If Business Development Makes You Anxious, Good. Embrace It.

Remember the first time your law professor asked you to stand and brief a case for the class, probably Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad or Pierson v. Post? (Bonus points if you can do a quick IRAC on either of those.) Or your first court appearance when you prepped for hours so you could ask the judge to extend the time to answer interrogatories? Or many of the other firsts you encountered during the early stage of your legal career?

That flutter in your stomach was anxiety. Your brain was sounding an alarm, alerting you to something scary and important. The same mechanism that helped you become a confident lawyer can make you a better business developer, if you let it.

Your Anxiety Isn’t a Bug, It’s a Feature

Let me be clear here. I’m not talking about clinical anxiety disorders that affect millions of American adults, and for which one may seek medical treatment. This is more of the lowercase “a” anxiety, the kind discussed in a recent article published in The Atlantic (sub. req’d).

According to the author, Harvard University’s Arthur C. Brooks, anxiety is “an unfocused form of fear characterized by recursive negative thoughts and physiological manifestations” that serves as “part of an alarm system that helps keep potential hazards from turning into actual harm.” That’s pretty heady stuff, but for lawyers anxious about business development, this translates into a heightened awareness of stakes, consequences, and opportunities—exactly what you need when initiating strategic relationships with prospective clients, referral sources, outside business partners, etc.

Brooks references the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, who wrote in his 1844 work “The Concept of Anxiety” that anxiety can be “the great opportunity and adventure of life.” When that familiar knot forms in your stomach before calling a potential client, you’re not experiencing a weakness; you’re encountering what Kierkegaard called “the dizziness of freedom,” the cost (and I’d argue the benefit) of doing business as a fully engaged, career-minded professional.

Think about it: every significant milestone in your legal career involved conquering anxiety. Each required you to push through discomfort toward competence. Business development is simply the next frontier in that progression.

Channel Anxiety Into Better Outreach

Without getting into the “sympathetic arousal and activation of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis” (yes, somebody wrote those exact words), research shows that moderate anxiety actually enhances “flow states,” the rewarding periods of absorption and focus we might otherwise call “the zone.” This suggests your pre-business development contact jitters might sharpen your performance when used correctly.

Here’s what happens when you leverage that energy:

Outreach gets warmer: Your heightened awareness helps you notice connection points you might otherwise miss. That anxiety-driven attention to detail makes you research prospects more thoroughly, craft more personalized messages, and identify mutual contacts who can provide introductions.

Follow-up gets authentic: Anxiety about maintaining relationships drives you to be more thoughtful in your communications. Instead of generic, often ineffective “checking in” messages, you’ll invest energy in sharing relevant articles, making meaningful introductions, or offering genuine insights.

Identifying needs gets sharper: When you’re anxious about a business development conversation, you listen more intently. That nervous energy translates into asking better questions, picking up on subtle cues about problems the prospect may not have articulated, and understanding the real business and personal pressures they face.

The Art and Angst of the Ask

The moment when lawyers must “close” (there’s that word again) and invite engagement (i.e., “Would you like us to handle your matter?”) often triggers the most anxiety. But that discomfort signals you’re operating at the edge of your abilities, that you presumably gathered enough intel and context to be confident about competently representing them.

Again, not to be overly dramatic, but when you navigate transformative anxiety-provoking events, research shows you will feel “freed from limitations imposed by their past life.” Stated more simply, whatever your hangups were before, working through anxiety-provoking events (like things that might kill you) makes you stronger. Your business development anxiety serves a similar function, forcing you to confront professional limitations and expand your capacity for relationship building.

Accept, Don’t Suppress

The worst thing you can do is try to eliminate business development anxiety entirely. You need it. Feeling that anxiety means you care about the other person, recognize the stakes, and understand that your relationship with them matters. These are precisely the qualities that transform great lawyers into trusted advisors.

Your anxiety won’t disappear as you become more skilled at business development, and that’s good news. The day business development stops making you a little queasy is probably the day you’ve stopped growing.

The next time you feel that familiar tightness before a networking event or pitch meeting, embrace that anxiety. Your brain is just reminding you that you’re about to do something that matters.