Executing Business Plans: Empowering Lawyers to Action

With nearly 15 years of experience in the professional services sector, Barbara Koenen-Geerdink is a highly passionate, ambitious, and driven professional who consistently seeks strategic and innovative solutions to drive business growth. A proven leader of award-winning marketing and business development teams, Barbara thrives on supporting individuals to succeed, ensuring that business objectives are consistently met—and often exceeded. Known for her strategic mindset, she excels at transforming ideas into impactful initiatives that align with a firm’s overarching goals and strategy.

Dedicated to making a meaningful contribution to the industry, Barbara is the author of the business book Beyond Billable Hours and the creator of an e-learning platform for fee earners in professional services: beyondbillablehours.com

Believing strongly in the power of collaboration, Barbara embraces the idea that greater achievements are possible when people work together toward a shared purpose.

Ben Paul has over 20 years of experience as a BD Coach, facilitator and speaker providing sales and marketing advice, primarily to lawyers, and professional services firms. He is the CEO of The BD Ladder.

Prior to establishing The BD Ladder, he was the Business Development and Marketing Director at Kensington Swan. In this role, he was part of the management team that oversaw the firm’s successful combination with the world’s largest law firm, Dentons. Ben led and managed the successful rebranding of the firm to Dentons Kensington Swan.

Ben Paul is regularly sought out by clients as a respected BD coach and mentor to assist them with many of the challenges they face in running a firm. Annually, he facilitates a panel discussion at LawFest, as well as being a regular speaker and presenter for The Law Association and  Legalwise.

Raya is an innovator in the legal sales and business development field, leading Bird & Bird’s Global BD and Sales team, helping the firm to win work from new clients, grow existing relationships, and providing BD best practice, training and coaching to the business  Originally from the US, she began her career as a litigator, handling complex civil and white collar criminal disputes before following her passion for work winning and client relationships, into legal BD.  Raya is a certified DCMi Activator facilitator and leads the Activator program for Bird & Bird. She also serves on the Advisory Board of the Legal Sales & Service Organization.

With over 18 years’ experience in the legal sector, Linsay is a bit of a rare breed in the agency world. Formerly a projects lawyer, she recognised her passion for strategic business development and went on to establish and lead the legal directories and bids team for a top-50 UK law firm for five years.

Linsay is a partner at MD Communications and heads up the legal directories, bids and awards team. She works with lawyers, barristers and in-house marketing and business development teams. She is at her happiest getting to grips with strategic business development plans, honing focused messaging and content to produce persuasive, stand-out legal directory submissions. No gimmicks, but a great deal of experience in the legal sector and detailed understanding of the legal directory process as part of the overall reputational mix.

Linsay is also a tenders and proposals specialist. After her five-year stint as in-house head of directories and tenders, she cut her teeth outside the legal sector spending a year as a bid writer for one of the UK’s leading, multi-sector bid consultancies. She is highly skilled at working with stakeholders to identify winning strategies and writing persuasive tenders and proposal submissions.

Whether bid management, writing and reviewing tenders or producing bespoke proposals, she can support firms at all stages of the tender or proposal lifecycle across a broad range of opportunities in the public and private sector.