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Five Tips For Making It Rain

Posted by lmavirginias on March 27, 2013 in Business Development, Legal Marketing, Networking, Tips

Law360, one of my favorite resources for legal industry news and information, had an interesting article yesterday, titled “Five Tips For Making It Rain.”

Featuring advice from successful rainmakers, the article frames the advice we’ve all heard (and given) in relatable, attorney-focused language.  Key points:

  • Identify Networks Strategically
  • Play to Your Personal Strengths
  • Sell the Team – Not Just Yourself
  • Make Personal Connections
  • Be A Good Resource

Which of these tips will you try?  Have any of them worked well for you in the past?

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Freesources: The New Rules of Legal Thought Leadership Webinar from ON24

Posted by lmavirginias on March 26, 2013 in Business Development, Freesources, Legal Marketing, Professional Development, Thought Leadership, Tips

thought-leadership

These days, “thought leadership” seems to be one of the most popular phrases in the legal marketing.  How do we promote it?  Who is doing it well?  How can we get our lawyers to understand the importance of thought leadership?   We all  want to position our lawyers and firms as thought leaders, but sometimes the path can be a little fuzzy.  On Thursday, March 28th at 1:00 pm Eastern, the fuzziness will disappear.

ON24, the AMAZING sponsor for Virginias Chapter webinars, will be offering a complimentary webinar that will help legal marketers turn the concept of thought leadership into actionable business plans for lawyers.  Speakers Marsha Redmon, CEO of Marsha Redmon Communications and Robert Algeri , co-founder of Great Jakes Marketing, will provide a step-by-step path your firm can use now to get more benefit from lawyers’ thought leadership content, using real-life examples of firms that are getting it right.

To register for “The NEW Rules of Legal Thought Leadership”, or for additional program information, click here.

We’ll be there – will you?

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Happy National Grammar Day!

Posted by lmavirginias on March 5, 2013 in Attorney Bios, Business Development, LinkedIn, Tips

In celebration of National Grammar Day, the Harvard Business Review has posted an article outlining how “good grammar is instrumental in conveying ideas with clarity, professionalism, and precision.”  It may seem obvious, but a small study of LinkedIn profiles conducted by Grammarly offers new data in support of proper grammar usage:

Professionals with fewer grammar errors in their LinkedIn profiles achieved higher positions. Those who failed to progress to a director-level position within the first 10 years of their careers made 2.5 times as many grammar mistakes as their director-level colleagues.

Fewer grammar errors correlate with more promotions. Professionals with one to four promotions over their 10-year careers made 45% more grammar errors than those with six to nine promotions in the same time frame.

Fewer grammar errors associate with frequent job changes. Those who remained at the same company for more than 10 years made 20% more grammar mistakes than those who held six jobs in the same period. This could be explained in a couple of ways: People with better grammar may be more ambitious in their search for promising career opportunities, or job-hoppers may simply recheck their résumés between jobs.

In honor of today’s holiday, why not challenge your attorneys to review their LinkedIn pages?

Further Reading
Proofreader Susan Sheppard/WordsRight
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation [Amazon]
The Elements of Style [Amazon]
LinkedIn Tops 200 Million Members:  One Simple Way Lawyers Can Use It  [Real Lawyers Have Blogs]
7 Ways for Lawyers and Law Firms to Use LinkedIn More Effectively  [Real Lawyers Have Blogs]

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2013 Litigation Trends Survey

Posted by lmavirginias on February 26, 2013 in Alternative Fee Arrangements, Business Development, Clients, Law Firm Culture, Legal Industry News, Legal Marketing

Have you checked your email this morning? Looked at any legal industry or legal marketing news feeds? Spoiler Alert: there’s a great sale going on somewhere, and, more importantly, AmLaw 100 firm Fulbright & Jaworski LLP has released their 2013 Litigation Trends Survey Report.

As legal marketers, we often coach attorneys to learn about what keeps clients up at night so that we can provide relevant, appropriate solutions and strategies. For the past nine years, Fulbright has gone straight to the in-house counsel’s mouth for this information.  For the 2013 edition, the firm surveyed 392 in-house counsel to gather data on a wide range of topics, including alternative fee arrangements, hiring, matter management, legal spend and extensive practice-specific findings.

We’ll be posting more about the survey data throughout the coming week, but check out what publications such as Law360 (including IP, Labor, Employment and Securities–specific analysis), Corporate Counsel and Law.com are saying about the survey’s findings. Fulbright’s press release and survey summary can be found here, and you can download the complete survey from Fulbright’s website.

A few initial thoughts:

We’re definitely including the Litigation Trends Report in our list of FreeSources.

The survey findings are a great resource for attorneys and legal marketers. Staying on top of legal trends is a key competency for legal marketers, and one of the best ways to show value. If you dig into the data just a little, I’ll bet you’ll find something that will affect or influence your firm’s business plan for the coming years.

What a great business development tool for Fulbright & Jaworski! The firm’s name is at the top of the call list for every legal industry publication this morning, and I’d be interested to see an analysis of the increase in traffic to the firm’s site. I’m not a client (or a lawyer) and I found myself wandering around Fulbright’s website for a few minutes after downloading the survey.

The survey of in-house counsel, which Fulbright has conducted for the past nine years, shows amazing thought leadership. Imagine that you’re an in-house attorney at a major company – when you think of a firm that “gets” what you’re looking for, why not go to the firm that literally wrote the book (report) on it?

Not only is the survey itself impressive, but the follow-up is equally impressive. Fulbright captured my information when I downloaded the survey, and immediately sent an email with links to their Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages, inviting me to join the conversation about the survey. In marketing-speak, I appreciate their multi-platform approach to leveraging their hard work…in regular person-speak, WOW.

We hope you’ll join us – and Fulbright – as we discuss the survey findings and what they mean for legal marketers. In the meantime, we’d love for you to share how you’ll use the survey findings.

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FreeSources: How to Become a Legal Industry Trend Expert

Posted by lmavirginias on February 4, 2013 in Business Development, Freesources, Legal Industry News, Legal Marketing, Marketing Technology, Professional Development, Tips

You’ve heard of Cool Hunters, right? They’re market researchers who (according to Wikipedia) “make observations and predictions in changes of new or existing cultural trends.” In other words, they get paid to hang out with teenagers to find out what band/trend/color/fashion will be the “next big thing”…so that their clients (often companies with operations around the world) can jump on the bandwagon and up their “cool factor”. As much fun as it would be to be a Cool Huntee, legal marketers are more like the law firm equivalent of Cool Hunters – charged with keeping up with the latest industry trends, upcoming hot-button issues, new tools and legal news so that our clients (often attorneys with licenses to practice across the U.S.) can anticipate the latest trends, and leverage that information for business development purposes.

As we discussed in our previous FreeSources post, keeping up with the latest industry trends, jargon and news can be a challenge. Not every firm has the resources to send their marketers to conferences or high-priced webinars, and not every legal marketer has the time to attend them. Fortunately for us, many leaders in the legal industry analysis and trend forecasting field make their information available for free. Some of our favorite resources for keeping up with legal industry trends – without a hefty pricetag – are described below.

Altman Weil
Altman Weil is a leading management consulting services firm that works exclusively with legal organizations. In addition to providing services to individual law firms, Altman Weil regularly conducts surveys on industry trends. The results of those surveys are available on their website…you guessed it, for free.

Recently, Altman Weil published the results of their 2012 Chief Legal Officer Survey, which found that in-house counsel “are re-negotiating outside counsel fees, shifting work to lower-priced law firms, increasing in-house capacity, opting for alternative service providers and using new technology — all to develop a more cost-effective legal services model.” It’s not a surprise that alternative fee arrangements and cost reduction are top-of-mind for in-house counsel, but the CLO Survey (and many others conducted by Altman Weil) provide specific details and comments from survey respondents. Still not convinced? Check out Altman Weil’s Resources page, where you can find links to blogs, past studies, whitepapers and articles.

Association of Corporate Counsel
What’s that saying about going straight to the horse’s mouth? The Association of Corporate Counsel website is the perfect example. Think of a visit to this site as the online equivalent to eavesdropping with permission! Although some sections of the website are accessible only to ACC members, a wealth of information is available to site visitors.

We recommend checking out the site’s Legal Resources section, the free articles and reference documents, and the Value Challenge section. Recently, our most-visited page on the ACC site has been the ACC’s 2013 Chief Legal Officers (CLO) Survey, which asked more than 1,400 CLOs about their top concerns “for the past 12 months, today, and into the future, and a prioritization of their business issues.”

Lawyerist
We try not to play favorites, but we can’t deny our crush on Lawyerist. Written by lawyers, former lawyers and two non-lawyers (because, as they say “lawyers don’t know everything”), Lawyerist keeps up with and stays ahead of the latest news in law practice. The site isn’t geared exclusively to lawyers or marketers, and offers readers different (but always intelligent) points of view.

We’re huge fans of their posts on marketing, insight into Alternative Fee Arrangements and the interactive LAB, a message board for readers to share ideas and ask questions.

LMA
We’ve saved the best for last! Who better understands the type of information that legal marketers need than other legal marketers? Who knows more about emerging products and tools than the leading vendors and early adopters?

LMA is an amazing resource for legal marketers, offering insight and guidance on the most pressing issues facing the industry. If you haven’t taken a spin around the website lately, check out the revamped bulletin board features, regular intelligence briefings and the great work being done by chapters throughout the U.S.

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Weekly Links: Freezing Friday

Posted by lmavirginias on January 25, 2013 in Business Development, Law Firm Culture, Legal Marketing, Why Lawyers Hate Marketing

cold

The current soundtrack to my life is the opening line of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,”  because, well…it’s not just cold, it’s FREEZING outside.  This frosty Friday, we’re highlighting our favorite ways to encourage attorneys to warm up to legal marketing.

Legal Marketing As Professional Responsibility - Lawyerist

Even Abraham Lincoln Had To Market - Lawyerist

More Provocative Questions and Bold Statements - Andy Stefanovich at TEDxNASA

Intrinsic Motivation for Lawyers: All In One Place - Leaving The Law

Marketing Is Easy – The Attorney Marketing Center

A New Way to Motivate Lawyers to do Law Firm Marketing and Sales - Larry Bodine

Staying Positive When Others Aren’t – Great Legal Marketing

What Drives You? Dan Pink on Lawyer Motivation - Lawyerist

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Viva Las Vegas!

Posted by lmavirginias on January 24, 2013 in Business Development, Law Firm Culture, Legal Industry News, Legal Marketing, LMA Annual Conference - 2013, Professional Development, Tips

LMA-We'reSupportinga

Looking for a sure bet? Put all your chips on LMA! This year’s LMA Annual Conference will be held at the Aria Resort  in Las Vegas from April 8-10.

Unlike blackjack, the LMA Annual Conference guarantees big dividends for novices and long-term professionals alike. With courses and speakers who will address every facet of the industry, LMA has made a commitment to dynamic, relevant programs designed to facilitate personal and organizational growth.

In addition to popular offerings such as SMORs (Smart Marketing on [Limited] Resources), QuickStart program and CMO Summit, LMA has divided 2013’s breakout sessions into five categories – Business Development, Innovation, Marketing Communications/PR, Professional Development and Marketing Technologies. We’ve been poring over the event brochure, and have added quite a few sessions to our wish list. Each week, we’ll be highlighting breakout sessions from one category – starting today, with Innovation.

Be sure to visit the LMA conference page for official news and materials, and check back with us for updates, previews and information!

Course:  Featured Discussion – Response to the State of the Industry and What Lies Ahead
Date:  Wednesday, April 9, 11:00 a.m.
Speakers:  Kim Koopersmith – Managing Partner, United States, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP; Bruce A. James - CEO/Managing Partner – Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP; Steven R. Lowenthal – Chairman, Farella Braun + Martel, and Moderator, Professor David B. Wilkins, Harvard Law School – Lester Kissel Professor of Law, Vice-Dean for Global Initiatives on the Legal Profession and Director, Program on the Legal Profession.
Inside Track: On Wednesday morning, Professor Wilkins speak on the key challenges facing the 21st century law firm.  At this session, he will moderate a discussion among law firm managing partners, addressing such questions as: What are the major factors driving the market for legal services? Why are these factors leading clients to seek “more for less” from even their best law firms? How are these factors shaping the market for talent at both junior and senior levels? What can firms do to respond to — and, even more importantly, to anticipate — these challenges? Professor Wilkins will expand upon the advice offered in his morning presentation, and will engage law firm leaders on concrete steps that marketing professionals can take to help their firms succeed in today’s challenging business and economic environment.

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