RainDance 2026: 5 Ideas I'm Bringing Back
Last week, I attended LSSO's RainDance Conference in Chicago.
RainDance offers a unique perspective: one that sits at the intersection of sales, client experience, business development, technology, and growth.
While the speakers covered a wide range of topics, I kept hearing the same themes emerge.
Here are five ideas that stuck with me.
1. Technical Excellence Is No Longer the Differentiator
This idea surfaced repeatedly throughout the conference.
Clients expect great legal work. Winning cases, closing deals, and providing sound advice are table stakes.
What clients remember – and what drives loyalty, referrals, and growth – is the experience surrounding the work:
Responsiveness
Communication
Clarity
Empathy
Proactive outreach
Ease of doing business
In other words, legal excellence gets firms into the game. Client experience increasingly determines who wins.
As Steven Keith and Catherine Alman MacDonagh discussed, firms often make decisions through the lens of legal delivery, while clients are evaluating firms based on both legal delivery and the experience surrounding it.
Those are two separate tracks.
The firms that intentionally manage both create a meaningful competitive advantage.
2. Client Experience Happens in the Moments That Matter
One of my favorite takeaways was the client experience moments that firms often overlook. The moments that matter. What struck me was that the moments clients remember are rarely the dramatic ones.
They're often:
The first call after a matter opens
The first invoice
The "nothing new to report" update during a quiet period
Delivering bad news with speed and empathy
The end-of-matter conversation
Many firms are missing a major opportunity to deepen their relationships by skipping out on these moments. Clients want them and they will remember the firms that make time for them.
3. Empathy Is Becoming a Business Skill
Several sessions challenged attendees to think less about what clients need and more about what it feels like to be the client. It’s a small but powerful shift. It changes how we ask questions, how we communicate news and how we show up in these relationships and in the moments that matter.
One of the core messages I share with attorneys is that business development is about helping, not selling. Empathy is the natural next step.
We want to understand the legal problem, certainly. But one takeaway that stuck with me was the discussion around the age-old question, "What keeps you up at night?"
While well-intentioned, it can be so broad that clients don't know where to begin. Instead, we should be trying to understand the pressures surrounding the legal issue. Is our client navigating internal politics? Trying to secure a promotion? Managing budget scrutiny?
Those questions often reveal more about what success looks like for the client, and how we can help.
4. The Future Belongs to Firms That Make BD Easy
One of the strongest business development lessons came from Mark Howe's presentation on lawyer engagement. He shared insights from his award-winning gamification initiative, where he pitted two teams (led by twins – also known as the #1 takeaway from the program based on the live poll; you had to be there) against each other.
In addition to requiring all activity to be entered into CRM to receive credit, Mark focused on removing friction by providing tools like:
Templates
Scripts
Checklists
Coaching
Scheduling tools
Flexible participation options
One slide described it as allowing lawyers to "choose their own adventure.”
The more firms can make business development feel natural, enjoyable, and achievable, the more participation they'll see.
5. The Human Element Is Becoming More Valuable, Not Less
In a world where there is significant discussion around AI, data, and technology, this message stood out:
Technology matters, but people matter more.
AI can surface signals, identify opportunities and improve efficiency. But trust, empathy, credibility, curiosity, judgment, and relationships remain deeply human. The human element is irreplaceable: AI can do a lot. It cannot replicate the moments that actually build trust and loyalty.
AI has also changed the way we obtain information. What once took days of research can now take minutes. The opportunity for BD professionals is not simply to find intelligence faster, but to help attorneys translate that intelligence into action. As routine information gathering becomes easier, our value shifts toward strategy, coaching, judgment, and execution.
We have an opportunity to become true growth partners: turning signals into strategy, conversations, and ultimately, revenue.
As firms continue adopting new technology, the organizations that thrive will likely be the ones that use technology to strengthen relationships – not replace them.
Final Thought
The theme I kept coming back to throughout RainDance was this:
The firms making the most progress are no longer debating whether client experience matters, whether relationship intelligence is important, or whether business development deserves investment.
They have moved on to execution.
They are building systems, creating habits, operationalizing intelligence and designing better client experiences. And perhaps most importantly, they're doing it while keeping the human element at the center.