Re-caps of Sessions

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At this year’s LMA, we were fortunate enough to have not one, but TWO sessions with General Counsel. This one took place at the end of the first day, and included a procurement guy – a first for the LMA. The session was titled "GC Focus: Project Management. Position Your Firm in Alignment With the Unique Challenges Faced by In-house Counsel." 

Panelists included Keith Isgett, the Managing Attorney-General – Global External Legal Relations, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Justin Ergler, Sourcing Group Manager, Legal Services Procurement, GlaxoSmithKline, and Nat Slavin, Founder and Partner of Wicker Park Group, along with Moderator Alicia Brown, Director of Strategic Relationships for Bloomberg Law. 

After their introductions, Isgett kicked it off by saying that he wants to receive the best representation for the best price, and part of the "best representation" is having a good relationship with the law firm. The procurement team is there to make sure that what they’re paying for is what they receive, and that there is value there. Isgett noted that "People are still talking about discounted hourly rates, which means we’re not as far along as I’d like us to be." Continue Reading GC Focus – an LMA Annual Conference Recap

In yesterday’s post, we learned that building relationships is still of primary importance to clients – and some of the ways to do this including figuring out what benefits the client the most, and focusing on what business solutions will make them look good. 

The panelists agreed that the role of their lawyers needs to be that of strategic partners, and for their part, they need to inform outside counsel about what they need. But outside counsel can also be proactive to learn more about their clients. The panelists suggested that attorneys read company filings and public documents before they meet with them. They emphasized that outside counsel should understand their customer before asking them to be their customer. Post-matter debriefings, at no cost, are also helpful.

Continue Reading General Counsel Panel: Separate from the Pack – a Recap Part II

Another of my all-time favorite conference sessions at LMA is always the client panel.  For me, the panel always makes the investment in the conference worth it, because I can impart what I learn from the GCs there to my lawyers, to help them to understand their own clients better, and that adds value for everyone. 

This year’s client panel didn’t disappoint. It focused on best practices for building and maintaining your law firm’s relationship with in-house counsel and featured Megan Belcher, the VP and Chief Employment Counsel for ConAgra, Kevin Schubert, the Associate General Counsel, Transactions for LV Sands Corporation, Simon Manoucherian, the Assistance General Counsel/Director of Litigation GRIFOLS, and Karen Cottle, Senior Counsel for Sidley Austin and former in-house counsel. The panel was moderated by Inside Counsel magazine. 

The panelists said that they would discuss the role of social media for general counsel, the challenges that they see over the next five years, and the change in inside/outside counsel relationships since 2008.  Since the economic downturn, GCs have changed the way that they evaluate outside counsel, and the process by which trust is built. 

Continue Reading General Counsel Panel: Separate from the Pack – a Recap Part I

So if you’ve been hiding under a rock instead of reading my blog posts, you may not already know that my favorite session from LMA13 was "Delivering Happiness: Fresh Ideas for Service-Driven Brands Deploying Social Media Tactics, Seeking ROI" with Graham Kahr, Social Scientist for Zappos and Jayne Navarre of Law Gravity LLC. 

Rather than a typical session, Jayne and Graham let us know right away that it would be different when they introduced themselves in the third person. Their session took on the tone of more of a conversation, which also included those of us in the audience. 

They began their conversation by saying that they wouldn’t be talking about social media per se, but really focusing instead on creating experiences for clients (which is something we could all identify with). Graham said that Zappos doesn’t push their own brand stories – they want their customers to tell the brand story for them.Continue Reading “Delivering Happiness” – A Zappos Session Recap

A lesson I learned several years ago that has been invaluable to me is that of "identify, don’t compare." When you compare, you’re looking to match your situation exactly to that of someone else’s – and when we do that, we’re always going to come up different (and that can paralyze us).

But when we identify, we’re looking for those elements that run through a situation that are the same as ours – and this gives us the inspiration to keep moving forward, instead of giving up because we think we’ll never be the same. That lesson comes in handy when I’m sitting in a session like the Zappos one from the LMA Annual Conference.  Although it’s easy to try to compare Zappos to legal marketing and come up lacking because they’re a consumer-driven business, when I identify instead, I find many parallels which allow me to take the lessons that Graham was sharing with us and apply them to my own situation.Continue Reading Identify, Don’t Compare – Lessons from Zappos for the Legal Industry

Last week, we had the pleasure of welcoming my friend, Gina Rubel, of Furia Rubel, as our webinar presenter for the ILN’s marketing group. Gina had a fabulous presentation dedicated to the topic of integrated approaches to law firm marketing and public relations, and the attendees agreed that it was excellent. 

I won’t do my usual lengthy recap here, because Gina will be using some of the same insights in her upcoming panel presentation at the LMA’s 2013 Annual Conference (and I’m attending her session, so I’ll recap it then).  But I do want to give all of you a taste of what’s to come, to encourage everyone who’ll be at LMA13 to see Gina’s panel at 11am on Tuesday, April 9th. (ILN members and marketers can email me directly for a copy of the presentation)

Gina noted early in the presentation that when marketing a law firm, there are several fundamental questions to answer, regardless of the size of the firm – these surround topics such as goals, audience, messaging, tactics and ROI. Continue Reading Integrated Approaches to Law Firm Marketing & Public Relations

The Legal Marketing Association‘s Social Media Special Interest Group is at it again – this afternoon, they brought members an excellent webinar focused on combating internal politics – how to sell social media to your lawyers. 

Featured on the panel were moderator and LMA SIG leader, Gail Lamarche, of Henderson Franklin, an employment law attorney and social media maven from her firm, Suzanne Boy, and legal marketing expert, Jill Rako with Ohio-based Bricker & Eckler. 

Since these webinars are an LMA member benefit, I’m not going to delve as deeply into the recap as I traditionally would, but I do want to hit the highlights! Continue Reading Combating the Internal Politics – How to Sell Social Media to Your Lawyers

It’s been a festival of webinars over here lately, so I’ve got one more recap for you this year! Yesterday, we hosted Jaimie Field, esq. of Marketing Field, who presented on the in-house marketers’ guide to motivating your attorneys to rainmaking success. 

Jaimie kicked off by saying that the short version of her presentation is that you can’t motivate them. It’s not possible to motivate someone else – they have to motivate themselves. But what the in-house marketers or marketing partners CAN do is to provide the attorneys at their firm with the tools they need to help them to motivate themselves to rainmaking success. 

While Jaimie didn’t address specific tactics, she did identify what attorneys need from their in-house marketers in terms of their marketing genius and motivating prowess. Continue Reading ILN Marketing Webinar: In-House Marketers’ Guide to Motivating Attorneys to Rainmaking Success

Yesterday, we began our recap of the Contract Lawyers & Outsourcing webinar with Tim Corcoran and Kevin Colangelo. Today, we continue the discussion. 

Who is Doing this Successfully, and How?

Tim said that one of the challenges he’s heard from law firms about outsourcing is that their work is unique, their firm is unique, and as such, their work is hard to routinize and find a common way to deliver the services. So he asked Kevin to comment on how others who have done this have found that there are practices that can be improved through this approach – and not just the low-end, simple document reviews, but some high end work as well. 

Kevin said that they analyze the tasks going on within a law firm, legal department our sourcing department to see what can be disaggregated. Those that they’ve been able to disaggregate, they rebuild in a very process-heavy, documented environment. This extends outside of just outsourcing – firms can understand both how they get their work done and improve the way they’re doing it with the people that they’re using. This blends into not only the way that clients want their firms to do the work, but also how the firm itself wants to be operating. Continue Reading ILN Webinar Series – Contract Lawyers & Outsourcing Part II