For our second installment of our General Counsel Corner, I’m very pleased to welcome a GC from the Baltics! 

Risto Hübner works as the General Counsel / Head of Legal for Nortal, which is the largest software development company in the Baltics. You can learn more about Nortal on their website here: http://www.nortal.com/about-us/overview

My question to Mr. Hübner was: 

What is your process for selecting outside counsel?"

As with our first GCC response, Mr. Hübner is looking for many of the same things. He told us: 

"There are usually several factors (which may somewhat differ from case to case) that I consider when selecting outside counsel. However, usually most important of these factors is the prior practical experience, as well as his or her specialization in similar matters. Other factors to consider include, but are not necessarily limited to, responsiveness, smooth communication, cost-effectiveness, personal experience from prior cooperation, etc. In addition, I must feel confident that outside counsel is actually motivated and interested to deal with the legal matter in question."

It’s a very interesting, and important, point that he mentions – "I must feel confident that outside counsel is actually motivated and interested to deal with the legal matter in question." Lawyers – are you making sure that your clients and potential clients know that you really care about the work they’re giving you, regardless of the size of the matter? 

As we saw with our first GC, inside counsel will often use a smaller matter to get a sense of how the relationship with the outside firm will work – which tells me that there is no such thing as "small" matters. Make sure to give your full attention and enthusiasm to all of the work you do – you never know what will lead to more work. 

Thanks so much to Mr. Hübner for his participation in our General Counsel Corner! 

I’m bringing you another recap from LMA14 today – this one focused on "LinkedIn…or Left Out? An Opportunity to Big for Smart Firms to Ignore." The session description reads: 

LinkedIn is radically changing the way General Counsel evaluates outside firms. Greentarget’s 2013 social media survey found that two-thirds of in-house counsel use LinkedIn on a weekly basis. LinkedIn threatens to sideline firms who ignore its impact, and presents an opportunity for firms who mobilize their partnerships to embrace social business. In this panel, we’ll explore how leading firms are using LinkedIn to burnish their brands, enhance attorney reputations, and continuously engage clients with thought leadership." 

The panel featured Patrick Baynes (@patrickbaynes) of PeopleLinx, John Corey of Greentarget (@greentarget), Lindsay Gotwald (@lindsayweb) of Faegre Baker Daniels, Megan McKeon (@meganmckeon) of Katten Muchin Rosenman, and Michelle Woodyear (@mwoodyear) of Orrick. 

Continue Reading LinkedIn or Left Out – A Recap

On Friday morning, LMA delegates gathered to hear the annual general counsel panel, "U.S. General Counsel Discuss Global Needs for Outside Counsel: Is Your Firm on Their Short List?" produced by Inside Counsel and Lloyd Johnson.

The program description read: 

This panel of general counsel will discuss high priority needs, challenges and concerns related to managing a large law department.  In addition, the panel will discuss the complexities…related to managing a remote professional staff who work outside the United States. Topics covered will include: 

  • How law firms can help meet the needs of today’s law department challenges; 
  • What today’s law department leaders see as potential future challenges
  • How firms’ managing partners may engage in shared insight discussions with law department leader/counterparts
  • How is value received for fees paid assessed by the corporations today? 
  • What is most useful about a year-end review, aka client feedback meeting?
  • Last call: number one need on the law department side: from the relationship standpoint? From the substantive legal needs standpoint?"

Continue Reading US General Counsel: Global Needs for Outside Counsel

On Friday, we had an excellent, excellent panel following lunch with some truly brilliant people – moderator Nancy Mangan of Wicker Park Group chatted with Paul Malanowski (@pmalanowski) of Saul Ewing, Melanie Green (@melaniegreen) of Faegre Baker Daniels, and Dave Bruns (@dbruns) of Farella Braun + Martel about some of the innovative things they do to combat the most prevalent problems in business development. 

Whether you’re at a large firm, or a small firm (or a service provider), there were a lot of tips in here that we can use to better drive business development. 

Key Takeaway: Talk to your Clients

When I use the word "clients" here, it has different meanings for different people: 

  • For attorneys, it’s your clients. 
  • For marketers, it’s your attorneys. 
  • For service providers, it’s your clients. 

 

Continue Reading Takeaways from “Quick Fixes: Innovative Solutions in Law Firm Business Development”

The very last session I went to before our wrap up at LMA14 was "Can the C-Suite Lead the Social Media Law Firm?" with presenters Deborah Grabein (@dgrabein) of Andrews Kurth and Michael Hertz (@michaelhertz) of White & Case and moderator Kevin O’Keefe (@kevinokeefe) of LexBlog. 

The description of the session in the conference book reads:

While Fortune 500 executives are beginning to leverage social media, law firm executives are lagging." 

Two C-Level decision makers (not practicing lawyers) in Am Law 200 firms made the decision in the fall of 2013 to start using social media, personally . They wished to experience how their use of social media could help change the perceptions of their brand, better equip them to lead their marketing and business development teams, and help them guide individual lawyers in their use of social." 

With five months of strategic consulting and coaching, these executives became active content creators and social media contributors on blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+."

Learn about the personal and firm wide challenges and rewards these law firm executives experienced, and will continue to experience in their personal use of social media." 

 

Continue Reading Key Takeaways from “Can the C-Suite Lead the Social Media Law Firm?”

I’ll be kicking off my recaps starting a bit later this afternoon, but first, I want to bring you a Two for Tuesdays, courtesy of a couple of great things I heard at LMA14. If you really listen to those in the LMA who are smart, thoughtful, hardworking and constantly challenging and improving themselves, you end up learning a lot and being a better marketer yourself. 

One of the best sessions of the conference was the wrap up on Friday afternoon, moderated by conference co-chairs John Byrne & Jose Cunningham, along with LMA president, Tim Corcoran. The moderators invited us to share the takeaways we’d gotten from the conference, and there were two that really stuck out for me – lessons that we can use to make ourselves better at our jobs.

Tip One: "When there’s a gap between exactly what we do, and what we hear from speakers, it’s our job to bridge it."

This is a HUGE pet peeve of mine, and has been for several years – you may remember my comments about it here and here. 

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Using LMA14 to be a Better Marketer

LMA14 is gone as quickly as it arrived, and it’s left me feeling like I’ve been hit by a truck! As I expected, the networking and the programming were the two most valuable pieces for me, and there are many, many things I’ll be sharing with you all here on Zen in the coming days. 

This year, I really felt that the conference chairs stepped up their game with the programming – almost all of the sessions I went to weren’t just good, they were excellent, and I came away feeling that I’d learned a lot to share with my attorneys, but also a lot that I can use myself in my daily work.  Of course, that means I feel like I’ve been trying to drink water from a fire hose for the last few days, which is a bit overwhelming, but I’ll work to distill it all for you over the next few weeks.

First up, I’d like to share some of the great takeaways to come out of LexBlog’s interviews of LMA attendees – there are some SUPER smart people in our organization, who shared their thoughts with LXBN. You can check out all the interviews here, but I wanted to share a few of my favorites. Pay particular attention to the advice from the General Counsel in the first interview and Toby Brown’s thoughts on the current pricing model. 

Continue Reading LMA14 – It’s a Wrap!

Several years ago, when we first started to see social media take the stage, I jumped right in with both feet and never looked back. I was fortunate to be an early adopter – I say fortunate, because that means that most of my mistakes in using social media were seen by only a few people early on. I got to learn the lingo and understand the norms for each of the platforms before I was connected with hundreds or thousands of people. 

When I speak about social media, I still recommend playing around on the platforms first to understand how to use them. But today, I want to talk about the incredible importance of listening first when you join a new platform (and this advice goes for even the savviest social media user, since every platform has its own unique style). 

To give you a little background, before I switched my major to computer science, I was an anthropology major, and ended up minoring in it. I LOVE anthropology, and what really ignited my passion for it was the work I did in linquistic anthropology, which is defined as:

the interdisciplinary study of how language influences social life"

Continue Reading Social Media: The Importance of Listening First

As we head into #LMA14 this week, I’m excited that we’ll be revealing the best of the best in legal marketing with our Your Honor Awards (which I was fortunate enough to serve as a judge for this year). 

As much as I’d like to reveal the winners (calm down Jill and Marcie, I would never do that!), instead, I thought I’d use this week’s Two for Tuesdays to give you two tips on smart marketing – we really saw some amazing and brilliant submissions this year, and they all had a couple of things in common. 

Tip One: Know your audience

I say this a LOT here, but any good marketing or business development activity HAS to start with knowing your audience. The best submissions that we saw really took the time to identify not only who their audience is, but what their needs and wants are. They made sure there was nothing else in the market that was meeting their needs in that way, and put together carefully crafted campaigns or events or apps or what have you that were actually of use to their clients and potential clients. 

Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Smart Legal Marketing