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Lindsay Griffiths

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Lindsay Griffiths is the International Lawyers Network’s Executive Director. She is a dynamic, influential international executive and marketing thought leader with a passion for relationship development and authoring impactful content. Griffiths is a driven, strategic leader who implements creative initiatives to achieve the goals of a global professional services network. She manages all major aspects of the Network, including recruitment, member retention, and providing exceptional client service to an international membership base.

In her role as Executive Director, Griffiths manages a mix of international programs, engages a diverse global community, and develops an international membership base. She leads the development and successful implementation of major organizational initiatives, manages interpersonal relationships, and possesses executive presence with audiences of internal and external stakeholders. Griffiths excels at project management, organization, and planning, writes and speaks with influence and authority, and works independently while demonstrating flexibility in thinking, especially in challenging situations. She also adapts to diverse and dynamic environments with constant assessment and recalibration.

JD Supra Readers Choice Top Author 2019

In 2021, the ILN was honored as Global Law Firm Network of the Year by The Lawyer European Awards, and in 2016, 2017, and 2022, they were shortlisted as Global Law Firm Network of the Year. Since 2011, the Network has been listed as a Chambers & Partners Leading Law Firm Network, recently increasing this ranking to be included in the top two percent of law firm networks globally, as well as adding two regional rankings. She was awarded “Thought Leader of the Year” by the Legal Marketing Association’s New York chapter in 2014 for her substantive contributions to the industry and was included in Clio’s list of “34 People in Legal You Should Follow on Twitter.” She was also chosen for the American Bar Association Journal’s inaugural Web 100‘s Best Law Blogs, where judge Ivy Grey said “This blog is outstanding, thoughtful, and useful.” Ms. Griffiths was chosen as a Top Author by JD Supra in their 2019 Readers’ Choice Awards, for the level of engagement and visibility she attained with readers on the topic of marketing & business development. She has been the author of Zen & the Art of Legal Networking since February 2009.

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During our Annual Conference, I had the opportunity to present on the topic that’s near and dear to my heart – social media. An informal survey of the room revealed that about fifteen attorneys were regularly using social media (I defined "regularly" as logging in once a week and connecting with someone in their network in some way). That still left the majority uninvolved, so I endeavored to convince them why social media might matter to them.

I began with some statistics on social media usage from the AmLaw 100 and 200 firms, adding the caveat that I understand that social media differs from region to region and that it isn’t commonly used in business in many countries. However, I still felt the topic had broad applicability because many firms around the world have American clients and I believe that social media will soon become important for businesses around the world.  Continue Reading Social Media – Why It May Matter to Lawyers – A Re-cap from the ILN Annual Conference

On Saturday, we had another session that was of interest to the delegates – a presentation on Effective Benefit Programs. The presenter was Stanley Jeremiah, the Vice President and Managing Director for Asia Pacific HR Management at Convergys.  Stanley is also a chartered insurer with UK professional qualification, a fellow of the Chartered Insurance Institute, and a council member of the Singapore Insurance Institute.  His talk focused on one small area of firm management, benefits, and he gave a general overview since benefits are country-specific.  

One of the characteristics of a benefits program is that it’s a more subtle form of compensation than remuneration, because it’s not often communicated to employees in terms of cost.  As a result, it’s less comparable to benefits packages at other firms and isn’t well-leveraged as a differentiating factor when recruiting talent.  Because benefits aren’t given this importance, employees often don’t know what benefits they have and as a result, are not as appreciative as they could be, because they don’t understand the value.  Stanley said that if firms can use benefits packages effectively, they could become something that has a higher perceived value than the actual cost.  Continue Reading Effective Benefits Programs – an ILN Conference Re-cap

Although generally I would make every effort to offer posts from our ILN conferences as they happen, in this case I am forced to write them after the fact.  Because of the political turmoil in Bangkok, we had to make the decision four weeks before our Annual Meeting to move the conference to Singapore, so I was knee deep in last minute decisions and more on-site planning and execution as a result than is normally the case.  So without further ado, I bring you some of the highlights from the ILN’s 22nd Annual Meeting in Singapore! 

In the first days of our visit, we had the pleasure of visiting Maxwell Chambers, the home of the Singapore International Arbitration Centre, where we met their head of business development, Ms. Rachel Foxton, and their CEO, Mr. Ming Naing Oo.  We saw several of their hearing rooms and learned more about the benefits of arbitration in Singapore during our Saturday morning session.  Continue Reading SIAC – Arbitration in Singapore, an ILN Conference Re-Cap

MGD Enterprises, a consulting company I follow on Facebook presents a business question or piece of advice daily.  Today’s comment was "Fact for Friday…Is access to social media critical to employee satisfaction? A global survey of workplace attitudes & behaviors by Clearswift shows that 21% of young adults say they would turn down a job if it didn’t allow them access to social network sites or their person[al] email. What is the situation where you work?"

The first commenter said "That will be the same 21% that will complain about their raise because their lack of focus will lead to their lack of production."  Those of you who know me well or follow this blog will know how I feel about that – to me, social media is not about wasting time and being unproductive.  Which is why I responded to him that "I’d include myself in that 21%, but social media makes me more effective because I use it for my job – I network with people in my field through Twitter and publicize my firms and their accomplishments, and use LinkedIn and Facebook for the same reasons. I think when you have people abusing social media, it’s a human resources issues, not a tools issue. The same people who will waste time on social media would be on the phone making personal calls if they were restricted from it."Continue Reading Social Media: Should it be Restricted in the Workplace?

Last week, a marketing manager posted a question to the Legal Marketing Association’s internal listserv – she wanted to know if there was a way to upload her attorneys’ bios to LinkedIn without them having to do it themselves.  I was both surprised and disappointed to see someone in legal marketing ask this, because she’s missing the point of social media and as a result, not able to help the lawyers at her firm understand and use it for their benefit. 

My response to her was the following:

“Unfortunately, I’m not going to give you the answer you’re probably looking for.  Because LinkedIn is not just a directory of attorneys, I don’t think posting all of the members of your firm is a great idea.  The key to social networking is engagement, whether you’re using LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or Martindale-Hubbell Connected.  For LinkedIn to be effective for your firm, the attorneys need to be involved directly – posting their own information on their profiles, and then staying actively engaged by linking up with colleagues, former classmates, clients and friends and then sharing information with them like articles/blog posts they’re writing, seeing what those people are up to and commenting on it, joining relevant groups and participating in them by answering questions, posting articles they think are useful, etc.  

 Continue Reading LinkedIn – It’s Not a Directory

On Wednesday, May 12th, I was fortunate enough to attend a couple of sessions at American Lawyer Media’s Law Firm Marketing and Business Development Leadership Forum. The ILN was a marketing partner for the event, and I spoke on a panel called "Going, Going…Global? The Worldwide Marketing for Legal Services." Unfortunately, I have not yet mastered the art of tweeting from a panel I’m participating in (and so don’t have comprehensive notes for a re-cap), but the first session of the morning on the changing nature of in-house and outside counsel relationships was full of great takeaways for law firms and their marketing departments.  If you’re interested in the full list of tweets from the conference, you can check out the #LCMO hashtag transcript.

On the panel were:

Continue Reading Re-cap of ALM’s Law Firm CMO Forum: Inside/Outside Counsel Relationship