The role of Business Development is a highly nuanced one within Law Firms. Lawyers are frequently keen to manage the sales process and relationship with clients - this is what the client wants (see below) and in yesteryear's world, where marketing in Professional Services was often a grand term for breakfast seminar administration, this makes sense. However, as marketing becomes increasing sophisticated, and technology-driven, it simply isn't sensible or feasible for all the partners to have an intimate knowledge of the technologies required.
That said, the client wants to hear from the experts. So how to manage that magic trick? Well have a look at a marketing platform, such as Passle, which is designed to fix exactly that problem.
...the vast majority [of law firm clients] want to deal with those who will end up doing the work and [that] they often get irritated by BD staff who try to muscle in on the sales process. This was confirmed by a poll conducted by Legal Week and published in 2012 which showed that most GCs interviewed felt that BD departments had a role to play but would prefer them to be operating in the background whilst the lawyers (usually partners) who would lead on the work instigated and managed the relationships with clients.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/teach-your-lawyers-fish-kevin-wheeler?trk=hp-feed-article-title-like