“There is a comfortable myth in legal networking that hours spent in the room equal a return on the investment.
It usually does not.
A lawyer we know spent two years showing up to every bar event in his city. He was visible. He was active. He never got a single referral that he could trace back.
He was mingling, not connecting. Presence without intention is just attendance.
The pattern repeats across the profession. Most networking efforts never convert because the work being done in the room is not the work that produces referrals. Trust transfers when someone has a reason to remember you, refer you, vouch for you. None of those reasons are produced by handshakes.
The lawyers who get referrals from these rooms walk in with a thesis: who they want to meet, what they want them to remember, what they want to ask. The rest are just collecting business cards and calling it strategy.”
– Hugo E. Gomez, Founder (Abogados NOW)
Audit what you’re calling networking: