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Barry Camson is an organization development consultant and trainer who works with organizations to help them be more collaborative and effective. He is a former practicing attorney in Boston. He can be reached at bcamson@aol.com.

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What can the International Lawyers Network (ILN) of law firms contribute to our knowledge of what it takes for law firms to succeed in the 21st century?

David Maister in an article in the April 2006 issue of The American Lawyer raises the issue of: “Are Law Firms Manageable.” In that article he delves into the reasons why law firms may not be and why in meeting their contemporary business needs they should be. Maister wonders whether law firms will be able to respond to the need for effective cross-office and cross-disciplinary action in order to meet the needs of clients.Continue Reading Building Relationships and Trust in a Network of Lawyers, Part I – Guest Post from Barry Camson

You may not be surprised to learn that during the 2011 Legal Marketing Association Annual Conference, I attended the session on Effectively Leveraging Social Media as a Business Development & Marketing Tool. And it was definitely a valuable session.  

The panel was moderated by Josh Fruchter, Principal at eLawMarketing, and featured Melanie Green, Director of Business Development & Marketing at Baker Daniels, Andrea Stimmel, Business Development Director, Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle, and Russell Thomas, Director of Media & Public Relations at Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice.

The panel began by asking who in the room worked at a firm that was tweeting, had a Facebook page, a LinkedIn profile, or blogs – the majority of the room was in this category.  Law firms lean more towards LinkedIn than Facebook based on the show of hands in the room, though a few of those on Twitter said they felt Facebook had value as well.  

The panel had crowdsourced questions from the attendees in advance of the session through the LMA Conference’s LinkedIn group, and the panel was built around this.  
Continue Reading Effectively Leveraging Social Media as a Business Development & Marketing Tool – An LMA Recap

Sometimes, I read someone else’s posts and am so inspired by them, I just can’t keep my mouth shut.

Such is the case this morning with Nancy Myrland’s latest post, "Social Media: It’s Time…Embrace it Already!"

As Nancy said:

Social Media are being used by employees of all ages and interests. You can no longer keep these communication tools out of their lives during the work day just as you can’t keep email, telephone and face-to-face communication away from people. These are tools that are here to stay, and will become a large part of every business around you, so it’s time to:

  • Become familiar with them.
  • Frame them.
  • Train people on them.
  • Monitor them.
  • Integrate them in to your business and marketing plans.
  • Then repeat all of these steps regularly.

Continue Reading Social Media – Why Are We Still Afraid of it?

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…

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

On April 2nd, I attended the Legal Marketing Association’s breakout session, “Going Green: What You and Your Firm Can Do to Help Save the Planet.” Initially, I was not scheduled to attend this session, but I was recruited by Alvidas Jasin, the Director of Business Development at Thompson Hine and the program’s presenter. I was not sorry that he’d dragged me into the session, because what followed was an informative, entertaining look at how law firms and individuals can “go green.”

Alvidas first determined by a show of hands that three people in the audience had an internally branded green program at their firms, with two of these also branding externally. To start, he gave the group some motivation for “going green,” based on Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Explaining that the earth’s average temperature is 59 degrees, compared with -67 on Mars, 333 on Mercury, and 855 on Venus, Alvidas said that the higher temperatures of the other planets can be attributed to their proximity to the sun, but also the density of the planet’s atmosphere. In terms of the earth, as carbon dioxide concentrations grow, the atmostphere becomes more dense and traps radiation that was previously able to escape. Because of this, 22 of the hottest years on record have occurred during the last 25 years. Though warming and cooling trends are not uncommon, they normally occur over millions of years, not 50 years. Scientists feel that because of the latest warming trend, there will likely be no snow or ice on the North Pole as soon as 2013 – only four years. On the South Pole, there is 1 1/2 miles of snow and ice, but the increase in temperature is causing chunks of this snow and ice to break off, crash into the ocean and raise sea levels.

Contributing to the increasing levels of CO2 is that 75% of electricity comes from fossil fuel plants and there has been an overall increase in the earth’s population. It took 162,000 years to reach 1 billion people on earth. In the following 2000 years, this grew to 6.5 billion people. At this rate, there will be 9.1 billion people on the planet by 2050, when we are struggling to find adequate resources already. In terms of CO2 output, the United States is twice as bad as the next worst offenders, Russia. Continue Reading It’s not easy being green: LMA looks at what you and your firm can do to help save the planet