I’ve spent the last two days talking about how to make improvements to your LinkedIn profile, and getting the most out of your LinkedIn home page.  Today, I want to cover LinkedIn Groups.

On LinkedIn, there are groups for everything, from business networking to animal lovers.  Groups are an excellent way to connect with people outside of your immediate network in areas where you share an interest.

I’m going to focus on the ILN’s group, because I’m the moderator and have the most familiarity with it, but most of this advice can be applicable to any business networking group for lawyers. During my presentation, I started with the "why" – why should the lawyers in the room have any interest in joining the ILN Group on LinkedIn? 

Continue Reading LinkedIn – Making the Most out of Groups

Yesterday, I talked about what improvements you  might want to make to your LinkedIn profile to get the best results from it.  Today, I’ll talk about the home page screen and why it’s useful to be logging in to LinkedIn periodically – I have LinkedIn set to open as one of the tabs on my browser, so every morning, I open Outlook and Chrome, go through my emails, and check on my browser tabs.  This includes taking a quick look (no more than five minutes) at my LinkedIn home page screen.  Lawyers, I know you’re busy, but if you make this part of your morning routine, you’ll only have to spend a few minutes looking at LinkedIn, you’ll stay up to date on what your network is doing, and you won’t have to try to remember to visit LinkedIn.

There are four things I find of particular importance on your home page screen (which looks like this):

Continue Reading “Hitting the (Other) Links to Develop Your Rainmaking Game – Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About LinkedIn” – Part II

If you read my posts regularly, you’ll know that I have a passion for social media.  I don’t think it’s the be all and end all of business development tools, of course, but I do have a fondness for it and an interest in sharing that fondness with my attorneys.

So I jumped at the chance to present a more in-depth look at LinkedIn to our group at the 2011 23rd ILN Annual Meeting on Saturday morning.  I wanted to stick to what I thought were the most relevant points about LinkedIn, and what would give our attorneys the greatest impact – and for me, there was no greater joy than sitting with one of our attorneys during the subsequent breakout session and helping him fill out his profile, as he repeated back to me snippets of what I’d said. 

Last week, I mentioned a few best practices for LinkedIn, but I’d like to add in a bit more about our session in Lisbon.

 

Continue Reading “Hitting the (Other) Links to Develop Your Rainmaking Game – Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About LinkedIn”

We kicked off the Saturday morning session with a presentation from Mr. Norman Zivin of one of the ILN’s member firms in New York, Cooper & Dunham, who reported on their recent involvement in a Supreme Court case and the implications for ILN member firms, both in the US and abroad.

Norman said that the case involved a deep fryer, a product made by their client, SEB, a French company in Lyon.  A number of years ago, they brought a lawsuit against a company in Hong Kong for infringement of the patent.  The opposing side defended on the grounds that they couldn’t have infringed the patent because the products were made and sold in China. They said that therefore, they don’t do any business in the United States and couldn’t have induced anyone to infringe, because they didn’t even know that SEB had a patent.

The case was tried three or four years ago, before a jury. Norman commented that the reason that a lot of foreign companies bring cases to the US is that juries in the US tend to grant much higher damages than one would get in a case in Europe or Asia.  The jury took about 15 minutes to deliberate and came back with a judgement of $5 million in favor of their client. The case went up on appeal, and the decision was affirmed, so everyone thought the case was over.

Continue Reading Actual Knowledge Necessary for Inducement, Mr. Norman Zivin, Cooper & Dunham

During our 2011 23rd Annual Meeting, we were fortunate to welcome the Secretary of State for Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Mr. Joao Tiago Silveira, as our speaker.  His topic, "Modernization of the States and of the Administration," covered the Portuguese government’s efforts to streamline their services by putting them online and making them more efficient.

Mr. Silveira began by welcoming the delegates to Portugal, and sharing his pleasure at speaking to the group about cutting red tape and the achievements that the Portuguese government has had. He said that they’re pushing forward a strong policy around cutting red tape, mainly by using two plans – the Simplex plan, a plan directly linked to reducing bureaucracy, and the Technological plan, which is a plan for using the internet and new technologies.

The government identified three clears goals for these two programs: 

  1. To eliminate and simplify the acts and procedures, mainly in registration offices. In Portugal, civil registration, company registration, industrial property trademarks and patents, land registration and car registration are dependent on the Ministry of Justice.  So one of the government’s goals is to simplify the procedures in this field.
     
  2. To de-materialize by using the internet and electronic procedures in the registration sector.  The government now uses e-filing, the internet and new technologies to achieve faster and more cost-effective registrations.
     
  3. To de-materialize judicial acts and procedures before the courts. This also incorporates the use of the internet and electronic solutions to allow lawyers and people to get more access to the courts, as well as reducing costs and saving time.

Continue Reading Modernization of the States and of the Administration – Mr. Joao Tiago Silveira

Today’s the big day! The International Lawyers Network is unveiling our new content-driven website at http://www.ilntoday.com. We gave our member firms a sneak peek at last week’s 23rd Annual Conference, and this week we’re revealing it to you! 

The redesigned site embodies the latest technology to best serve the growing needs of ILN members and their clients, and provides a variety of benefits, including:

  • Up-to-the-minute legal content and news from law firms in 66 countries around the world.
  • RSS feeds to deliver content directly to your desktop.
  • Direct connections to ILN members and Administration through a member Tweet stream, Facebook and LinkedIn.

 

 

Continue Reading It’s Here! The ILN Launches its New Site – ILNToday

I’m just back from our 2011 23rd Annual Meeting in Lisbon, and I’ll have lots to share with you over the next week or so.  But what’s fresh in my mind this morning is our session on LinkedIn from Saturday morning – I’d like to share some best practices for LinkedIn, which can be particularly useful when you’re just returning from any conference:

  • Review the attendee list, or the stack of business cards you returned with and make note of the people you met and chatted to at the conference. Search for, and connect to, these people on LinkedIn, making sure to send a personal note with your invitation that refers to your conversations.
     
  • Set your browser to open to the LinkedIn home page when you start it up.  I use Chrome on my desktop, and have set it to open several tabs when I start it up each morning, including LinkedIn – that way I never have to remember to visit LinkedIn and check the latest status updates.  Then, each morning, I scroll through my news feed and comment on or like updates and news, or connect to anyone I might know.  It doesn’t take a lot of time, and it keeps me plugged into what my network is doing.

Continue Reading LinkedIn Best Practices

 We’re here in Portugal, and the ILN’s 23rd Annual Meeting is underway – we had a wonderful welcome reception and dinner last night and a very informative business session this morning.  Here’s a few photos for your viewing pleasure from the meeting!

 

Our Chairman and Executive Director chat before the meeting starts

We welcomed three new firms at this conference

Okland & Co in Norway

Davis & Gilbert in New York

And Davis Malm D’Agostine in Boston!

After our Administration update and a coffee break, one of our host firm’s attorney’s introduced our speaker, the Secretary of State for Presidency of the Council of Ministers.

Mr. Joao Tiago Silveira

We hope tomorrow’s session will be just as good!

Today’s Ask Friday! question comes from our very own Executive Director, Alan Griffiths, who asked me to share with you some tips for getting ready for a business trip.  We’ve all got our own lists and prep routines, but this has been on my mind this week while we’re getting ready to head over to Lisbon for our Annual Meeting.  

So here are my Top Ten Tips for Business Travel Prep – feel free to add yours in the comments!

  1. Check the TSA website– you can see what the travel conditions are, what you can and can’t bring in your carry-on, how to get through the line faster, and what to do if you’re traveling with a medical condition. 
     
  2. Check the weather at your destination – it always surprises me when someone shows up at a destination thinking it’s a tropical one, but it’s cool or rainy at the time of year they’re there, and they’ve got all the wrong clothes in their suitcase.  A quick check of the weather saves a lot of packing faux pas.
     
  3. Get the necessities together – Make sure you have your passport or ID (don’t forget that you need a passport to go back and forth to Canada from the US now!), information about your tickets, hotel confirmation, any cash you need on hand, etc.
     
  4. Put any medication you’ll need in your carry-on – you might be tempted to put this in your checked luggage, especially for a shorter flight, but don’t do it.  It’s always when you think the airline won’t lose your bag that they do, and you don’t want to be without anything you might need.
     
  5. Along these lines, either wear business attire to fly, or have something you can wear in your carry-on.  If the airline misplaces your bag and you’ve got to meet clients or colleagues, you’ll feel less flustered if you’re not wearing stretchy pants or jeans.
     
  6. Put a photocopy of your passport in your checked luggage – and even in your carry-on.  Leave a copy at home too.  If your passport is lost or stolen during your trip, it’s FAR easier to handle it if you have easy access to a copy.  It may also be advisable to keep a soft copy on your laptop and smartphone so you’re covered no matter what.
     
  7. Check that you’ve got all your electronic bits and pieces – I forgot my mobile phone charger when traveling once, and had to scramble once I arrived to pick up a new one.  It was a big pain and stressor.  If you check beforehand that you have your chargers, phones, iPads, Nooks, laptops, cameras, batteries, and any power adapters (if you’re traveling abroad), this will save you a lot of anxiety.
     
  8. Review your itinerary – I like to go through what I’m scheduled to do each day of a trip, and what I might need to wear, while I’m packing. It gives me the opportunity to get my schedule straight in my mind, and helps me avoid forgetting to pack something essential.
     
  9. Bring snacks – depending on where you’re traveling to and from, you might not have easy access to the snacks you like (even at the airport), often leading you to end up with a bag of gummy worms that’s just not satisfying or good for you.  I find if I pack some snacks both in my carry-on and checked luggage, I’ve got food that I want to eat and don’t have to pay for snacks on the plane if I don’t want to.
     
  10. Check your flight information – You’ll want to make sure that your flight is on-time and not cancelled before leaving for the airport, and it’s a good idea to see what the individual airline’s policies are for checked baggage fees, carry-on restrictions and anything else that might hold you up when you are trying to get on the plane.  Keep the flight information handy as well (including the airline’s phone number), so you can get in touch with them quickly if your flight is cancelled or you need to make alternate arrangements.

And I’m going to throw in one more tip, because it’s rather a big pet peeve of mine…

  1. Before you board the plane, but once you know they’re going to start the process, take out anything you’re going to want in your seat during the time that the plane is taxiing, taking off and reaching altitude.  Please. Then, when you get on the plane, you can put that stuff on your seat, toss your bag into the overhead compartment, and any smaller items under the seat and sit down quickly without building a huge line behind you.  It saves everyone so much time, and means you don’t have to keep popping out of your seat during the boarding process to get one more thing, or put one more thing in your bag.  This may seem like a no-brainer to some, but I was recently on a flight of almost entirely business travelers, and it was by far the longest boarding process I’ve ever experienced – so it applies.

Happy travels!