Article · Professional Services

Attributed revenue is not portable client value

Big Law has become a market for portable revenue. Or, more accurately, for the promise of it. The better question is how much of it will actually move.

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A partner’s notebook with a handwritten client list

A partner may arrive with a very strong business case. Significant billings. Deep client relationships. A loyal team. But revenue attribution is not always the same thing as client ownership.

Inside a firm, revenue gets attributed to whoever originated the matter, led the relationship or sat closest to the general counsel. Those are three different things, and only one of them travels. A client who instructed a firm because of its bench, its pricing or its panel position will often stay exactly where it is when the partner leaves.

The due diligence that matters is not the billing history. It is the client’s view. Who does the general counsel call when something goes wrong? Who sits on the panel, the partner or the firm? How many of the top ten relationships would survive a conflict check at the new firm? Those questions are rarely asked with any rigour, and the answers decide whether a lateral hire pays for itself.

This is where BD earns its place in the conversation. A good client programme knows the relationships at a level the partnership does not: who the secondary contacts are, which matters came through the panel rather than the partner, and where the firm itself is the brand. That information should sit in the lateral business case before the guarantee is signed.

The firms that benefit most from lateral hiring will not necessarily be those that spend the most. They will be the ones best at distinguishing between attributed revenue and truly portable client value.

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