At this year’s LMA, we were fortunate enough to have not one, but TWO sessions with General Counsel. This one took place at the end of the first day, and included a procurement guy – a first for the LMA. The session was titled "GC Focus: Project Management. Position Your Firm in Alignment With the Unique Challenges Faced by In-house Counsel." 

Panelists included Keith Isgett, the Managing Attorney-General – Global External Legal Relations, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Justin Ergler, Sourcing Group Manager, Legal Services Procurement, GlaxoSmithKline, and Nat Slavin, Founder and Partner of Wicker Park Group, along with Moderator Alicia Brown, Director of Strategic Relationships for Bloomberg Law. 

After their introductions, Isgett kicked it off by saying that he wants to receive the best representation for the best price, and part of the "best representation" is having a good relationship with the law firm. The procurement team is there to make sure that what they’re paying for is what they receive, and that there is value there. Isgett noted that "People are still talking about discounted hourly rates, which means we’re not as far along as I’d like us to be." 

Continue Reading GC Focus – an LMA Annual Conference Recap

In yesterday’s post, we learned that building relationships is still of primary importance to clients – and some of the ways to do this including figuring out what benefits the client the most, and focusing on what business solutions will make them look good. 

The panelists agreed that the role of their lawyers needs to be that of strategic partners, and for their part, they need to inform outside counsel about what they need. But outside counsel can also be proactive to learn more about their clients. The panelists suggested that attorneys read company filings and public documents before they meet with them. They emphasized that outside counsel should understand their customer before asking them to be their customer. Post-matter debriefings, at no cost, are also helpful.

 

Continue Reading General Counsel Panel: Separate from the Pack – a Recap Part II

Another of my all-time favorite conference sessions at LMA is always the client panel.  For me, the panel always makes the investment in the conference worth it, because I can impart what I learn from the GCs there to my lawyers, to help them to understand their own clients better, and that adds value for everyone. 

This year’s client panel didn’t disappoint. It focused on best practices for building and maintaining your law firm’s relationship with in-house counsel and featured Megan Belcher, the VP and Chief Employment Counsel for ConAgra, Kevin Schubert, the Associate General Counsel, Transactions for LV Sands Corporation, Simon Manoucherian, the Assistance General Counsel/Director of Litigation GRIFOLS, and Karen Cottle, Senior Counsel for Sidley Austin and former in-house counsel. The panel was moderated by Inside Counsel magazine. 

The panelists said that they would discuss the role of social media for general counsel, the challenges that they see over the next five years, and the change in inside/outside counsel relationships since 2008.  Since the economic downturn, GCs have changed the way that they evaluate outside counsel, and the process by which trust is built. 

 

Continue Reading General Counsel Panel: Separate from the Pack – a Recap Part I

So if you’ve been hiding under a rock instead of reading my blog posts, you may not already know that my favorite session from LMA13 was "Delivering Happiness: Fresh Ideas for Service-Driven Brands Deploying Social Media Tactics, Seeking ROI" with Graham Kahr, Social Scientist for Zappos and Jayne Navarre of Law Gravity LLC. 

Rather than a typical session, Jayne and Graham let us know right away that it would be different when they introduced themselves in the third person. Their session took on the tone of more of a conversation, which also included those of us in the audience. 

They began their conversation by saying that they wouldn’t be talking about social media per se, but really focusing instead on creating experiences for clients (which is something we could all identify with). Graham said that Zappos doesn’t push their own brand stories – they want their customers to tell the brand story for them.

Continue Reading “Delivering Happiness” – A Zappos Session Recap

Welcome to ILN-terviews, a series of profiles of ILN member firm attorneys, designed to give a unique insight into the lawyers who make up our Network. For our latest interview, we chose ILN member, Bill Milani of our member firm, Epstein Becker & Green in New York!

In one sentence, how would you describe your practice?
Management side labor and employment law with a particular concentration representing foreign-owned and financial services companies.

Who would be your typical client? 
A foreign-owned bank.

What would you like clients and potential clients to know about you? 
I will partner with them to achieve the best possible business results within the law.

What has been your most challenging case? Why? 
My very first case upon joining EBG involved representing a foreign-owned company doing business in the U.S. accused of sex discrimination. I had to learn about the culture and business practices of the Company in order to defend the case. It was a wonderful learning experience.

What has been your proudest moment as a lawyer? 
Having my son tell me that he would like to pursue a career as an international lawyer.

What do you do when you’re not practicing law? 
Reading, sports, travel.

What would surprise people most about you? 
Sadly, nothing.

What has been your most memorable ILN experience? 
My first meeting-I was in awe of the many countries and firms represented and the close friendships among the attendees.

What career would you have chosen if you weren’t a lawyer? 
Centerfield for the N.Y. Yankees

If a movie were made of your life, who would you want to play you? 
Any of the James Bonds (except for Roger Moore)

How would you like to be remembered? 
For my professionalism and integrity.

A lesson I learned several years ago that has been invaluable to me is that of "identify, don’t compare." When you compare, you’re looking to match your situation exactly to that of someone else’s – and when we do that, we’re always going to come up different (and that can paralyze us).

But when we identify, we’re looking for those elements that run through a situation that are the same as ours – and this gives us the inspiration to keep moving forward, instead of giving up because we think we’ll never be the same. That lesson comes in handy when I’m sitting in a session like the Zappos one from the LMA Annual Conference.  Although it’s easy to try to compare Zappos to legal marketing and come up lacking because they’re a consumer-driven business, when I identify instead, I find many parallels which allow me to take the lessons that Graham was sharing with us and apply them to my own situation.

Continue Reading Identify, Don’t Compare – Lessons from Zappos for the Legal Industry

This morning, I had the pleasure of speaking with my fellow co-leaders in the Legal Marketing Association’s Social Media Special Interest Group (LMA Social Media SIG for short). Our main purpose was to debrief on our group’s activities at the conference, to see what worked well and what didn’t, but by virtue of the conversation, we ended up talking about the conference in general and some of the anecdotal feedback that we’d heard. 

One of the interesting points that was raised was it had been suggested that the Zappos session, bringing in an outside-of-the-industry speaker, was either loved or hated. Loved, because, as I’ve mentioned before, it was excellent, or hated because people didn’t understand how a customer-driven organization like Zappos could have any relevance to legal marketing. 

Sigh. 

Continue Reading Legal Marketers – Let’s Raise the Bar

When I attended the general counsel panel a couple of weeks ago at the LMA’s Annual Conference, I was happy to hear that the moderators would be spending some time focusing the panelists on discussing social media, and their use of it in their outside counsel relationships.

I’m going to delve into that discussion more in a future post, but today, I wanted to talk about the results from Greentarget, Inside Counsel, and Zeughauser Group’s In-House Counsel New Media Engagement Survey results, which were released last week. I pay very close attention to this survey because let’s be honest, social media isn’t going to matter one whit to my clients if their own clients aren’t paying it any attention. 

This year’s survey results reaffirmed both the comments of the three general counsel at the LMA Conference, and my anecdotal experience, which I often share with my attorneys. Today, let’s look at a couple of highlights. To see the survey results in full, click here. 

Continue Reading It’s Here! — A Look at the 2012 In-House Counsel New Media Engagement Survey

It’s been a week since I returned home from the LMA’s Annual Conference, and I’m still digesting everything that went on there – it was a non-stop whirlwind of networking, meetups with social media friends and ILN marketers, face-time with new attendees, and conference sessions (as well as a LOT of food). LMA served its purpose once again though, and I’ve returned to the office with new vigor, feeling more inspired than when I left! Even better for this Social Media Special Interest Group Co-Leader? Not only did I get to see my friends and make new connections face to face, but #LMA13 was trending on Twitter! (Pictured are fellow co-leaders Gail Lamarche of Henderson Franklin and Nancy Myrland, Myrland Marketing with me. Not pictured are Lance Godard of JD Supra, who was unable to join us, and Laura Toledo, Tenrec, who was ill). 

There will be several recap posts to come, but while I’m still ruminating on those, I thought I’d share with you my three favorite sessions, as well as what’s on my reading list now that I’ve returned home. Keep an eye out for the recaps on these sessions! 

 

Continue Reading LMA Annual Conference – A Quick Debrief

Social media is the perfect medium for someone like me – someone who’s an introvert, a bit on the shy side, and prefers to have the safety of being behind a computer screen rather than face-to-face. 

But if you’re using social media to be…well, social…and you’d like it to lead to business development opportunities, you’ve got to take it offline. While it’s possible to build relationships online, and to nurture them there, you cannot discount the benefit to meeting someone face-to-face. 

A conference is the perfect opportunity for this, and I’ll tell you a story about how social media has enriched my conference experience at the Legal Marketing Association’s Annual Meeting (which I’m currently en-route to – I love airplane wifi!). 

Continue Reading Taking it Offline