Katie Schwarting | The Surprising Habits of a Successful Rainmaker

Elise Holtzman: Hi, everyone. It's Elise Holtzman here, a former practicing lawyer and the host of The Lawyer's Edge Podcast, where I sit down with successful attorneys, legal marketing specialists, business leaders, and authors to talk about how lawyers and law firms can grow and sustain healthy, profitable businesses.

Hi everyone, it's Elise Holtzman here, a former practicing lawyer and the host of the Lawyer's Edge Podcast, where I sit down with successful attorneys, legal marketing specialists, business leaders, and authors to talk about how lawyers and law firms can grow and sustain healthy, profitable businesses.

Today's episode is brought to you by the Ignite Women's Business Development Accelerator, a nine-month business development program created by women lawyers for women lawyers. Ignite is a carefully designed business development program containing content, coaching, and a community of like-minded women who are committed to becoming rainmakers and supporting the retention and advancement of other women in the profession. Registration is now open for the 2025 Ignite cohort and early bird pricing is available. To learn more about Ignite, visit thelawyersedge.com/ignite.

I am delighted to welcome my guest today, Katie Schwarting, a partner at Seyfarth Shaw in Charlotte, North Carolina. Katie is a real estate lawyer whose practice focuses on commercial mortgage-backed securities, including conduit and single asset, single borrower securitizations, collateralized loan obligations, and Freddie Mac securitizations.

She works with servicers and special servicers on legal issues regarding asset management, default strategies, compliance, regulatory and disclosure requirements, and audit. Outside the office, Katie is a very busy woman. She is a vice chair on the board of trustees for the Charlotte Museum of History, on the advisory board for Duke University Alumni Giving, and she is a new member of the Mortgage Bankers Association Commercial Board of Governors.

Katie was recently among a small group of private practice lawyers honored as top rainmakers by the MCCA, which is the Minority Corporate Counsel Association. She has got a lot going on. Katie, welcome to The Lawyer's Edge.

Katie Schwarting: Thank you for having me.

Elise Holtzman: I'm so glad you're here, particularly because one of my favorite things to talk about with my clients and my guests is business development. Let's dive right into talking about your role as a rainmaker.

You obviously did not spring from the ground as a newly minted first-year associate being a rainmaker, what made you decide to invest time and energy in business development in addition to focusing on being a talented legal practitioner? Because we know that so many lawyers focus exclusively on becoming a really good lawyer. They're doing fantastic work, but they don't take the time to invest in growing as a rainmaker. What made you decide to do that?

Katie Schwarting: There are two things I probably would point to you as my foundation. The first is my love for people. I love meeting new people, knowing more about them, knowing what their business is, what they're interested in. That part always intrigued me. The second thing is my thirst for knowledge.

What I realized was, if I didn't keep building my practice, I wouldn't find new opportunities to continue learning. You can become stagnant, or really just good at one thing if you don't step out and take new opportunities and risks. Quite frankly, that's where the good stuff is. That's where the magic of new challenges and chances and an ability to keep growing in the law, a lot of that lives along with new business development.

Elise Holtzman: If you're just locked in your office grinding out really good legal work, you're not necessarily meeting people who will challenge you, you're not necessarily getting the best opportunities to try new things. Those are really great reasons to pursue something like this.

Now that you are able to generate business for your firm and you're considered a rainmaker, what do you think your ability to do this has done for you in addition to those things? You're talking about getting to meet new people, talking about being interested, learning something new. What else does being a rainmaker do for you?

Katie Schwarting: There's an obvious answer, which is when you are a rainmaker at your firm, you play a greater leadership role in the overarching structure management decisions that come with being a lawyer. If you're interested in those things, which I was, that creates and opens doors.

I have in the past served as the Charlotte office managing partner, which means you get to set the tone of an office. I've also served on the board. I was the first Black woman to serve on the board of my previous law firm. That meant something to me, and it meant opportunities to be in the room and help create change, help think diversely, help make decisions. All of that mattered to me. Being a rainmaker opens doors.

The other thing is, of course, that it also gets you an opportunity to create a team. I love working on teams. If you have work that is greater than yourself, that requires more people, it allows you to create a team. My team is amazing. It is the reason I want to go to the office.

Elise Holtzman: I love that. I think what's interesting about that too is that it's one side of a coin where the other side is that I think in order to become a rainmaker and to be able to continue to grow your book of business, it's important to develop that team so that you're not doing everything yourself. It's like both happening at the same time. You have this amazing team, it gives you the opportunity to grow the team, but having the team helps you develop business in the first place.

Katie Schwarting: That's so well said. What I have found is that in a strong team, you need a couple of things. You need strong associates who are interested and invested. You do actually need folks who love to grind and do the work. There is nothing wrong with being that kind of lawyer and having one to two people on the team whose strength is in really being additive to the team and yet less interested in business development of their own is not a bad thing.

But I also strongly encourage multiple team members to be invested in their own business development. The best answer always is to never clip anyone else's wings. Your best teammates may be also in the process of growing their business. What I found is that transparency about where their opportunities are and where your opportunities are, credit sharing, making sure that they are recognized for their contribution, all of those things are extremely important so they know that they're valuable and that they aren't being pigeonholed or put into a corner because they work on part of my practice.

Elise Holtzman: What I hear you saying is partly that part of becoming a rainmaker is also becoming a leader. They really can't be separated from each other. I mean, we think of them as kind of, “Oh yeah, there's this rainmaking thing over here and then there's leadership development.” But in order to become a rainmaker and develop a team, you've also got to grow as a leader.

Katie Schwarting: That is so important. I think you said something also that's critical. That old-fashioned concept of the rainmaker who doesn't particularly practice law, they have a lot of long lunches and they're not in the office necessarily with a team, that really isn't today's rainmaker. That's certainly not the kind of rainmaker I am.

I bill a strong higher than 1800 hours every year because my practice matters. I say all the time I did not go to law school to be an administrator, I went to law school to practice law. So I practice law every single day. But you're right, you need to be a leader, you need to be able to have room for your team to have other leaders.

I do often rule by consensus. It's important that everyone has a voice and gets a say in our direction and in our key principles and decision-making. I think leadership, but also with the ability to give your team room to have their own desires and intentions and goals is your best option.

Elise Holtzman: In addition to the team building that you do, what do you think are a couple of the primary things that have led to your success as a rainmaker?

Katie Schwarting: The most important thing is probably listening. I know that sounds simple, but what I'm always doing is trying to think not only what does the client need today, but I'm trying to think about what they might need in the future and get ahead of it. What I'm often doing is thinking, “Okay, they've recognized, let's say that there's a compliance issue or a disclosure issue or an operational issue. We're discussing that today, but I'm also thinking about what might happen three months, six months, nine months down the road, and I'm raising those questions with them.”

That's where the appreciation comes. Also sometimes what that means is I will put a pin on a time frame in the future to come back to the issue as well. The answer might be we don't have all the answers today but we might have more answers in three months or six months. That shows the client that I'm thinking about them when they're not in the room as well and that creates a greater amount of appreciation for how I can help their business.

It's most important that we're focused on their business, not focused on ourselves. It's funny that people forget, law is really being a service partner. We are there to help make our clients be better, and we can't lose sight of that.

Elise Holtzman: I'm interviewing you or chatting with you in your current role as an experienced rainmaker. Let's go back to the beginning. If you're sitting there, if somebody's sitting there listening to us and it's somebody who says, "I really want to do this, but gosh, how do I even get my first client?" or, "Everybody's telling me to get out there and network, what does that even mean?" Katie, how do you get started and how do you recommend other people get started? What do you think is a good first step?

Katie Schwarting: I love that question. First of all, I think it's important to recognize that maybe getting the first client is the hardest thing you will do. I've talked about before how excited I was the very first client I brought in, but that client took over a year to bring in. It was not an easy process, and I even have one of my strongest clients now that it took me almost three years to bring in.

What does it take? I want to talk about networking, but maybe not the old-fashioned way you've heard the word networking before because I can remember folks saying to me, "Well, just network, network." And I would say, "But what does that mean? I need more." So here's some things, understand potentially where there are opportunities to get involved at an industry level in your practice.

In my practice area, there are several different industry organizations that deal with the same issues that I do. Those are the conferences that I like to attend on an annual basis. Conferences can be a great place to network. However, you should treat it like a job. You have to be intentional.

I do hours and hours of pre-work before I go to a conference. One, I want to know what sessions I would like to attend. Sessions are a great way to understand how your industry is dealing with issues. By the way, when you go to a session, I challenge you to sit not with your friends, but just anywhere in the room and introduce yourself to the two people you're sitting next to because you already have something in common because you've decided you care about the issue of the panel.

Two is I will make contact with people that I already know. I don't cold email people but if it's someone I'm either dealing with across the aisle on a transaction or client contact, I will send them an email before I go and ask to get on their schedule. I often have a spreadsheet that includes breakfast, lunch, dinner, breakfast, lunch, drinks, dinner, options open for each day that I'm at the conference.

I make space to try to meet with the people that I'm dealing with, think about if you haven't actually met one of your clients in person, it changes things to be able to actually have sat across from them and gotten a chance to speak to them about their business. So I strongly recommend that.

Third is, you don't have to go far away to do networking. In your local offices and businesses, there may be chapters of things or organizations that you like and that you care about and that would interest you and also will give you an opportunity to meet new people.

But when you're there, I know it's going to be a little uncomfortable. You're there to meet new people, so go and ready, maybe even prepare one to three questions, you can ask people, “Hi, I see you're here at this event as well. What brought you here today?” Or even you start with why you were brought there. Be prepared to be there. It's a little uncomfortable sometimes when you don't know other people, but it's an amazing opportunity to just take the chance and meet someone new.

I just want to say one other thing about this. When I leave an event, the first thing that I do is take notes on the people I met and the things I learned. While it was still fresh, I'll take notes about the people I met and the things I learned so that I can either follow up with those folks or find another connection point for future connections, that's part of it. It takes time, but when you invest and put in the time, you will find new friends and find new clients.

Elise Holtzman: This is fantastic, Katie. There are so many great things to unpack here, and it's funny because while the listeners can't see me, you can see me. I've been nodding my head the whole time that you've been speaking like some kind of weird doll because all the things you're talking about, I think, are so important.

I actually recently did a podcast episode, just a solo episode, where I talked about how to get a return on investment from conference attendance. Because to your point, so many people go to conference, they run in at the last second because they've been busy billing hours, they jump on the plane to go home. Through no fault of their own, just because they don't really know any better, they're not getting the most value out of it. So, all of the things that you've listed are really important.

I also just really want to highlight the idea that you mentioned a couple of times. This stuff takes time. Especially for those lawyers who are in B2B businesses and in fairly sophisticated practices where the deals or the litigations have a lot of zeros at the end of them. These companies are not making decisions in a split second, and they're not making decisions after they've met you once.

There are also so many layers of decision-making in these organizations. It can take a really long time to develop clients, and I think part of it is sticking to it, which is something that you've obviously done over the years.

Katie Schwarting: Yeah. If you won't mind, I want to emphasize this because it is important. I do not, do not ever go into a potential new client saying how bad their current law firm is. In many cases, the people I'm meeting are actually happy with the law firms they use. I see no upside to saying bad things about their current law firm. In fact, oftentimes my pitch to a new law firm is I say, “If you have overflow work or that firm has conflicts, I want to be your second call. I want to be the next person you call if the firm that you already use and that you like can't do what you need.”

That puts the pressure off of that client also to say, "Look, I like my law firm or field defensive. I'm okay. I don't have to be their exclusive law firm on day one." My answer is really, “Give me a shot. Give me a chance.” Here's the great thing is I have a fantastic team and I put my team up against any other team. So if they give us a shot, we're going to do amazing legal work for them and they're going to be happy with us because we're going to give them our all.

I'm always willing and up to the challenge to be the second law firm. Then quite frankly, in many cases, we quickly become the first law firm. But you don't have to go in saying, “Give me 100% of your work, or I want 50% of your business.” That is often too aggressive for a client to even wrap their arms around, especially when you haven't practiced for them before, going with much more humility and being ready to just knock it out of the park, you'll just go so much further.

Elise Holtzman: Certainly saying something negative about another firm really only reflects on you. It doesn't reflect on the other firm. I think that that can be the kiss of death. I think that to your point, a lot of this is about taking the time, it's about the relationship, it's about standing in service for when they need something else.

Then you do get to prove yourself. As you say, sometimes you do become their only lawyer because of the value that you deliver. I also think, and this is going to sound a little bit woo-woo, but this concept of an abundance mentality I think is really helpful. There's a lot of work out there.

I recently was speaking to somebody who is a direct competitor, and she's kind of started her practice recently in coaching. I was trying to introduce her to everybody I knew at a conference and really get her comfortable. At one point she turned to me and she said, "You're so nice, why are you doing this? I compete directly with you." I said to her, "There are 1.3 million lawyers in the United States, and I can't serve all of them."

You're creating community. If you can refer another lawyer and do a favor for them, you create a community where those benefits and those opportunities will come back to you. So, thank you for sharing that, Katie. I think it's really important to hear that from somebody who is as successful at rainmaking as you are.

You've mentioned your team, we've talked about your team a couple of times. One of the things that we think about, there are people who develop business and they bring in enough business to keep them busy. Then there are people who really are the rainmakers and are making it rain for other people in the firm as well. You've developed a team around you and you're able to bring in more clients than you can handle alone. What does that look like? How is that different than just bringing in work for yourself? How do you build a large client base like that?

Katie Schwarting: Yeah, so imagine if you want to have a five, six, seven million dollar practice and you just do the math, there aren't enough hours in the day in most cases for you to bill, even at the greatest height of your work, you hit a ceiling of the amount of work you can do and bill. It takes a team.

The first thing is you really want to align yourself with folks who have the same vision you do. I know that sounds simple, but that is a lot of communication. I said to my team, I want to be one of the largest special servicer default management practice groups in the country. My team is on board with that, they too want that vision. We're rowing our oars in the same direction.

These seem like simple things, but it doesn't help if you want something and somebody else wants something, and they're just not matched. We also then started to look at, well, where do you need the talent? It's important to also understand the economics. As lawyers, a lot of us, I don't have my MBA, but you need to understand law firm economics. What are realization ranks? What can a client bear to do this work? Is fixed fee work a part of your practice? Or are you working hourly or both? Are you hybrid?

Understand what it's going to take because some things will require an hourly rate that you can't do. I have associates who are strong and who work on things where the work that needs to be done won't bear my rate. I also have the same thing for our junior partners. Looking at your practice and how you can meet client, again, needs and do it successfully and yet still be economically viable and meet your thresholds for your law firm is part of it.

If you're not looking at your economics, you're missing out, there's a problem there. I have my team and I say, "If you haven't looked at your economics, if you're a partner and you're not looking every couple of days, and if you're an associate and you're not looking every other week, you need to understand our practice and how we make money and how we grow.

That is a strong part of it that I think sometimes gets lost. The building block is being a good lawyer. That's just not enough. You do have to then think like a business and so how can you actually grow and find the right practice areas and then also, again, the right economics and put the right person with that workflow?

Elise Holtzman: They certainly don't teach us law firm economics in law school, and they don't teach us business development, obviously. They get to a law firm, they're not teaching it there either. It sounds like you are teaching that to your team and talking to your team about that. I don't know very many associates who are looking at numbers. I think most partners aren't looking at numbers much of the time. That's really great advice.

We're talking about going out into the world and foraging for clients. What about keeping clients long-term? Because if you're somebody who has a book of business, a large book of business, and as an example, I'm working with a couple of different attorneys right now. One has a $7 million book of business. One has a $5 million book of business. These are people that have managed to grow books of business and be fairly consistent over time. They're still interested in growing more.

To your point, we spent a lot of time talking about team building and all the things outside of the pure rainmaking. But what about the balance between going out into the world and getting new clients and holding on to the clients you already have? Presumably, if you want to continue as a rainmaker, you've got to hold on to the clients you have.

Talk to me a little bit about what you do to make sure that you are paying good attention to what the clients need and not running the risk of being so excited about running around getting a new client that you forget about the client you already have.

Katie Schwarting: Yeah, that's a great question. The first thing is that I spend the first year with any new client. I am extremely hands-on in the first year. It's important that you build goodwill with a client. It's important because we're fallible, and you may mess something up, you may have things that don't go perfectly, but what you want is an amazing track record that the client knows that if something happens, that's the aberration. That is not the norm.

With new clients, it's important that you be extremely focused and intentional for a certain amount of time. Again, for me, that is the first 12 months. They get a lot of my attention, and I work on those deals most often myself. After the first 12 months, and by the way, during that time frame, I'm not working alone.

My junior partners and my other team members are copied. They're seeing how the client likes to receive things. They are seeing how I communicate with that client so that there's a smooth transition and handoff, let's say, in month 13 that the next deal that they run, I'm still copied on for a very long time. Honestly, with some clients, I'm copied forever, but that they know the quality of work will just be the exact same in month 12 as month 13.

I also just spend a lot of time with the current clients ensuring that they know they can always get to me, that I am always going to be a point of contact for them. I don't pigeonhole my team either. We move deals around so that if we have five or six strong clients, you're working with five or six clients, you're not working with just client one all of the time. That means I'm cycling in as well so that the client doesn't say, “Well, I haven't seen Katie on a deal in three years because she handed me off to someone on the team.”

Part of it is making sure that you continue to have touchpoints with your clients. Also, really rainmaking in part is being able to spread the work into your firm, go deeper into the firm, and you will hit areas where you just don't know anything about it. If you're doing real true rainmaking, it's not going to be that everything that I do for my client is real estate based, it's going to be that I've taken advantage of Seyfarth's amazing labor and employment practice.

That's an area I don't know anything about. What I am doing is ensuring, again, I'm still copied on many things, I do check-ins, usually on a quarterly basis with clients to make sure there are no changes we need to make or anything they want clarified. Making sure that you still create the continuity that, and I always encourage them to give me the true feedback.

I don't need to be told quite frankly that we're amazing. I do want to know if there's something wrong or they want us to tweak something. I am quick to remind clients and thank them, I remind them that I understand that they have options and that when they pick me, that I appreciate that, and so I take the opportunity, quite frankly, usually with every bill to remind them that I thank them very much and that I appreciate the opportunity. Staying involved is part of really, truly building a strong practice where you are part of the client's focal.

Elise Holtzman: And that you're not taking them for granted, which is what I'm hearing. I mean, they could walk out the door any day, and you're appreciating them and checking in with them. It's not a set-it-and-forget-it kind of situation. I think sometimes when people think about business development, they do think about the new client acquisition, but we always forget that it's easier and less expensive to get more work from an existing client.

And across the firm, as you pointed out, going back to this idea of how do you get started and how do you network and what does that mean, people also sometimes forget about internal networking. To your point, it's really important to know the other people in your firm.

What do they do? How might they be able to help an existing client that needs it? Who do I go to when something comes up and I look at it and I go, "Oh, my God, I have no idea. I know there's a challenge because I learned issue spotting early on. But I don't know how to handle it," knowing where to go and being able to be a resource for others in the firm that might need what you have to offer. Some more really good advice.

Do you think, Katie, that it is easier, harder, different, let's say, to make rain as a woman and/or as a person of color? Is it all pretty much the same stuff? Or do you think there's something different about it?

Katie Schwarting: I think there's something different about it. What I think is important is, first of all, just look at statistics. The number of women coming out of law school, I think, is actually slightly higher than the number of men. Yet, when you get to partnership, it can go as low as 33%, I've seen in some statistics of women to men for junior partners, and then it gets even worse for equity partners.

Yes, it's harder. Those are numbers. I'm not even just talking about how I feel. Then let's say you add diversity on top of that. I'm going to lean in on the positive today and say that I have worked really hard to make my diversity part of my brand and part of my advantage.

One of the things I talk about is quite frankly, if someone meets me, the chances they're not going to remember meeting me are smaller because they don't look like everyone else. I maybe don't think like everyone else and so you can lean in on your brand and making sure that you're already memorable.

Using that to your advantage, to encourage clients to give you a chance or to tell them that working with you means a richer experience, I try to lean in on that because I can't change my race and I can't change my gender and quite frankly, I wouldn't want to. Super happy with both but you have to know what you're dealing with and by the way, I'm in commercial real estate where there are a lot of men and I have been at the table sometimes where I'm the only woman, but knowing that, know how to use that as part of your brand and how to make yourself stand out from the rest, you're already halfway there.

It is and can be an opportunity. But remember, sometimes you have to be assertive. I've said to my team, especially in reviews, I've served in management at my law firm. Part of that job was looking at annual reviews for associates and junior partners. Junior partners who were successful. They had already become partners and I would look at their reviews and I would have some male partners telling me that they had created an eighth day in the week.

I had many women partners who would not take credit for their strong work. Sometimes I tell my team, “You're going to have to be a little bit uncomfortable and say I need you to actually take ownership of the things you did.” I'm not saying create the eighth day. That is not the answer.

But you've done all these amazing things all year round, I think it's okay for you to sing your own praises. I'm going to sing them too, but I need you to be comfortable with stepping out and saying, “I did that. I led that. I am the architect of that.” So, we as women sometimes don't do that enough and I encourage each of you to really lean in on being okay with your amazing successes.

Elise Holtzman: We could do a whole podcast episode or several podcast episodes on that alone. One of the things that I think women need to recognize is that it's not that we're not naturally capable of promoting ourselves. It's that we have been socialized from the time we're very young to not do that. Listen, it's not true for all men or for all women obviously, but just in gross generalizations, typically, girls are socialized not to toot their own horn and boys are socialized that it's okay and not only okay, but desired to do that.

Old habits die hard. So even when you're in your 30s, 40s, or 50s and you've accomplished so much, it can feel really weird and unseemly and unprofessional to talk about yourself and take credit for the things you've done. I think that that's such an important point and thank you for mentioning that because I think people need to hear that over and over again.

There's something else I want people to hear from you, Katie, and it's a question that I ask all of my guests at the end of our time together. There's a phenomenon called the curse of knowledge where experts sometimes forget that what is so obvious and natural to them is not at all obvious to others. When it comes to growing a substantial book of business, what's a principle or piece of advice that may seem obvious to you but is important for people to hear?

Katie Schwarting: Probably the most important thing is intentionality. Growing a book of business has the word “grow” in it. Think about a plant that you leave on the shelf and you don't water it and you don't give it good soil and you don't give it good light, it won't grow. In fact, it will wither and die. Think of your life and your practice as something that takes growth and intentionality. So set aside time—I know we're busy, I know it, but this is one of the most important things for your career—set aside time that is business development time.

I know it will surprise people, but I still do a business plan every single year and I put pen to paper. Why? Because it's important to be intentional. It's not enough to just think, “I'm going to grow this business.” How am I going to grow this business? Pick two to three things that you're going to do because it can be overwhelming if you just think, “I'm going to hit every client and I'm going to change everything and I’m going to grow this by 5 million this year.” Let's set realistic goals.

“With client number one, I'm going to introduce another part of our business that I don't do, but I know we're strong in. With client number two, I'm going to do more work on X. With client number three, I like this area of their practice. I don't think they know that we could do this for them. I'm going to talk to them about that.” Be intentional about what the goals are and how you're going to get there and even which team members can help you and writing it down really does make a difference.

It creates accountability for you and it gives you the roadmap. I just encourage you, regardless of what year you are in your practice, it never hurts to really have a business plan.

Elise Holtzman: Love it. Thank you so much, Katie. It's such great advice and so many of the things you're talking about are the things that I talk to my clients about on a regular basis. It's just wonderful to hear it from somebody who's living it every day and has intentionally grown a business to the place that you've done. Thanks for being here today. Really grateful to have you on the show.

I'm going to thank our listeners also for tuning in. If you've enjoyed today's show, please subscribe, rate, and review us at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. In the meantime, be bold, take action, and make things happen. We'll see you next time.

Thank you for tuning in. If you've enjoyed today's show, please subscribe, rate, and review us at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. In the meantime, be bold, take action, and make things happen. We'll see you next time.