Posted in Firm of the Month

ILN Firm of the Month – Royer Cooper Cohen Braunfeld, Pennsylvania!

By Lindsay Griffiths on

The ILN is proud to announce our latest firm of the month, Royer Cooper Cohen Braunfeld LLC, Pennsylvania!
Royer Cooper Cohen Braunfeld LLC is a 40 lawyer, full service firm with offices in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area. RCCB’s lawyers bring a wealth of prior experience to matters, ranging from large multi-national and regional law firm roles, to practicing in smaller entrepreneurial firms, to leadership positions, both legal and non-legal, within companies and clients. RCCB provides clients sophisticated, high quality strategic advice and legal counseling in a client-friendly and collaborative environment. RCCB practices include corporate and transactional law, real estate, commercial litigation, IP licensing and litigation, bankruptcy and restructuring, tax, trusts and estates, alternative energy and employment, ERISA, and employee benefits law. Many RCCB lawyers have significant experience with cross-border transactions.

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Posted in Law Firms, Legal

ILN Announces Third Edition of “Buying & Selling Real Estate: An International Guide”

By Lindsay Griffiths on

The International Lawyers Network’s Real Estate Specialty Group announces the third release of its publication, “Buying & Selling Real Estate: An International Guide.” This collaborative electronic guide offers a summary of key real estate law principles in 21 jurisdictions across the globe, serving as a quick, practical reference for those buying & selling real estate in these jurisdictions.

I’m really pleased as the guide’s facilitator to offer the third edition of our guide, which builds on our previous efforts. We have a number of new jurisdictions, and the group continues to work collaboratively to update the guide with the latest figures and regulations for their countries. It’s a practical and valuable resource for firms and companies with multinational real estate needs.

To view the guide, please click here: http://bit.ly/ILNRealEstate3rd

About the ILN Real Estate Specialty Group
Co-chaired by Amy Fracassini of Davis, Malm & D’Agostine in Boston, Massachusetts and Kathryn Collie of Cleaver Fulton Rankin in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the Real Estate Group fosters relationships among practitioners in this area to support the making and receiving of referrals.

Posted in Future of the Law Firm, Law Firm Client Service, Law Firms, Leadership

Lawyers: Collaboration Drives Your Success. Here’s How to Do it

By Lindsay Griffiths on

We’ve discussed the idea of change extensively here on Zen, and although it’s a long time coming in the legal industry, there are pockets of exciting innovation. One such pocket is the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium, or CLOC, which has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years (as in 40 members to 1800 members in 3 years). One of CLOC’s core tenets is bringing together the ENTIRE legal ecosystem in order to achieve real, systemic change, and that’s a tenet I can really get behind.

Last week, I had the pleasure to join their CIO/Cybersecurity Initiative task force, and it got me thinking about what’s really necessary for collaboration in the legal ecosystem (and other professional services industries, for that matter). I’d like to share with you my three tips that I saw in action during this CLOC meeting that you can implement today in your firms as you seek to ride the wave of change.  Continue Reading

Posted in Law Firms, Leadership, Legal, Legal Marketing

4 Tasks to Improve Your Business Communication Skills

By Lindsay Griffiths on

Successful communication comes in many forms, and we may be already convinced either by virtue of our training or personality that we’re naturally good communicators. Whether you’re confident in your communications skills, or looking for a refresher, there are four tasks you can undertake today to improve your business communication skills.

Audit Your Communication

How do you currently communicate with others on a professional level? For this purpose, we’re going to consider all of your means of communications to be “professional.” The list may surprise you:

  • Verbally
  • Written (articles/blogs)
  • Email
  • Phone
  • Text
  • Social Media

All of these are means of communication and translating the message of who you are as a lawyer to colleagues, clients, potential clients, and referral sources. Knowing what channels you use is helpful to ensure that your communication skills are up to par across all of them. Continue Reading

Posted in Future of the Law Firm, Law Firm Client Service, Leadership

Breaking Down the Barriers to Change

By Lindsay Griffiths on

This post was originally published in Legal Business World on November 5, 2018

It’s no secret that the legal market is a challenging place to be today.

Mergers, non-law firm players, clients continuing to take work in-house, increasing investment in technology, changing demands from different generations…the list goes on.

With a staggering number of reasons in front of us for why change is imperative, what’s holding lawyers back? And what steps can we take to face these challenges head on?  Continue Reading

Posted in Firm of the Month

ILN Firm of the Month – Howard & Howard, Las Vegas!

By Lindsay Griffiths on
The ILN is proud to announce our latest firm of the month, Howard & Howard, Las Vegas!
Founded in 1869, Howard & Howard Attorneys PLLC (“H&H”) is a full-service law firm with a national and international practice that provides legal services to businesses and business owners. The firm has offices in Michigan (Ann Arbor and Royal Oak); Illinois (Chicago and Peoria); Las Vegas, Nevada; and Los Angeles, California.

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Posted in Future of the Law Firm, Law Firm Client Service, Law Firms, Legal, Legal Marketing, Relationship Development

Referrals and First Impressions: How Technology Has Changed Them

By Lindsay Griffiths on

A question I get ALL the time is whether using social media actually has any impact at all on referrals and business development.

Actually, the way it typically goes is this:

Come on, really. Tell me. Does anyone get matters or referrals because they post to LinkedIn?”

The short answer is yes, sometimes, it does happen. But it’s really atypical. Anyone who tells you that lawyers need to be using social media because clients see them there and hire them there is selling you something. But it IS part of a bigger picture, and as part of that picture, it’s essential.  Continue Reading

Posted in Future of the Law Firm, Law Firm Client Service, Leadership

Three Truths About Innovating for Radical Success

By Lindsay Griffiths on

“Innovation” is a buzzword that gets thrown around a lot these days, right up there with “disruption.” It sounds like something that’s foreign in the legal industry, but it shouldn’t be. Believe it or not, we, too, can be innovative.

If you’ve been following along here for a while, you may know that I have a section of my bookshelf that’s dedicated to business books on my “to read” list – I love to read, but I’d rather pick up a mystery and plow through it than bury my nose into what feels like a textbook. But when I do, I’m more often than not pleasantly surprised by the inspiration that it affords me, and the comfort that it gives me in following some of my own plans and ideas moving forward. One such book is Eric Ries’ The Lean Startup (not new to many of you, I’m sure). I’m about halfway through this book that promises to show me how “today’s entrepreneurs use continuous innovation to create radically successful businesses.”

“But law firms aren’t startups and lawyers are entrepreneurs,” I can hear you saying.

What if we were?  Continue Reading

Posted in Law Firms, Legal Marketing, Relationship Development

Lawyers: Put the Kibosh on Random Acts of Business Development TODAY

By Lindsay Griffiths on

As you’re reading this post, I want you to think about whether you’d consider yourself to be a fairly good networker and business developer. What does “networking” mean to you? Do you think of it as a complete waste of time? If the answer to that last question is yes, keep reading, and I hope you’ll change your mind.

A quick story – if Steve Jobs had never met Steve Wozniak, the Apple I would not have been invented in 1976. A year later, this machine became the Apple II, the bestselling computer of all time. Steve Jobs had the vision, the ideas, but it was Wozniak who knew how to assemble teams. Their change meeting results in a multimillion dollar business. It is often the power of a chance meeting that sparks a revolution.

Sure, that sounds like a one-off, something that doesn’t apply in the legal industry. But it happens every day, and even in legal. How do busy lawyers get to these revolutionary opportunities? It’s about the difference between ordinary networking and power networking.  Continue Reading

Posted in Law Firms, Leadership, Legal Marketing

3 Tips to Raise the Level of Your Business Writing

By Lindsay Griffiths on

We’re continuing our series on soft skills that lawyers require in order to achieve success. We’ve looked at some suggestions for improving networking and presentation skills, and the next item in our series is raising the level of our business writing.

You may feel that this is something that you’re already pretty adept at, since you do a lot of writing – but my guess is that it’s primarily focused on legalese. And while you, and other lawyers, will understand this clearly, most of your clients and potential clients don’t want to be reading a lot of phrases like “inter alia” or highly technical writing. Even the lawyers among them will want you to get right to the point, and distill your writing into direct, actionable items that they can understand efficiently.

So how do you practice that? Continue Reading

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