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.
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.
Welcome to ILN-terviews, a series of profiles of ILN member firm attorneys, designed to give a unique insight into the lawyers who make up our Network.
For our latest interview, we chose ILN member, John Verrall of Verralls Barristers and Solicitors in Gibraltar.
In one sentence, how would you describe your practice?
I would describe
Today, I attended one of the Social Fresh conferences, which took place here in Portland, Oregon – for those of you wondering what Social Fresh is, it’s a conference about social media, focused around case studies, and it takes place in some “underserved cities,” as the conference website describes them. Although it’s not a conference focused around the legal field, I felt that broadening my social media education to find out what other companies are doing and what works for them would be useful in my own professional social media efforts, as well as for the law firms we work with.
Continue Reading Social Fresh – What Did I Learn About Social Media?
Last night, I had the opportunity to attend a socialmediatoday webinar on “Social Media in Asia: Where are the Emerging Opportunities?” (For the webcast and slides, visit: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/webcasts/184500) What follows is a re-cap of the highlights, but the key takeaways that came out of the webinar are the following:
– Culture is hugely important – In order to succeed in Asia, you must have people on the ground who understand the social meda ecosystem for that country and can help you to navigate it.
– Mobile devices will be the primary source of access for a lot of people because broadband access is not always available. So compatibility with mobile devices is hugely important.
– Face-to-face interactions are still paramount.
The speakers for the webinar were Thomas Crampton, Asia Pacific Director of 360 Digital Influence for Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, Peter Auditore, head of SAP’s Business Influencer Program and a Senior Fellow at the Society for New Communications Research, and Robin Carey, CEO of socialmediatoday. They began with comments from Crampton on scale – he said there are 338 million “netizens” (citizens of the net) in China versus only 62 million in France (as of a report from 2009) and also greater than the population of the United States. However, the top social networks in China are not the familiar ones in the West - Qzone has 183 million users, Xiaonei has 40 million, kaixin001 has 30 million, while Facebook only has 0.4 million. Crampton observed that the government is very savvy in China – Twitter is blocked, but Google Wave is not. He also noted that Friendster used to rule Asia, but now Facebook is “romping across the nation.”Continue Reading Social Media in Asia: Where are the Emerging Opportunities?
Welcome to ILN-terviews, a series of profiles of ILN member firm attorneys, designed to give a unique insight into the lawyers who make up our Network.
For our latest interview, we chose ILN member, Lorna Patajo-Kapunan of Kapunan Lotilla Garcia & Castillo Law Offices in Manila, the Philippines.
In one sentence, how would you describe
As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been following along as attendees of Georgetown’s Law Firm Evolution Symposium have been tweeting the conference highlights. Rachel M. Zahorsky of the ABA Journal was in attendance, and wrote a great article that summed up a theme of the conference – BigLaw must change or die. She quotes several
Last week, I wrote a re-cap on a panel I attended at the Legal Marketing Association’s Annual Conference on Alternative Fee Arrangements. The panelists said that the law firms that are “pyramid-shaped,” with the larger part of their firms being made up by associates, would have difficulty adapting to the make-up needed to accommodate
One of the important messages in terms of social media that came out of this year’s LMA Annual Conference is that “you cannot be a proxy for someone else’s relationship – the lawyers have to do it themselves.” But in the busy world of attorneys, where time is quite literally money, what about ghostblogging?
For
For my last session of the conference, I attended “The Digial Firm 2015 – The Changing Face of Professional Services Marketing Communications,” with opening remarks from Anthony Green, President of Concep, moderated by Dwain Thomas, Managing Director of Concep, and panelists Susan M. Snyder, Senior Consultant at Hay Group, Jodie Kaminsky, Vice President of J.P. Morgan Asset Management, and Royal Simpkins, Firmwide Communications Manager at Sedgwick, Detert, Moran & Arnold LLP. The panel looked at new marketing channels and how they impact marketing professionals in a fee earning environment. When the room was polled, we learned that a lot of the audience is using social media in their communications mix. Jeannette McGarr wondered on Twitter what her attorneys would say about social media becoming the norm in firms.
The panelists went into three case studies of firms using digital strategy with Concep, starting with J.P. Morgan. They needed a reduction in cost, which for them, meant getting away from paper. They were looking for both strategic and tactical recommendations to help them to migrate their current contact strategies to digital, and used their competition to convince naysayers to get into social/digital communication tools. It took 2-3 years for them to switch entirely to digital communications, and now their marketing plans are much more integrated with digital media and have the same messages across platforms. At the start of this process, they had 15 different databases, and have since merged all of them. When all data repositories begin to communicate, the power is exponential for intelligence and relationship management. Continue Reading LMA 2010 – The Digital Firm 2015 – The Changing Face of Professional Services Marketing Communications
The client panels held during the LMA conferences always provide a wealth of useful information for legal marketers to bring back to their firms. This year’s panel was no different – moderated by Michael B. Rynowecer, President and Founder of The BTI Consulting Group, the panel featured Eric Hilty, Senior Vice President and Assistant General Counsel of Apartment Investment and Management Company (AIMCO), Carmel Gill, Corporate Counsel, Legal Department of Level 3 Communications, Jeffrey K. Reeser, Vice President and Secretary of Newmont Mining Corporation, and Julie DeCecco, Associate General Counsel and Director of Litigation at Sun Microsystems, Inc. The session was titled “What we love most about our lawyers,” and the panel started by saying that in order to stand above the competition and become a prefered provider, firms need to step up partner engagement and have a proactive knowledge of their clients’ business. The clients listed a few of the law firms that they consider top of their lists, and one included ILN member, Holland & Hart.
So what gets a firm “on the list?” One of the panelists counseled that lawyers shouldn’t make them jump through legal hoops, but should do as much for them as they can, so that they don’t have to do it themselves. Another said that lawyers should identify the obstacles for their clients, think two steps ahead to the solution and articulate it. Their impressions of firms come from their experiences with the attorneys of that firm, reinforcing the theme that it’s all about relationships. The panelist admitted that she thought saying service was the most important thing to her might offend the audience, but as Kate Haueisen said via Twitter “we influence service too!” The panelists suggested that firms have a dialogue with their clients about their expectations for communication, workflow, and sharing the work burden and they agreed that they are trying to isolate the firms that they have good relationships with and save some money. Continue Reading LMA 2010 – General Session: What We Love Most About Our Lawyers – A Client Panel
The first session on Friday was another session that delegates were excited for, and the big room was packed. Moderated by Patrick Fuller, the Managing Account Director at Hubbard One, the presenters included Twitter favorites like Melanie Green, Director of Business Development and Marketing at Baker & Daniels LLP and Tim Corcoran, Senior Consultant at Altman Weil, as well as Robert D. Randolph, Jr., Director of Marketing and Business Development at Bryan Cave LLP and Steven B. Bell, Chief Client Development Officer at Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, PLLC.
Tim started the session by saying that the difference between business development and marketing is that marketing is the tactics to build awareness and identity, while business development is what you’re doing to further that relationship. Steve wondered why there should be a distinction between marketing, business development and sales, saying that “we all want to ring the cash register.” He said that everyone in the room is engaged in the buying process every day, and it’s marketing’s role to create awareness. Anyone can take their own lessons from the things that they buy – buying legal services is no different. Buying is emotional and justifying a purchase is logical, though he clarified that an emotional purchase doesn’t mean it’s illogical. He emphasized that companies don’t make purchases, individuals do. So you have to understand the individual. As we all know, clients buy services from peope they trust, like, are capable, and understand their business. This isn’t an illogical process, but they have to trust you. Lawyers sometimes think that they can’t do this business development “stuff,” but it doesn’t have to be a close relationship. They just need to build a relationship of trust. Lawyers also think that they need to explain their capabilities in the buying process, but most clients are not even considering you if you don’t already have the skill set they need. Continue Reading LMA 2010 – Creating and Implementing a Sales and Business Development Culture in Your Firm
