Why this report, why now?It is of course an understatement to say our lives have changed massively since the end of March 2020. The restrictions that have had to be brought in to control COVID-19 saw almost all of us forced to work from home, only connected to our colleagues and clients by Teams, Zoom, and Facetime. At the time it looked like this was going to be a six-month blip. We’d ride it out then things would start to go back to normal and we could carry on as we were. We all now know that is definitely not the case. As I started writing this book in late October 2020 we had started to see a slight return to the office – albeit in shifts to maintain the required social distancing – and face-to-face meetings over coffee or lunch were starting to creep back in. However, it now looks as though in the short-term at least the restrictions will get tighter before they relax again. But you know all this. What does it have to do with business development?Way back in March, a lot of law firms pushed business development to the bottom of their priorities. Work had to come first. And, as we can’t do business development the way we always have, there was no way to keep it going even if we wanted to. The only problem is, if you don’t do any business development, you are not going to generate the new work required to sustain your practice. You are also going to put yourself at high risk of losing the client relationships you have worked so hard to build. This meant we had to quickly come up with new ways to do business development from home. We had to adapt our approach by using the tools that were available to us. We had to replace physical business development with virtual business development. The Virtual Lawyer examines those new virtual ways of approaching marketing and business development, explaining how you can continue to strengthen your existing relationships, boost your visibility in the markets you serve, and generate the new introductions and new opportunities you’ll need to grow your practice whilst working remotely. The book uses a three-step model, designed to take us from where we are today to where we need to be in the future, whatever that future ends up looking like. These three steps are React, Refresh, and Return.