This afternoon, I was reading an article on four suggestions for rules to follow when networking internationally.  The tips are good ones (and we’ll go into more on them in a moment), but it occurred to me as I was reading that they’re actually quite good tips for all types of networking – whether you’re meeting people from other cultures, or just two blocks away. 

The author of the article, Pierre Brais, puts these in a certain order, but I’m going to prioritize them a bit differently. For me, everything starts with "Do your homework." 

Do Your Homework

Whether you’re meeting someone in your own city, or from a city halfway around the world, it pays to do your homework: on the individual, on their business, and on the culture. With so much information available online these days, there’s no excuse for not being adequately prepared.  Before meeting someone, take some time to search for their name online – look through their LinkedIn profile, and find out what outside interests they might have, the types of responsibilities that fall under their purview at their current position, and what other organizations they may have worked for and with. 

Continue Reading Let’s Be a Little More International in Our Networking

Only one thing could bring me in from my vacation, and that was the Legal Marketing Association’s Social Media Shared Interest Group’s webinar with Peter Shankman (@petershankman) and Jasmine Trillos-Decarie (@jasminedecarie), entitled "Bringing Law Firms ‘Back to The Future’ of Social Media."

I wasn’t alone in thinking that, if the tweetstream was any indication – valuable tidbits from the conversation were flying over on Twitter! We even had a legal marketer join the LMA just to be able to attend the webinar, and she said it was well worth it! 

LMA members can access the full recording over on the website, but for everyone else, I’ll share some of the valuable information that came out of the presentation.

Jasmine kicked it off from the law firm perspective – she’s got more than 20 years of experience in legal marketing with AmLaw 50, 100, and 200 firms, so she knows what she’s talking about! 

 

Continue Reading Bringing Law Firms “Back to The Future” of Social Media

After two weeks off, I’m thinking about how to boost your creativity on this two for Tuesday. The lawyers among you may be wondering how that applies to you, if at all, but there’s room for creativity in all professions.  When we take the time to refresh, let different ideas in, and open our minds, sometimes the answers to critical problems can make themselves clear much more easily. 

So with that, I bring you this week’s Two for Tuesdays! 

Tip One: Read Something Different

We all do a lot of reading for work. Briefs, arguments, new legislation, blog posts, articles, news items, you name it. So it can seem daunting to try to add yet one more thing into the mix.  But how about, for today, taking a break from all of that and reading something absolutely unrelated to your work? 

Perhaps you’re a mystery buff, or you enjoy trashy beach reads (don’t worry, we won’t tell anyone). Maybe you’ve wanted to dive into that bestseller that everyone has been talking about, or reread a favorite classic novel. 

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Boosting Your Creativity

As I’m still out on holidays, I’m bringing you a fabulous guest post today from my friend, Chris Kirby, President of PCT Solutions. 

***

Over the more than 15 years I’ve been coaching and/or training attorneys and other professionals, perhaps the most consistent reason for not marketing is, “I don’t have time.” Whether the client is a monsoon maker or someone who is still looking forward to his first origination credit, they never seem to have time for business development.

No matter how proficient you are at business development, it does take time. And whether you enjoy it or not, business development is no longer optional. So how do you manage to effectively source, grow, flourish, and maintain great relationships when there isn’t a spare minute in the day? Here are a few strategies I’ve seen PCTS clients use to great effect:

 

Continue Reading Sleepless in the Saddle: Finding time to market when there’s no time to sleep

 We’re excited to announce this month’s Firm of the Month, McDonald Hopkins LLC of Ohio! 

   

 

 Member of the International Lawyers Network

The ILN is proud to announce our latest "Firm of the Month" – McDonald Hopkins LLC of Cleveland, Ohio!

Attorneys. Advisors. Advocates.
As a business advisory and advocacy law firm, McDonald Hopkins is focused on insightful legal solutions that help their clients strategically plan for an increasingly competitive future. The firm has 150 attorneys based in six strategic locations—Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Miami, and West Palm Beach. For more than 80 years, McDonald Hopkins’ attorneys and professionals have been helping clients navigate some of the most challenging and timely issues—data privacy and cybersecurity; intellectual property; labor and employment; mergers and acquisitions; taxation; trade secret, non-compete and unfair competition practices; white collar and government compliance; and many more business and litigation topics. McDonald Hopkins: Attorney Insight. Business Foresight.®

McDonald Hopkins has a Washington, D.C.-based wholly-owned subsidiary, McDonald Hopkins Government Strategies LLC, which is led by distinguished former Congressman Steven LaTourette, who served nine terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is widely recognized for his bipartisan and solution oriented approach to complicated issues. McDonald Hopkins Government Strategies is not a law firm and does not provide legal services.

 

Full descriptions of McDonald Hopkins’  services, expertise, and lawyer profiles are available on their ILN profile.

Lindsay Griffiths
Director of Global Relationship Management
International Lawyers Network

Lindsay Griffiths

 

Learn More

 

Main Contacts: 

William O'Neill

William O’Neill

Chair, Litigation Department
Email: woneill@mcdonaldhopkins.com
Telephone: +1 (216) 348-5755

Practice Groups:

  • Labor and Employment Counseling
  • Products Liability and Mass Tort Litigation
  • Business Litigation
  • Data Privacy and Cybersecurity

Carl Grassi

Carl Grassi

President
Email: cgrassi@mcdonaldhopkins.com
Telephone: +1 (216) 348-5448

Practice Groups:

  • Commercial Finance
  • ESOP Transactions
  • Succession Planning
  • Taxation

 
Alan Griffiths

“McDonald Hopkins continually impresses us with their professionalism and expertise, as well as with their commitment to the ILN.”

Alan Griffiths
Executive Director
International Lawyers Network

+001.201.594.9985

www.ilntoday.com

 

The final session I attended at the P3 conference was TyMetrix’s "Navigating the New Normal – Where to Start." The panel was moderated by John Strange of Baker Botts, and included Holly Montalvo, TyMetrix, Peter Eilhauer, Elevate Services, and Toby Brown, Akin Gump. 

The attendee guide reads: 

As law firms navigate in the new normal they are being asked by corporate clients to deliver their services in a more predictable and transparent fashion. Join our panel of experts in a collaborative discussion on ‘Where to Start’ on this path to deliver a more efficient and effective legal service deliverable while demonstrating value to your client in a transparent way."

As we’ve seen, there is a corporate appetite for more data to analyze what companies are spending on legal services. But where are we today in terms of understanding "big data?" The panelists say "in between a rock and a hard place." 

Continue Reading Navigating the New Normal – Where to Start

I may be on vacation this week, but it doesn’t mean that you’re without content here at Zen! We’re back with another Two for Tuesdays, and our second installment of "thought leaders to follow!"

Thought Leader One: Eric Fletcher

Eric’s blog bio tells us: 

With more than twenty-five years of experience, spanning broadcasting, advertising, marketing and professional services business development, Eric Fletcher is a seasoned connector — of ideas, people and strategic growth-oriented solutions. For the past dozen years he has managed and directed teams focused on targeted business development and client service in the legal industry."

I first met Eric virtually when he was brought on as the CMO of a former member firm of the ILN. But I really got to know him better when he started blogging over at Marketing Brain Fodder. Eric always writes brilliant, well-thought out and timely posts, which get me thinking and challenge me to be a better marketer and communicator. 

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Thought Leaders to Follow

I may be out on vacation this week, but I’m still bringing you some content! 

My first session at the P3 conference on Friday was titled "Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: Borrowing Lessons in Pricing and Metrics from Other Industries." If you’ve been reading Zen for any length of time, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of looking to other industries for new ideas. And in P3 that’s especially helpful, since we’re not reinventing the wheel here – a lot of the challenges firms face have been seen in some other way somewhere else. 

The program description states: 

As the legal services industry continues to define what works and what does not in the opaque world of pricing, efficiency and process innovation, one can’t help but notice that other industries have been doing these things for quite some time, and not without success."

‘Borrowing’ best practices from others is a business best practice itself, and this panel of pricing professionals from non-legal organizations will share their methodologies, observations and recommendations that will provide both law firm and corporate legal department executives with food for thought on methods for addressing some of the challenges they face and finding effective solutions to conquer them."

Continue Reading Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: Borrowing Lessons in Pricing and Metrics

It’s another Two for Tuesdays here, and apparently, I’m feeling the need for lots of alliteration today, as we’re looking at two tips for Twitter. 

Why bother with Twitter? 

Let’s look at a couple of stats first, and then why those might be important: 

  • 255 million monthly active users (that’s ACTIVE users)
  • 500 million tweets sent per day
  • 77% of accounts are outside of the US

And lawyers may be a bigger deal on Twitter than they think. According to Kevin O’Keefe, the "median active Twitter user (tweets at least once a month) has only 61 followers." So it follows that…

If you’re a lawyer seeing yourself as a Twitter laggard because you have only a few hundred followers, fear not. You’re in the 80th to 90th percentile. Reach 1,000 followers and you’re at the 97th percentile of active Twitter users."

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Tips for Twitter

We had high hopes for the final session on the first day of P3, with my friends Tim Corcoran (@tcorcoran), John Byrne (@johnmbyrne), Catherine MacDonagh (@CathMacDonagh) and Amy Hrehovcik (@hRovingChik) presenting – and we weren’t disappointed! 

As per the attendee guide: 

We will examine a typical corporate business case and how it incorporates internal and external factors such as market demand, competitive pricing, cost of production, cost of delivery, client mix, channel strategy, profit targets and resource allocation to make a go/no-go decision for a new initiative. By contrast, law firms have traditionally taken a less rigorous approach to quantifying new initiatives, relying instead on each practice group or even each partner to drive business decisions."

We’ll illustrate how a law firm fully embracing an integrated P3 mindset can dramatically improve its approach to business strategy, improve financial performance and maximize its resources and capabilities. We’ll demonstrate how law firms can embrace data, process, tools and incentives to make better business decisions." 

Continue Reading Anatomy of a Business Case – Integrating P3 Discipline into Law Firm Business Strategy