Method · The Practice Growth Sequence

Five stages. Two points where you can stop. A date it ends.

The method behind every engagement. Eight lawyers or forty accountants, the five stages are the same. What changes is which you buy, and when. Each ends in something the partners can hold someone to.

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Thesis

Most firms do this in the wrong order.

A firm hires a marketing executive before deciding what the function is. Buys a CRM before anyone owns the referral list. Lets juniors use AI on client work before writing down what may go in a prompt. Three problems. One: the order was wrong.

The method fixes the order. Review before you design. Design before you hire. Stand it up with the firm’s own people, then leave. Two points where the management committee decides whether to continue. Everything produced stays with the firm either way.

The arc

Review. Build. Hand over.

Review

How the firm wins work today, written down.

Stages 1 to 2 · Foundation, Discovery

Build

The function designed, then stood up with your people in it.

Stages 3 to 4 · Build, Execute

Hand over

The firm runs it. I leave on a date.

Stage 5 · Hand over

The stages

Five stages. Two points where you can stop. Something to show for every one.

Stage 01
Review
Foundation
Who decides, who delivers, who pays.
- Which partners need to be in the room, and which do not.
- What the firm already holds: the referral list, the client data, the systems, the policies, if any.
- Interviews with the partners who bring in work and the people who support them.
- What has to be true before the next stage starts, written down.
What you leave with: A one-page readiness brief. Everything else stands on it.
Stage 02
Review
Discovery
How work actually arrives.
- Every source of new work in the last two years, traced to a partner or a process, or to nobody.
- Where referrals leak: what happens to a warm introduction when the partner it landed with is unavailable.
- What the systems cost, in fees and hours, against what they are used for.
- What your people are doing with AI in pitches, client communication and marketing, and what it exposes the firm to.
What you leave with: A written, evidenced account the management committee can read in an hour, ending in a recommendation.
Decide
Decision 1 · Rebuild, change one thing, or leave it alone
The recommendation can be that the firm needs nothing further. If so, that is the answer. Everything produced is yours.
Stage 03
Build
Build
Design the function.
- The function on one page: who owns growth, who owns each source of work, who answers to the management committee.
- Who reviews what, weekly, monthly and quarterly, and against what.
- Which tasks AI does, which it does not, and who signs off on each.
- The rules, written for a regulator to read.
- The hiring brief, if the design needs a person the firm does not employ yet.
What you leave with: The design, as a document the management committee approves or sends back. Not a deck.
Decide
Decision 2 · Stand it up, change it, or stop
A management committee approves a design before it is built. Stop here and the design is still the firm’s, with or without me.
Stage 04
Build
Execute
Stand it up, with the firm’s people in it.
- The reviews run for real. I am in the room for the first cycles, out for the last.
- Owners doing the job, with what they need and nothing they do not.
- The first quarter’s numbers, reviewed the way the design says.
- Execution stays with the firm. I do not run campaigns.
What you leave with: Business development running, owned by named people who are not me.
Stage 05
Hand over
Hand over
Leave on a date.
- The operating manual: the function, the reviews, the rules, what AI does. Written for the next person.
- A handover meeting with the management committee.
- A date I stop attending, agreed at the start, kept at the end.
- The Quarterly afterwards, if the firm wants it.
What you leave with: The operating manual.

Which stages you buy

You buy it one piece at a time.

Most firms buy the Review and decide the rest from inside it.

Stages 1 to 2, then you decide

Review

Four weeks. One partner can approve it. It may say you need nothing else.

Review →

Stages 3 to 5, and you decide after the design

Rebuild

Twelve to sixteen weeks. The function designed, stood up, and handed over with its manual.

Rebuild →

Alongside stages 3 to 4, or on its own

Rainmaking

The leadership half of standing the function up: how partners sell, what happens to a referral, AI with clients.

Rainmaking →

After stage 5

Quarterly

Half a day each quarter before the management committee meets.

Quarterly →

What the method is not

Four things it is not.

Not a campaign. If you need one piece of marketing done well, an agency. I will name one.
Not partnership governance. Ownership, partner compensation, practice portfolio, mergers. A different adviser.
Not a course. Rainmaking runs on the firm’s own pipeline, with the partners. No certificate.
Not execution. I design and stand up. The firm runs it. The grant draws the same line.

Read further

The longer version, if you want it.

Governance, personal data, and what the software you pay for is costing you. Long-form, Singapore-specific. No sign-up.

See all essays

Tell me how work arrives at your firm. I’ll tell you which stages to run.

Thirty minutes. Which stages, over what calendar, or that something else would serve the firm better.

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