Last week, we gathered for another meeting of the NJ LMA city group…only this time, I was the presenter! I’d volunteered to talk to everyone about Twitter, and after accepting questions beforehand, I put together a presentation that tried to be as interactive as possible. 

I started with my background on Twitter – I joined Twitter in April of 2008. Although I initially joined for other reasons, I soon found a group of legal marketing colleagues that I could bounce ideas off of, find inspiration through, see what real concerns both marketers and attorneys have, and eventually become friends with. Using Twitter, I started to get real-time news from people in the know, both in and out of the legal industry. I connected with thought leaders in other industries and saw how they shared content, both theirs and others, to become considered go-to sources. I started to do the same. 

Continue Reading Twitter: Effectively Leveraging Twitter as a Business Development and Marketing Tool – Part I

Today, while everyone is posting about the SCOTUS decision to uphold the PPACA, I thought I’d talk about Adrian Dayton’s webinar to the Legal Marketing Association’s Social Media Special Interest Group. 

Adrian’s webinar focused on "how to get your firm blogging," and the invitation to the SIG members described the session as: 

Drawing from the bestselling book The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg and from over a dozen case studies within law firms, join us for 60 minutes on the 22nd of June as Adrian Dayton, author of Social Media for Lawyers: Twitter Edition (2012, 2nd printing) and LinkedIn & Blogs for Lawyers (West 2012, co-authored by Amy Knapp) shares three keys to moving lawyers from neophites to habitual bloggers and social media users.

Included in this webcast you will learn:

  • How to persuade your lawyers to start blogging
  • Helping overcome common objections to blogging
  • Three steps to forming habits
  • Internal implementation strategies
  • Case studies from medium to large law firms

Continue Reading How to Get Your Firm Blogging – A Webinar Re-cap

Last week, I attended the LMANJ city group’s session on "Teachable Moments from Dewey," a presentation taking place in New York that we were remotely accessing. Our speakers were Bruce MacEwen, founder and President of Adam Smith, Esq and Sara Randazzo, a reporter with American Lawyer. 

While I’ve been watching the Dewey coverage with interest, I haven’t gotten as involved as some in the details, so it was a fascinating presentation. Bruce said that it’s been a topic of near obsession among his readers for the last few months – he started writing an analysis of this in March. 

As Bruce and Sara spoke, I took notes all over the handouts that we’d been given, so I’ll try to make sense of them here! 

Continue Reading Teachable Moments from Dewey – An LMANJ Recap

Following Doug’s comments on the case for payment and delivery reform in the United States, Stuart Gerson was next to the podium to discuss whether the mandate is constitutional. 

Stuart began by saying that it’s important to understand one thing – this discussion, besides the quality and efficiency issues, is about health insurance and not about healthcare itself. This is one of the real pitfalls of the US system – we provide healthcare to almost everyone, but it’s done through a series of cost-shifting and inefficiencies, and that’s what these programs are trying to address. 

He added that he hoped to make his presentation interesting for non-Americans, many of whom live in systems with national health programs supplemented by private insurance. These countries feel that they have all the answers, and in some senses they do, with many of the countries providing a reasonable quality of healthcare at a vastly lower percentage of the GDP than what the US is doing. Although the US has some high end medicine, we also have a lot of inefficiency. 

Continue Reading Is the Mandate Constitutional – US National Health Care Act – a Presentation by Stuart Gerson

Rumor has it that SCOTUS might announce their decision on the PPACA today, so there’s no more appropriate time to continue our discussion of health care reform! Today, I’m bringing you a recap of Doug Hasting’s presentation during the ILN’s 24th Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. 

Doug said he would touch a little bit on the context that the health reform law provides or relates to in connection with the way that the healthcare delivery system in the US is evolving. He said that there are interesting interconnections there that lead into implications for how the Supreme Court ruling, whichever way it comes down, might affect that system. 

The healthcare delivery system – doctors, hospitals, long-term healthcare companies, laboratories – in the US is overwhelmingly private. There is a little bit of veterans’ care, and some state universities have partial relationships with university medical centers, but otherwise, it’s overwhelmingly private. From a payment standpoint, it’s about 50% private, but when you add in all of the different components of Federal and state payment (Medicare, Medicaid, etc.), there is still a significant amount of private health plans paying for healthcare. 

Continue Reading The Case for Payment and Delivery Reform in the US – A Presentation from Doug Hastings

During our 2012 Annual Meeting in May, we were fortunate to have an excellent presentation from a panel of health care law experts from Epstein Becker & Green. First up, we had Lynn Shapiro Snyder, who spoke about health reform at the federal and state levels, as well as private parties achieving health reform. 

Lynn has a long background in the healthcare field, and has been with Epstein Becker & Green almost since it was founded. She began by saying that many people think of "healthcare" as being about doctors and hospitals. But it’s also pharmaceutical companies, private equity firms, and banks – because, for all of us, healthcare and life sciences represent such a major portion of our economy. 

Continue Reading Overview of Health Reform Activities in the US – A Presentation from Lynn Shapiro Snyder

Amy Adams had some social media tips to report back to us following her attendance at the LMA’s post conference social media session: 

  • Engage: It’s not just about serenading people, it’s about getting them to sing along.
     
  • Audience: Focus on your audience – what are clients interested in?
     
  • Post at roughly the same time every day, so people know when they can look for your posts and engage with you. 
     
  • Give people the opportunity to respond.
     
  • Include evergreen content. 
     
  • Use social media to build excitement in the lead up to a conference. 
     
  • If you comment on an article, cite the journalist. 

What tips for social media do you have to share? 

Now, as I mentioned in my summary of the GC Panel at the LMA Conference this year, Jeff Carr says he’s banned the word "alternative," because there should be nothing alternative about alternative fees.

But, for the sake of this recap, we’re going to use it, as that’s what the session focused on.  Tim Corcoran shared with us the salient points from the alternative fees session that he attended at LMA (and often speaks on himself). 

  • Most law firms are reactive when it comes to offering alternative fees because they’re concerned that they’re dilutive to profits. But the firms that have figured this out and are acting proactively are seeing business development opportunities and more work. 
     
  • There’s a correlation between value and charging – lawyers need to understand this. 

Continue Reading Are you Thinking…Alternatively?

There were so many good tidbits that came out of our LMA New Jersey meeting last week! Amy Adams shared her comments on the session she attended about mentoring associates in business development.

Amy’s comments were particularly helpful, because she’s speaking from the perspective of an in-house marketer, so she’s implementing the advice from the Annual Meeting in her daily activities. Using a phrase from the SMORS session, Amy said she’s deploying a pilot program for mentoring – she’s identified a couple of partners who work well with associates, and using the formula of one partner to four associates. 

Continue Reading Mentoring Associates in Business Development

One of the other sessions that we covered during our LMA recap was about using video. There aren’t many law firms doing it right now (or doing it well, for that matter), and is it really just another fad?

Tim Corcoran says no – video is on the rise, not just on your PCs, but on other devices as well. Buyers are making purchasing decisions emotionally, and then justify these decisions using logic afterwards. Video helps people to connect with you and gives them a sense of loyalty.

A lot of times, we, as marketers, don’t distinguish between marketing and demonstrating expertise. Video can demonstrate this expertise. 

Important things to remember include: 

  • Keep it short: people only want quick snippets. There can be some value in recording your hour long seminar and posting it online, but for the most part, people’s attention will only be held by videos under five minutes (and ideally no more than three).
  • Create a video CV that you use as an addendum to your posts or client alerts (or even in your email signatures!). 
  • You can use video across multiple platforms.
  • Although little cameras these days have come a long way, and can take some great video, there is something to be said for doing video right – get the right people, the right lighting and the right sound for a dynamite finished product. 

Is your firm using video yet?