have scrutinized the issue more carefully before automatically changing my schedule. Not thinking things through like this can throw your life out of balance.

Tell me about one rainmaking strategy or tactic that you initially thought would work, but it failed.

I quickly realized that attending a large event without an advance plan of action is, for me, not an effective way to generate business. I have not found it productive to attend an event simply hoping to run into someone who would be a good contact. If you’re going to attend a convention or conference with thousands of people in attendance, it’s best to identify, in advance, specific people you might target to meet. For example, you might be able to obtain an attendee list prior to the event. If you don’t prepare in some way, it likely won’t prove to be a good return on your investment to leave things to chance.

Tell me about one rainmaking strategy or tactic that you initially thought would fail, but it was a great success.

I had been familiar with the concept that you should “make your friends your clients and your clients your friends,” but I didn’t initially value the networking opportunities that friends could provide. I underestimated the reach that a lot of my friends had. I now better recognize the value of networking through personal friends to make worthwhile business connections.

What has been your greatest frustration about trying to get new business or new clients?

I’ve come to realize that there can be a very long runway involved in obtaining new business. It’s a long sales cycle, which can be tough if you’re seeking immediate gratification. You have to be patient.

If you were mentoring a young woman lawyer, what advice would you give her regarding rainmaking?

Again, do start early with business development. One thing to consider is getting involved with networking organizations for professional women in your community. Treat this as a priority along with your billable work. I personally became active early on with The Commonwealth Institute, which provides resources to women CEOs and entrepreneurs.

Women increasingly hold positions that involve the purchase of legal services. It’s best to develop a business plan early in your career that includes networking with other professional women, such as becoming involved with a charitable organization devoted to women’s issues. If you get named to an organization’s board, you will be working with other businesspeople on that board who will make excellent contacts. In deciding how to spend your time, it’s very important that you join organizations that deal with issues that you personally care about. Don’t just join to join; it won’t work as well and you won’t enjoy it if you’re not committed to the cause.

Another piece of advice is to track your activities to hold yourself accountable. I keep a chart that lists company names, corresponding contact names and information, my activities with each, and follow-up tasks. Follow-up activities might be calling the contact again by a certain date, sending an article of interest, following up with a person to whom my contact referred me, and so on. My administrative assistant helps monitor this chart, reminds me of the activities I’ve slated to accomplish in any given week, and keeps me on track.

Think about when you started out as a lawyer. Now think about the new female lawyers just starting out. What is different now compared to when you started?

For one thing, there is more flexibility when it comes to alternative work arrangements and working remotely; advances in technology have helped a lot with that. I also think it’s clearer today that if you want to control your destiny as a lawyer, you need to build your own book of business. Today’s law school graduates understand better than we did in previous decades that the practice of law is truly a business, and the way to best contribute to the firm’s bottom line is by generating business.