Why lawyers hesitate to ask for work – and the secret to getting it right

While legal practitioners excel at solving complex problems, Prodonovich explained that translating those technical strengths into generating new business remains a persistent hurdle, with many lawyers hesitant to ask for work for fear of coming across as pushy or desperate.

“One of the most frequent questions I am asked is how to build a book of business or build more business from the book that you’ve already got, both of which require the act of asking for work,” she said.

“I’m sure a lot of them have seen the pushy sales tactics. A lot of them experience themselves when people are trying to sell to them what they don’t like. So they don’t want to sound desperate.”

Prodonovich expressed that selling themselves and their services doesn’t come naturally to lawyers and is rarely a skill they are trained in; their real strength, she said, lies in listening closely and pinpointing the problems that truly matter to their clients.

“They’re not trained to be salespeople and to be pushy, but what they’re very good at is listening. What they’re very good at is understanding or identifying some problems or triggers,” she said.

Rather than seeing it as pushing unwanted services, Prodonovich urged lawyers to reframe their mindset and approach each interaction as an opportunity to listen, add value, and build trust, transforming what might feel like a transactional exchange into a genuinely meaningful relationship.

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“One of the reasons it doesn’t come naturally is that it’s been framed as pushing a service that a client doesn’t want, and I think if we reframe it to how I can listen or how I can help someone rather than treating relationships as transactional points and using people for their worth,” she said.

To drive improvement in this area, Prodonovich emphasised that the first step is to fundamentally rethink how lawyers approach conversations with clients and referral contacts, moving away from a focus on personal gain and instead leading with genuine curiosity about how others build and sustain their work.

“Rather than thinking what you’re going to get out of this or what you can get from them, perhaps a conversation with a contact that you have, a client or a good referral contact, is how do they build their practice, how do they build their influence, how does their business build work?” she said.

By first seeking to understand how others build momentum in their business, she explained, lawyers can more meaningfully reflect on their own reliance on referrals and word of mouth, creating the conditions for a more authentic and mutually beneficial connection.

“Understand how they are getting their business momentum, and perhaps that gives you a chance to reflect and talk about, well, how you get most of your business, let’s say, from word of mouth and how important referrals are to your growth,” she said.

“So start by seeking to understand how they work, then you can reflect on your practice and see if there’s a meeting of the minds there.”