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The ILN is proud to announce our latest firm of the month, Bryn Aarflot, Intellectual Property Boutique – Oslo, Norway!
Bryn Aarflot was founded in 1947 and is one of Norway’s leading intellectual property firms. Their clients range from large international companies to individual entrepreneurs, representing all fields of business and industry.

The firm provides technical and legal expertise at all levels on all areas of intellectual property law.

Bryn Aarflot’s professionals draw on their broad range of technical backgrounds and legal experience to serve the needs of the client.

What makes them unique and different from most other IP firms is that as well as being one of Norway’s leading filing and prosecution firms, they also act as litigators. This enables them to offer a full range of services in the IP field.

Bryn Aarflot has regularly been ranked by the renowned, independent publication Managing Intellectual Property (MIP) as the “Norwegian IP Law Firm of the Year,” and is listed in the top tier of MIP’s World IP Survey in trademark, copyright and patent law.

Continue Reading ILN Firm of the Month – Bryn Aarflot, Intellectual Property Boutique – Oslo, Norway!

Grunge cracked zombie virus concept background with some soft smooth lines

17 million people watched the October 23rd premiere of the 7th season of The Walking Dead.

Although the show is wildly popular because of its writing and its character development, it’s safe to say that it’s also a huge hit because, well, zombies.

Zombies may not be the biggest threat facing our friends on TWD at the moment, but it turns out that zombie-thinking IS the biggest threat facing our content marketing efforts in the legal industry.

That might sound extremely dire, but hear me out – as we look at the saturation point we’re reaching with content (both in and outside the legal industry) and we look at the lack of care a lot of us are giving to the details over the tools and the shiny new thing, we’re just blindly producing more and more and more and more, adding more noise (as Adrian Lurssen would say).  Continue Reading Combatting the Zombiefication of Legal Content Marketing with Breakthrough Storytelling

FullSizeRender2017 is here and that means a fresh, clean slate, right?

I like fresh starts, and I like that I feel like I get two of them during the year – one in January with the advent of a new year, and one in September when the school year begins again (even though I’m not in school anymore). But with 2017, I’m struggling to feel rejuvenated. It could be the two solid days of rain we’ve had to kick off this week, or the tough slog that was 2016, but whatever the reason, I’m just not feeling it this week.

I suspect that I might not be alone in this, so in today’s post, we’re going to be looking at some ways we can generate a little inspiration this week if you’re struggling (or even if you’re not!). And if it takes us a few weeks to get our fresh start, then that’s okay too. I’m all about a kinder, gentler 2017, so if we don’t get a perfect jump start right out of the gate, that’s what second chances are for.

As we dive into our three inspirations, huge thanks goes out to my friend, Lance Godard, who helped me formulate a germ of an idea into a palatable post today!  Continue Reading Three Ways to Inspire Your Marketing in 2017

wjqedasn_ni-jeffrey-wegrzynHas everyone got their “fa la la” on yet?

While the holidays are often a mad rush for all of us, it seems that this year especially, everyone is behind with wrapping up their end of the year duties (and wrapping up their gifts), while we try to figure out shortcuts for how to manage to get everything done before family and friends descend on us (or you head out the door yourself). In among all of the holiday madness are your professional pressures, which, of course, take priority.

So rather than a thought-provoking, meaty post today, let’s look at some (mostly) quick ways that you can engage with your clients and other relationships – these can be done over the holidays, if you find you have some down time and you want to get a jump on 2017, or they can be things that you pencil into your schedule for next year. While the options for engagement are endless, and many of them are really in-depth, today, we’re going to focus on some of the simple ideas that can add a little boost to your relationships. Continue Reading 7 Ways Lawyers Can Build More Engagement Over the Holidays

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December 2016/January 2017

The ILN is proud to announce our latest firm of the month, Martinez, Algaba, de Haro y Curiel, S.C.!
The firm was established in 1969 and has broad experience in civil, commercial and administrative litigation, commercial arbitration, and bankruptcy and restructuring. Specialized publications such as Chambers & Partners, Legal 500, and Who’s Who Legal recognize the firm as a leading firm within said areas of practice. Additionally, the firm provides corporate and banking advisory legal services.
Clients counseled consist of both domestic and foreign entities, many of which are publicly traded and are key players in areas of business and industries as diverse as banking, insurance, investment and pension funds, education, oil and gas, retail, real estate, technology, aeronautics, and telecommunications.
With offices in Mexico City and Monterrey, the firm has nine partners and twenty-five associates with sound academic and professional backgrounds, licensed to practice law all across the country, supported by over sixty people, including paralegals and administrative staff.

Continue Reading ILN Firm of the Month – Martinez, Algaba, de Haro y Curiel, S.C.

2016We’re excited to announce today the release of the first edition of our real estate guide, “Buying & Selling Real Estate: An International Guide.” The collaborative electronic guide provides an overview of the legal aspects of buying and selling real estate in eleven jurisdictions internationally. It is designed to serve as a quick and practical reference for those buying or selling real estate in these jurisdictions.

As the facilitator of the guide, I can say that we’re delighted to publish this collaborative work and showcase the strength and depth of the combined expertise of our real estate lawyers. We already have plans to add additional jurisdictions to the publication, which will be regularly revised, to make this a comprehensive and up-to-date source of information. Like our corporate guide on establishing business entities, this is a real labor of love.

To view the guide, please click here: http://bit.ly/ILNRealEstate

About the ILN Real Estate Specialty Group
Co-chaired by Amy Fracassini of Davis, Malm & D’Agostine in Boston, Massachusetts and Tor Erlend Framstad of Okland & Co DA in Oslo, Norway, the Real Estate Group fosters relationships among practitioners in this area to support the making and receiving of referrals.

Speedometer with needle racing through the words Revolution, Change, Shake it Up, Status Quo and Stagnation

“Change or die.”

How many times have you heard that over the last eight years?

A friend of mine in the legal industry pointed that out to me yesterday, along with commenting that it always sounds so dire. And it does sound dire.

But after the statistics that we covered in last week’s post (1/3 of clients are openly dissatisfied with their outside counsel, chief legal officers rank firms at a 3 on a 1 to 10 scale for commitment to change, and clients are moving their legal work to other firms or to nonfirm vendors), it would seem that we should be properly incentivized to speed up the pace of change. From the Peer Monitor/Georgetown 2016 Report on the State of the Legal Market, which cautioned BigLaw against a “Kodak moment”

[A]s in the case of Kodak, the challenge is that firms are choosing not to act in response to the threat, even though they are fully aware of its ramifications.”

So what’s holding us back?  Continue Reading Change: What’s Holding Us Back?

iStock_000011353685_LargeThe “law firm of the future.”

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about this in recent months, not because I find it to be interesting (which I do), but because other than my “Instagram for Lawyers” post, this has been the hottest topic on Zen this year. I had a conversation with a senior partner at a law firm last week, who asked me “How do we communicate to people that the future is NOW?” His firm has been embracing these “futuristic” policies for a number of years, and recognizes that change in the industry is not happening fast enough.

In May, Altman Weil published the 8th edition of their “Law Firms in Transition” survey, which polls the managing partners and chairs at 800 US law firms with 50 or more lawyers (this year’s survey received 356 respondents from 49% of the 350 largest US law firms). If you haven’t already read at least the executive summary for this survey, I highly encourage you to take a look through it. In the midst of the second quarter of this year, Altman Weil said:

Are law firms still in transition in 2016? We think so, although the pace of change can seem modest. Despite pockets of true innovation, most firms are choosing to proceed with lawyerly caution in the midst of a market that is being reinvented around them.”

Yikes.

A bunch of a hoopla about nothing? We’ll get to that in a minute.  Continue Reading Law Firms: The Future is NOW

cqatth9oyuw-liz-bridgesThe end of this week marks the beginning of December, and we all know what that means…

Holiday party invitations are coming. 

For introverts like me, holiday parties are probably not high on your list of exciting December “to dos” – it’s not that we don’t love them; it’s just that they’re rather exhausting. Extroverts may see them as a chance to enjoy a bit of relaxation with friends and meet new people. But no matter how you view holiday parties, they are definitely a key opportunity to network.

Whether you’re a networking pro or feel like there’s room for improvement, every networking experience is a chance to hone your skills. Recently, we held our Regional Conference of the Americas, and invited David Ackert, President of The Ackert Advisory, to facilitate a type of speed-dating session that we refer to as our “referral rendezvous.” We matched our lawyers in groups of 3-4 people, and they had 25 minutes to talk and connect with each other – some of them have known each other for many years, while others were meeting each other for the first time.

David’s networking tools offered a road map to maximize the time invested in each conversation. These tips are valuable not just for speed dating purposes, but across all networking opportunities, so I am sharing them with you today as we head into a whirlwind season of relationship-building possibilities.  Continue Reading Holiday Networking is Coming.

photo-1468645547353-56d325bb57ffWe’ve spent several weeks addressing the potential characteristics that the lawyers and law firms of the future will require in order to be successful. Today, we look at the last two contributors to High Q’s book on Smart Law and the Law Firm of the Future, but I invite all of you to continue to consider these issues and discuss them – particularly give some thought to whether the contributors missed anything you see as essential to law firms in the future and where you see our profession headed.

And what’s next? We’ve been looking at sort of where we’ll be in five or ten years, but not what the incremental steps will be to get there. So what is the first thing that firms and lawyers need to be doing in order to prepare themselves to be an effective law firm of the future? Is it embracing new technologies? Is it a shift in mindset at the leadership levels of the firm (or is that already happening)? Is it bringing in strong teams of professionals, not just lawyers? Are all of those things already taking place to some extent at many firms, and we just need to accelerate them?

What’s next? Continue Reading Law Firm of the Future: Are You Ready?