There's a couple reasons, most Chicago law firms are not really built for sales. They're built to be compliant and analytical and thoughtful, and in many cases, they're built to be kind of dominant and competitive.
But most sales people and actors - they fall in the same category - are built to be very experiential, very outgoing, and they want to meet everybody. Lawyers for the most part aren't built that way. Which is why they get into law. They don't want to go out and sell.
The other part of it is when you're an associate, especially at a bigger firm, they don't want you doing business development. The culture has been, just do the work, learn the law and crank out work, as many hours as we can get out of you. The last thing they want is people running around on the billable hour trying to create business. It's finally coming around where I think firms are starting to appreciate that both have to happen simultaneously, but that hasn't really been the case in the past.
