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.
The ILN is proud to announce our latest firm of the month, PlasBossinade advocaten notarissen – Groningen, the Netherlands!
PlasBossinade is a full service law firm and one of the leading legal service providers in the Northern Netherlands. The firm looks after legal matters for a number of large scale and smaller enterprises
If you produce content – for example, you write a blog, author articles, post tweets, create videos, write LinkedIn posts, etc. – you’ve probably heard or read at some point that it’s a good idea to connect with “influencers” in your industry to extend the reach of your content. “Influencers” are those who are perceived as leaders within your industry, and as such, have the power to affect what others are reading, watching, and talking about. In talking about what’s called “influencer marketing,” Andrea Lehr of the Content Marketing Institute tells us that
Influencers work hard to cultivate relationships and maintain their position as a leader within their niche. Partnering with influencers in your industry helps get your message in front of the right audience and accelerates conversions.”
Sounds great, right?
But how do you figure out who those influencers are?
In her article, Lehr talks about two pieces of advice, and a note of caution, to help you to identify the influencers in your area of expertise. She and her team focused on marketing when they undertook this exercise, but it will work for your area of expertise as well – note that where you focus will be impacted by what your content marketing goals are. So, for example, if your goal is to reach more clients and potential clients, then you’ll want to focus on the client profile when looking for influencers – if you’re a corporate lawyer who helps entrepreneurs, your influencers will be found among the entrepreneur community, not other corporate lawyers. But if your goal is to become a respected thought leader among corporate lawyers who help entrepreneurs, then your influencers will be found among other corporate lawyers. The more specific your goals are, the easier it will be to define your potential influencer pool.
Continue Reading Two Tips for Identifying Influencers in Your Niche
For the last two weeks, we’ve look at four different ways to bring a WOW factor to your content marketing – in the first post, we focused on content, while in the second post, we looked at email marketing. In today’s post, we’re going to wrap up our WOW series, and look at two final action steps you should be taking when it comes to your content marketing, and these focus on your audiences. We talk about audience a lot here on Zen, and especially about checking in with them, ensuring that the content that you’re delivering is the content that they want. These are two different audience angles/tactics to consider taking.
Continue Reading Two Steps to WOW Your Content Audience
Let’s face it: networking can be hard. Unless you’re someone who thrives on meeting other people (and many of us don’t, including yours truly), networking is something that we consider to be a chore, albeit a necessary one.
So why not pair it with something that you already like doing?
For example, I’ve been a runner on and off for about the last seven years – mostly off (you may remember when I mentioned that running is like content marketing). Over the past year, I’ve really committed to it, and even ran my first half marathon in April. As I’ve posted about my runs on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, I’ve found a community of runners among my existing network – including of my own lawyers. It turns out that quite a few of my lawyers are runners themselves.
Continue Reading Networking Tip: Find Your Niche
Last week, we talked about two steps to bring the WOW factor back to your content marketing. Continuing with that theme, and the post that inspired it, we’re going to look at two more actions that those of us producing content for law firms should be taking to make sure that we’re wow-ing with our email content.
In his post, Pulizzi says:
Give more time and attention to your newsletter. Is it truly amazing or is it something your customers consider ‘salesy’ or spam? Of all the subscription options we have with our customers, including all social channels, email is where we have the most control over messaging.”
While he’s talking about newsletters (and you can certainly apply this advice to any newsletters you’re producing as well), I’d like to concentrate on the client alert, as it’s something that continues to get attention. Why is that?
Continue Reading Two Steps to Bring the WOW Factor To Your Email Marketing
Taped to my computer monitor, I have a set of photobooth photos from last years LMA New England conference, which include the conference theme: “What’s Your WOW Factor?” As much as I enjoy seeing the photos of my friends and I from the conference, the theme itself is a constant reminder to be asking myself that question as I undertake my daily tasks – “What’s my WOW Factor today?”
In today’s post, I want to look at two steps that law firms should be taking right now in their content marketing (as part of a series of posts), thanks to this piece from the Content Marketing Institute by Joe Pulizzi. These steps, and the ones that follow, have me thinking about that very idea – what’s our “wow” factor when it comes to content marketing – because in the end, that’s what it’s really all about. The thing that makes our audiences sit up and take notice of what we’re putting out for their consumption.
Pulizzi sets up his post by saying that these action steps are reminders to keep us on track in our content marketing – and I love that idea. We can easily get bogged down in the day to day nitty gritty that we lose sight of the forest for the trees. So action steps such as these are a way to pause, take stock, and ensure that what we’re doing with our content is effective and valuable, so that we’re getting the most for our efforts. And in a time and in an industry where we don’t want to waste any efforts, that’s essential.
Continue Reading Two Steps to Bring Back the WOW Factor To Your Content
The ILN is proud to announce our latest firm of the month, Michel LLP – Berlin, Germany!
PARTNERING WITH YOUR INTERESTS.
Located in the heart of Berlin, Michel LLP has been a genuine alternative to large and impersonal law firms since 2001. People who come to them seeking advice and help profit from their broad expertise and highly qualified legal work. At the same time, they feel that they are in good hands. They attach great importance to personal support for every single client.
Continue Reading ILN Firm of the Month – Michel LLP, Berlin, Germany!
Last week, we looked at one of the entries that had been submitted and won for this year’s Your Honor Awards for the Legal Marketing Association. I liked the concept so much that I want to take the opportunity to do it again, this time with one of my other favorite entries: K&L Gates LLP’s “Australian Open – Building Brand Awareness for a New Entry Down Under.”
I know a thing or two about events, because we put on a lot of them for the ILN, so I love getting the chance to see what other firms and organizations are doing with theirs. A lot of firms and companies tend to stick to sort of the same script, so when an event stands out like this one did, it was easy to get excited. You’ll notice if you look at the overall winners for the YHA that there was only one awarded in events, and that was first place to this entry – there was good reason for that.
It wasn’t an inexpensive endeavor – the event was a sponsorship of the Australian Open, to highlight K&L Gates’ breaking into the Australian legal market. But the two takeaways I have for you have nothing to do with having a big budget. So whether you’re a small firm or solo or a mega firm, you can take these to heart for your next event to help bring it to the next level.
Continue Reading Two Takeaways for Stellar Events Marketing
Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of serving as a judge for the Legal Marketing Association’s Your Honor Awards. These awards are the “longest-running annual international award program recognizing excellence in legal marketing,” and it’s the second time I’ve been able to serve as a judge. I enjoy it not only because of the camaraderie among my fellow judges, but because I get to see some of the smartest work in the industry, and get a sense of how firms and other professional services organizations in the legal industry are meeting the challenges that we face every day.
When we judge the selection of entries, we’re each given a few categories that we’re responsible for scoring, based on a list of criteria, and then we get together for a weekend in early January to review the entries with our fellow category judges, and then as a group. We then award first, second, third, and honorable mention as appropriate – and we have the option to award no prizes at all if we don’t think the entries are worthy, so when an entrant wins a prize, they really deserve it.
Continue Reading Two Takeaways for Surveys as Content Marketing
Every time I want to learn something about content marketing, I look to Neil Patel, co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, and KISSmetrics, and author for the Content Marketing Institute. In one of his latest posts, Patel addresses “How to Fix the 4 Biggest Problems with Content Writers.” Since it’s a Two for Tuesdays post, it actually works out well that I only want to focus on two of his four identified problems, and translate them over for the legal industry.
Continue Reading Fixing the Two Biggest Problems with Legal Writers