suit-business-man-business-man-37547“Don’t talk to people you know.”

“Follow up immediately.”

“Meet as many new people as possible.”

“Jump into social media.”

Is any of this sounding familiar to you?

As you head off to yet another networking event or conference, is someone admonishing you not to spend time with the people you know, but to get “five new business cards” by the end of the evening? Are you dreading yet another long session of small talk about the weather, or worse, politics, with a crowd of people you’ve never met?

Never fear, I’m here to tell you that everything you know about networking may be wrong.

Yep, I said it. It’s wrong. 

How can that be? Two important reasons.  Continue Reading Lawyers: Everything You Know About Networking is Wrong

suhyeon-choi-104926On this International Women’s Day, we reached out to some strong, smart women we know – the in-house counsel in our LinkedIn group – and asked them to say a few words about the mentors that they credit with helping them with their professional advancement. We’re all made better by the passion, guidance, and helping hands of those who have come before us, and my favorite thing about mentorship is that it inspires each of us to reach out to the next person who can use our advice or guidance. We give back because we have been given to so freely.

The ILN has launched our own mentorship program this year, and we’re in the process of pairing up our young lawyers with experienced partners, and I can only hope that both mentors and mentees gain as much from the experience as our in-house counsel have from their mentors. We’ll add additional responses to this post as they come in, and we invite you to share your mentors with us in the comments. Before we get to our in-house counsel commentary, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes for today:

Here’s to strong women. May we know them. May we be them. May we raise them.”

Continue Reading International Women’s Day – An Ode to Mentors

FullSizeRenderAvid readers of Zen will know that one of my favorite topics is networking. So I was immediately drawn to read J. Kelly Hoey‘s new book, Build Your Dream Network: Forging Powerful Relationships in a Hyper-Connected World, when Mark Beese recommended it in his latest newsletter. I’ve been following Kelly since the early days of Twitter, so her name was also familiar to me, though not her story. She started her career as a lawyer in Toronto, and has wandered a fascinating path since then. Her book jacket tells us that:

J. Kelly Hoey is a writer, investor, connector, and networking expert, lauded everywhere from Forbes (“1 of 5 Women Changing the World of VC/Entrepreneurship”) to Fast Company (“25 Smartest Women on Twitter”). A columnist for Inc.com, she’s appeared on CNBC’s Power Pitch, and her clients include The New Yorker, Coca-Cola, PBS, L’Oréal, Capital One, and Dove.”

Using her own experiences, as well as sharing direct interviews with other successful friends and peers, Kelly illustrates how to build and leverage various networks, and what works and what doesn’t when it comes to networking. Whether you love to network, view it as a necessary evil, or can’t understand why you need to do anything besides work hard at your chosen profession to get more work, this book is for you. Let’s talk a little bit about what Kelly has to say about networking, and then run, do not walk, to buy this book (available in hard copy and electronic).  Continue Reading Build Your Dream Network: A Book Review

sofiya-levchenko-165628I am a couple of days late with this, due to travel, but nonetheless, happy 8th blogiversary to Zen & the Art of Legal Networking! It’s a bit hard to believe that 8 years ago I wrote my first post (Is the Billable Hour on its Way Out? – spoiler alert, it’s still dragging on), and the last eight years have been quite the roller coaster ride, teaching me an endless number of things about networking, writing, discipline, social media, and so much more.

Some fun stats for you – eight years has brought us:

  • 993 posts (WOW – we’re getting treacherously close to 1,000 blog posts!)
  • 19 topics covered (about seven or eight of those on a very regular basis)
  • Almost 36,500 page views and over 20,000 users
  • Our top audience is from the US, but we also see regular readers from Canada, the UK, India, Australia, Brazil, the Netherlands, Germany, and the Philippines!
  • My all time most popular post, by a landslide, remains last year’s “Instagram: How Lawyers Can Use it & Get Noticed“
  • Most of our readers come either from organic searches or directly, but for those that come from social media sites, you’re coming most often from LinkedIn, followed by Twitter

Continue Reading Happy 8th Blogiversary to Zen & the Art of Legal Networking!

Robin IoriThe ILN is extremely fortunate to have not only a lot of talented lawyers, but a number of other talented professionals as well. Included in that group are the hardworking marketing professionals at our member firms across the world. This year, I wanted to highlight some of their expertise in a series of guest posts here on Zen. Our first one comes from Director of Marketing with the ILN’s Illinois member, Arnstein & Lehr, Robin Iori. In today’s post, Robin is addressing the topic of business development training for associates, and this is a timely one for many law firms in the market. One of the hottest trends that came out of the submissions from this year’s crop of Your Honor Awards was an increased focus on young lawyers, and that bears out with what I’ve seen and heard in my daily engagement with firms as well. So as Robin says, when it comes to business development training for your associates, it’s never too soon to start.

***

Introducing the concept of business development to eager, young associates in a law firm can produce a variety of responses.  One response is the “deer-in-the-headlights” eyes that ask with trepidation, “I have to do this already?”  Then, there’s the furrowed brow look that may be saying, “Did I miss an email about this?” Or, there’s the response that involves nodding the head in agreement during the meeting and sheer panic once the meeting ends.

It’s not as if the topic of business development is new to the legal community today. Law schools still are not giving the subject as much attention as they could, but at least young lawyers know that ultimately they will come face to face with the concept if they join a law firm. Continue Reading Associate BD Training: It’s Never Too Soon to Start

FirmoftheMonth1

The ILN is proud to announce our latest firm of the month, Sit, Fung, Kwong & Shum – Hong Kong, China!
Founded in 1981, Sit Fung Kwong & Shum has established a solid practice in litigation, conveyancing, commercial law, intellectual property, information technology and Chinese law. Local and overseas clients include leading multinational, public and private companies and professional firms.

There are four notaries public and five China-appointed attesting officers in the firm. Many of the lawyers are qualified to practise in other jurisdictions in addition to Hong Kong, including England, Australia and Singapore.

The partners believe that the success of a modern law firm depends on its ability to understand and satisfy its clients’ needs and answer them in a professional manner. In pursuit of such belief, they have insisted on a high level of accountability to their clients. Continuous training organised within and outside the firm equip their staff with up-to-date legal knowledge and regular practice reviews provide venues where practical experience is shared among members of the firm.

Through effective office management, effective deployment and structuring of human resources, application of modern information technology, meticulous business planning and budgetary financial control, they have been able to build a smooth and efficient working environment achieving optimum output for their clients’ benefits.

Continue Reading ILN Firm of the Month – Sit, Fung, Kwong & Shum – Hong Kong, China!

We are finally here at the “ugly” of the 2017 Super Bowl commercials – do you already have your list is mind? The first couple were really easy for me to come up with, and the last few were late additions after some extra thought was given to the crop of ads this year.

No need for extreme measures just Switch to Sprint!

https://youtu.be/w_8ms2RzSYk

Sprint, seriously?

The best that you could come up with after spending all of that money on this spot was the idea to fake your own death to get out of your phone contract?

Seriously icky and disturbing.

And while his family watches no less? Really? Just a no, all around.

We get it. You want to give us the message that it’s hard to get out of your phone contract. But is that really the reason you should switch to Sprint? Because it’s so hard to get out of your phone contract that you need to fake your own death? That’s the best you have to offer us?

Huh. Continue Reading Super Bowl Commercials – The Ugly of 2017

Now that we’ve seen our lackluster list of “good” Super Bowl commercials for 2017, let’s dive into the ones that I thought weren’t so hot. The majority of spots made it into my “mediocre” category, so it’s harder to choose “bad” and “ugly” ads this year than you might think – but I’ve buckled down and come up with a few for you!

CURE Auto Insurance 2017 Super Bowl Commercial: Don’t Follow Too Closely

CURE Auto Insurance has never made an ad I’ve liked, and this year is no exception. But I find this one to be especially disturbing. The message in this spot is the idea that you shouldn’t “follow too closely” – they’re an auto insurance company, so they’re banking on a double entendre. They literally mean that you shouldn’t follow people too closely in your cars (though they’ll protect you from people that do, is the brand claim), but the metaphor in the spot is people who “follow” you too closely on social media.

However, the ad comes off as really creepy and stalker-esque. Which real-life following mishaps can cause too. Differently executed, this commercial might have been funny. But instead, it’s a bit traumatizing – for anyone who has ever been harassed online and off, cyber- or in-person stalked, this ad isn’t funny in the least. And they’re an auto insurance company, whose message also gets lost in there somewhere too. Not only is it a big miss on the messaging, it leaves me with a negative feeling about the company, which is really not something you want to achieve with your marketing. Continue Reading Super Bowl Commercials: The Bad of 2017

Gratuitous photo of me with the winningest Super Bowl QB of all time
Gratuitous photo of me with the winningest Super Bowl QB of all time

It’s that time of year again – the time when football fans mourn the end of another season with the pigskin and marketing fans rejoice because the best and brightest (usually) bring out the year’s highlights for strong ad campaigns. Also, guacamole tends to abound, and when is that ever a bad thing?

2017 was a little bit different, and definitely in a bad way. We had a little bit of a warning, because advertising was down – Tim Calkins, Clinical Professor of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University talked about some of the reasons for it in his post “Why Super Bowl Ads Are a Tough Sell in 2017.” And it makes sense. In seven years, ad buys for the Super Bowl have at least doubled in cost (really, NFL?), and that doesn’t take into account that companies now must create an entire social campaign around their 15-60 second spots. Where they used to have to draw only on their creativity for the ad, and perhaps a fully branded campaign around it (depending on the brand), they now have to consider both the social impact and the social engagement that the spots will generate – before, during and after they air.

This year’s crop of spots also saw some big names absent too – no Doritos or Butterfingers meant that we were already lacking some traditionally funny giants right off the bat. The tense political climate of the moment had a lot of people asking whether brands would play it safe, or take risks. In some cases, it had fans misreading the intentions of brands’ ads, because of the context of the environment. Overall, it was a ho-hum crop of spots – both on the good side AND on the ugly side. While I still have a few for you in the “ugly” category for next week, I felt like I was missing both the highs and lows of previous Super Bowl ads.

But without further ado, let’s look at my top five commercials for this year, and what lawyers can learn from these spots. Continue Reading Super Bowl Commercials: The Good of 2017

iStock_000016006182SmallEarly on in my legal career, I learned something about law firms that has stuck with me.

Law firms don’t want to be first. But they want to be first to be second.

Bearing that in mind, the importance of keeping an eye on what your competitors are up to cannot be undervalued. Whenever I speak to a lawyer or legal marketing professional, I get the sense that we’re all doing this on an informal, if not formal, basis fairly regularly. We know who our competitors are and what they’re good at, in much the same way that we know the ins and outs of our own organizations or firms.

This afternoon, I read a great post on “6 Things Your Competitors Can Teach You About Your Business,” which I highly recommend – there are some concrete suggestions in here for ways you can look critically at what your competitors are up to in the context of your own firm’s activities, and use those to improve your own goals and focus. It got me thinking about some additional ways that firms can be looking at their competitors for answers, and below are four key questions you want to ask yourself about your competitors to drive your own firm.  Continue Reading Four Key Questions Your Competitors Can Answer for Your Firm