Depending on your business/relationship development goals and strengths, one of your strategies may be to write and share content. When you’re considering augmenting your reputation and building your practice, it might seem counterintuitive to share the spotlight with someone else by quoting or referencing them in your articles and posts, but I’m here to tell you that it’s both essential, and a good business development practice. How so?
Continue Reading Three Reasons Attribution in Your Content is the Right Thing to Do
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.
USING SALES DATA TO IMPROVE YOUR BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
While I’m out of the office this week for our Annual Conference, I’m bringing you a guest post from Vince Robisch, of Minimalex – Vince coaches attorneys on improving their business development process to bring in more corporate clients. He practiced at an AmLaw 200 firm for eight years, and has sold millions of dollars of products and services to corporate legal departments and law firms, an experience that helps him to understand his clients and their clients. He currently coaches attorneys from specialized boutiques to some of the largest firms in the United States. You can learn more at his website. Vince is using the dreaded “s” word today – sales – to talk about an important topic, that of business development. It turns out that data helps your business. Who knew?
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Let’s be clear that lawyers don’t need to turn into professional salespeople to be good at business development. In fact, sales and business development often get used interchangeably when in reality, sales is focused on revenue generation, while business development tries to identify a product/market fit.
For our purposes, business development is the action of growing existing clients and bringing in new clients. Lawyers are in a much better position than the average salesperson to control the entire process and can leave behind all of the advice of slick, high-volume sales pros. That’s not your business and it won’t help.
Continue Reading USING SALES DATA TO IMPROVE YOUR BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Nice Recovery! Fixing Your Worst Networking Mistakes
Networking is not an easy task, which is one of the reasons that we discuss it so frequently here on Zen.
Since I’m spending this week with my lawyers in Milan, facilitating their networking efforts at our Annual Conference, I have networking on the brain, and wanted to share with you a couple of the worst networking mistakes you can make, and how to recover from them.
Continue Reading Nice Recovery! Fixing Your Worst Networking Mistakes
Lawyers: What Makes You Worth Talking About?
Lawyers know better than most people that words matter – after all, who knows better than a contract lawyer that a nuanced clause can make or break a deal?
But who knows better than your marketing team that “marketing” is a four-letter word?
It shouldn’t be – and I’ll explain why in a moment.
But how many of you (raise your hands) think of marketing as something that some group in your office does once in a while?
How many of you think of marketing as brochures and advertisements?
How many of you think marketers are just people who ask you for money and then put pretty logos together or make sure you have enough business cards?
Okay, put your hands down. I’ve got news for you – marketing is everything you do.
Continue Reading Lawyers: What Makes You Worth Talking About?
ILN-terviews: Arthur Li, Lee and Li
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, Arthur Li of our member firm Lee and Li in Taiwan, China.
In one sentence, how would you describe your practice?
I am a general practitioner, especially focused in IP-related matters.
Who would be your typical client?
Those who seek assistance to enter the Taiwanese market.
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ILN Firm of the Month – Ferrari Pedeferri Boni Studio Legale Associato, Milan, Italy!
We are proud to announce our latest firm of the month, Ferrari Pedeferri Boni Studio Legale Associato , Milan, Italy!
Ferrari Pedeferri Boni is an independent Italian law firm that handles legal issues of business law. They strive for excellence in their services and are proud to meet the highest international standards of the legal profession. Their clients are entrepreneurs and executives, Italian and foreigners, and their philosophy is to take a pragmatic and business-oriented approach when assisting them. They regularly handle cross-border and international transactions and litigation cases. Over the years, they have garnered significant expertise in international market and have developed a trusted network of professionals that they put at the disposal of their clients when needed.
What Does it Mean to Develop Your Personal Brand?
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of participating in the inaugural New York City event for She Breaks the Law, a network of women leaders founded by Priya Lele, Christie Guimond and Nicky Leijtens. The group brings together women in the legal industry who are “breaking the mould and challenging the norm in the world of law. Our members come from a wide range of backgrounds and disciplines, from female founders of disruptive start-ups to general counsel to innovation leaders in traditional law firms. They all have one thing in common: they are leading the change in the way that legal services are delivered.” Over the past two months since the soft launch, the group has grown to over 1,000 members, and officially launched with their London event last week.
At the New York event, as in London, in addition to general networking, we had structured “networking circles” – ours focused on legal tech and how we use it, the power of networking in the legal industry, legal design, and personal branding. I had the opportunity to chair the personal branding sessions, and it led to some thoughtful and interesting conversations around the idea of what it really means to develop your personal brand.
Continue Reading What Does it Mean to Develop Your Personal Brand?
You Can’t Delegate Relationship Development – Lessons From Taylor Swift
Last week, we talked about channeling your inner Taylor Swift to connect with your clients – it seems silly, but no one understands her client base and instill rabid loyalty better than Taylor, and isn’t that all something we’d love to emulate with our own clients?
We may not have her reputation (see what I did there?), but that doesn’t mean we can’t practice some of her tactics in our own relationship development efforts with similar success. One of the things she’s got down pat is knowing when to engage directly.
Continue Reading You Can’t Delegate Relationship Development – Lessons From Taylor Swift
Channel Your Inner Taylor Swift & Connect to Your Clients
Taylor Swift is my favorite client relationship genius.
That may seem a bit strange, but when you drill down into the brilliant marketing and business development machine that she is, you’ll agree that there are a few things that Taylor does that create rabid loyalty among her fans – and I mean rabid.
Before you start asking what Tay-tay and her music have to do with the law, first, ask yourself what it would feel like to have your clients feel the same way about you as Taylor’s fans feel about her? What if your clients trusted you so implicitly that they never took their business to anyone else? What if they called you first before making a business decision, because you’re their trusted adviser? What if your clients lined up every time you wrote or spoke, because they knew what you had to say was that valuable?
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Great Leaders Think Outside the Box
Lawyers, don’t panic – this isn’t as scary as it sounds.
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to participate in a workshop on leadership that encouraged some out-of-the-box thinking – the session integrated improv techniques into various business applications. I hate anything that feels like an icebreaker (I prefer routine and structure), so I was already pre-programmed to prefer sitting in a conference room listening to a speaker than to engage in improv.
But I was pleasantly surprised – and while some of the tips seemed silly at first (or may not work for every situation), I could definitely see the benefits of incorporating them.
Two of my favorites were “Yes, and…” and applauding all ideas.
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