As you know, I’m attending the Legal Marketing Association’s Annual Conference this week, and it’s so great to see those that I keep in touch with throughout the year in person! 

Social media is great – the tools help keep us in touch throughout the year, and help me meet new people.  But it’s really about taking those relationships offline. This morning, we had the chance to do that when the Social Media Special Interest Group, which I’m fortunate to be on the leadership committee for with some wonderful colleagues, met for the second time. 

We had some great people there! To get to know them better, check out their twitter feeds! I’ve put an asterisk by those on the Social Media SIG’s leadership committee: 

Nicole Anderson, Legal Marketing Association
Adam Stock, Allen Matkins, @AdamLStock
Andi Robinson, Bingham Greenbaum Doll LLP, @indylawmktr
Lydia Bednerik, Wendel, Rosen, Black & Dean LLP, @lydiabednerik
*Gail Lamarche, Henderson, Franklin, Starnes &Holt, @gaillamarche
Stacey Taylor, Hawley Troxell
Amy Adams, Wilentz Goldman & Spitzer PA, @ajamarketing
Caroline Letiecq, Quarles & Brady LLP
Billy Apostolou, Hodes, Pessin, & Katz, @billy_apostolou
Jenna O’Connor, Rosenberg | Martin | Greenberg, LLP @JennaKate413
Dawn Reimschussel, @DiscoInfiltrato
*Laura Gutierrez, Winthrop & Weinstine, @lalaland999
Russell Lawson, Sands Anderson, @sandsanderson & @sociallawyers
Rebecca Wissler, King, Krebs & Jurgens, PLLC, @rebeccawissler
Nicolas LoRe, Foley Hoag LLP
Laura Powers, Furia Rubel Communications, @LPPowers
Jessica Gagnon, Robinson Cole LLP, @Jessi_Gagnon
Crystale Wozniak, Robinson & Cole LLP, @CrystaleWoz
Lisa Woodford, Cooley Manion Jones LLP, @lisawoodford
Miki Hanlen, Steptoe & Johnson LLP, @mikihanlen
Amy Knapp, Knapp Marketing, @knappmarketing
Adrian Dayton, Author, Speaker and Social Media Strategies to law firms, @adriandayton
Gina Rubel, Furia Rubel Communications @ginarubel
Jon Holden, Bennett Jones LLP,  @holdencalgary
*Nancy Myrland, Myrland Marketing, @nancymyrland
Adrian Lurssen, JD Supra, @adrianlurssen
Jay Pinkert, Shatterbox, @Shatterbox
Kevin O’Keefe, LexBlog, @kevinokeefe
*Lindsay Griffiths, International Lawyers Network, @LindsayGriffith

So far, we’ve had a great keynote session this morning, and we’re enjoying a session on change leaders right now – more re-caps to follow!

It’s that time of year again – time for legal marketers from all over the world to gather together to network, get inspired, and learn from each other. That’s right, it’s the Legal Marketing Association’s Annual Conference! 

In between networking and meetings, I’ll be attending a number of conference sessions and sharing my reviews of them here. Here’s what my schedule looks like: 

Wednesday: 

  • First Timer’s Reception: It’s not my first LMA conference (in fact, it’s my seventh!), but I’ve been invited along with my friend, Nancy Myrland, to talk to some of the first timers about social media. I’m looking forward to seeing some new faces!

Thursday: 

  • 8:30am: Opening Remarks (the LMA State of the Union, if you will).
     
  • 9:00am: Keynote speaker, James Kane, who will talk about the secret to building relationships. As all good professional services marketing is based on building relationships, this will be a session not to miss! 
     
  • 10:00am: Social Media Special Interest Group Meeting: I’m fortunate enough to serve on the leadership committee for the Social Media SIG with a number of talented people, and we’ll be gathering with the other members of the group to talk social media and legal marketing. 
     
  • 11:00am: Featured speaker, Jonathan Michael Bowman, will talk about leading change – since he’s a lawyer he’ll be able to speak to the unique challenges that legal marketers face. 
     
  • 12:00pm: Lunch – I’ll be joined for lunch by the ILN marketers in attendance. It’s great to get to know them better and answer any questions they might have about the ILN and how we can help them better. 
     
  • 1:30pm: Today’s Lawyers and Social Media – How Are They or Should They Be Using It? I’ll be attending and tweeting live from this breakout session, featuring panelists Marcy Salo, Peter Vogel, Camille Stell, and Melissa Croteau, with moderator Larry Bodine.
     
  • 3:30pm: The Evolution of the Law Firm Brand. How to Promote Individual Attorneys within the Parameters of the Firm’s Brand. I’ll also be attending and tweeting live from this panel, which will also be of interest to me in terms of how I can better promote individual firms within the parameters of the legal network brand. This session features panelists Jasmine Trillos-Decarie, Robert Algeri, Joe Calve, Peter Winzig, and Aden Dauchess, with moderator Adrian Dayton. 

Friday: 

  • 9:00am: Success Through Collaboration: GCs and Law Firms Working Together. My favorite session of the LMA conferences is always the GC panel – that’s where I get the most valuable information about what general counsel want from their attorneys. Panelists include Ron K. Barger of Archon Group, Jeffrey W. Carr of FMC Technologies (a presenter at the ILN’s 2010 Regional Meeting of the Americas in Houston!), and Janet L. Dhillon of J.C. Penney Company, moderated by Tom Duggan and Cathleen Flahardy of InsideCounsel. 
     
  • 11:00am: Creating a Culture of Client Service Excellence: Following on the first session of the morning, I’ll be continuing in the client-focused theme with this session, featuring Leonardo Inghilleri of West Paces Consulting. 

You can follow along with my live tweets over at @LindsayGriffith, keep an eye on all of the tweets coming out of the conference using the #LMA12 hashtag, or wait for my re-cap posts! 

Recently, we’ve been looking more in-depth at the ILN Marketing Specialty Group roundtable, which focuses on what mid-sized firms are doing in social media.  Today, we look at question four, which asks "How do you and your firm connect with your firm’s top clients and top prospects via social media?"

Do Kim Dung: Leadco, as a firm, does not have connection to our firm’s top clients and top prospects via social media. Certain partners and associates within the firm do use Facebook and LinkedIn in their professional capacities to connect and communicate with clients and colleagues.

Simone Fell: As with Leadco, lawyers connect with clients and prospects individually through LinkedIn and their personal Twitter accounts. We have not done much to advertise our social media presence. This will likely only change once we have a policy in place and have determined a better way to generate timely and interesting information that top clients (who already get our newsletters) will want to read. 

 

Continue Reading ILN Marketing Roundtable: Connecting with Clients and Prospects

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of co-presenting a webinar with Kevin O’Keefe on Blogging Basics.  During the call, I mentioned a couple of blogs that I recommend, and I thought I’d share my full list here, as well as my notes about each!

  • Corcoran’s Business of Law Blog: Tim’s blog makes me a better marketer, because he’s always making me think and challenging me to keep an open mind.
     
  • The Legal Shakeup: Rebecca Wissler and Laura Gutierrez author this blog, which offers stories and advice from two rising stars in the legal marketing industry. 
     
  • Myrland Marketing: This is Nancy Myrland’s blog, where she offers marketing advice to the legal community, with a social media focus.
     
  • The Legal Watercooler: This is one of the first legal blogs I followed, and it’s still my go-to source for inspiration. Heather Morse does an excellent job of balancing blog voice and personality with the issues that lawyers and legal marketers face.

Continue Reading My Favorite Blogs

The last two weeks, we’ve been looking more in-depth at the ILN Marketing Specialty Group roundtable, which focuses on what mid-sized firms are doing in social media.  Today, we look at question three, which asks "Do you have a social media policy in place? If so, how are you handling training on both policies and proactive use of social media and tracking of results?" 

Do Kim Dung: Leadco does not yet have a social media policy.

Simone Fell: Not yet, but it’s in development. We already have policies regarding employees’ use of technology and some of the issues would be covered under that. We used to track social media as a firm but we now have a number of lawyers with individual accounts who tweet/blog about a combination of personal and work-related issues, which why it’s even more critical that there be a formal policy in place. We have done some training on how to use social networking tools, which highlighted best practices (eg be conscious of who’s in your audience and don’t broadcast every thought you have without considering the impact) and have offered pointers at our business law and litigation department meetings. We expect lawyers to take a common-sense approach to their online business development activities and consider the same Law Society guidelines that govern other mediums. 

Continue Reading ILN Marketing Roundtable: Social Media Policies

There are still people out there who think social media is not for professionals.

C’mon, admit it. 

All right, so the likelihood is that those people aren’t reading this blog, because, after all, it’s part of that "social media stuff." But how many of you who have dipped your toe in the water (i.e. joined Facebook, staked your claim on your Twitter name, filled out your LinkedIn profile) are using social media? And how many of you are blogging…regularly? 

I’m sure more than one of you mentally raised your hand as you read that. 

And I’m sure some of you who did are still wondering why the heck you would want to use social media anyway.  So let’s talk about that for a little while. 

Continue Reading Let’s Be Social – A Look at the 2012 In-House Counsel New Media Engagement Survey

So yesterday, we had the chance to take a look at some of the higlights from the Superbowl commercials of 2012.  Now, it’s time to see which spots failed, why, and what lessons law firms can take from them. 

We’ll start with my pick for the worst commercial of the night…Go Daddy’s Body Painting Commercial (which is pretty much tied with their Cloud commercial for worst in my book).

https://youtube.com/watch?v=NG2qU7x4Djo

Continue Reading Superbowl Commercials – The Bad & The Ugly 2012

While I know that most people watch the Superbowl for the sports (myself included, I do like the game!), the biggest football game of the year is also the Superbowl for marketers – because of the commercials.

I’ve heard mixed reviews of last night’s spots from people via my social networks, but I have to say that unlike recent years, I was very pleased with this year’s ads. As I did last year, I’ll give you my thoughts on the good, the bad and the ugly, starting with the good…

Overall, I’d say that humor won out this year. To me, the commercials that did "funny" right were the real winners…and also the most memorable. However, one funny, expensive ad spot doesn’t change a lot, but it’s fun to see where they went right and the lessons that law firms can take from them. 

 

Continue Reading Are you ready for some FOOTBALL….Commercials? (The Good)

Last week, we looked at the question of firms’ biggest social media successes, but this week, it’s time to look at the other side of the coin – challenges.

The question we posed was "What has been your greatest social media challenge thus far, and how did your firm tackle it?"

 

Do Kim Dung: The greatest challenge for Leadco is to get agreement within the firm as to what should be posted online.

Simone Fell: Agreement within the firm with regard to what should be posted online and who should be responsible for drafting and managing content. Truly meaningful content is usually generated at the individual and practice/industry level, where ‘experts’ in those areas update topic-specific postings and seek out useful information for their target audience. This is much trickier to do at the firm level as the audience is so broad and our marketing team does not have the time to seek out keywords associated with the firm’s brand and reach out to everyone talking about those topics with a personally crafted tweet, track the activities of our clients in the media and post items of interest to them (which would definitely require vetting by a group of lawyers), nor do they have the expertise to generate legal commentary. As a result, our general firm accounts repost articles and news items that can already be found on our website. 

 

Continue Reading ILN Marketing Roundtable: What has been your greatest social media challenge thus far, and how did your firm tackle it?

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, Dimpy Mohanty of our member firm LexCounsel Law Offices in New Delhi, India.

In one sentence, how would you describe your practice?
Responsive and business-oriented.

Who would be your typical client?
One looking for advice which is well-rounded and covers diverse practice areas. 

What would you like clients and potential clients to know about you?
That we at LexCounsel offer practical solutions based on, but not bogged down by a narrow reading of, law. 

What has been your most challenging case? Why?
A transaction involving the transfer of an educational institution to a client. Other than the complexity of the matter stemming from the education sector being a highly regulated sector, the matter required bringing in the skills of a UN diplomat! The older generation of the transferring family was (i) sentimentally attached to the institution which they had founded and hence prone to heart stopping frequent doubts, and (ii) being ignorant of the due diligence process, regarded every request for information and documents as an act of distrust and invasion of privacy.

What has been your proudest moment as a lawyer?
There has been so much joy, but the proudest I believe it is still to come.

What do you do when you’re not practicing law?
Read, travel, watch the world.

What would surprise people most about you?
Initially, that I am a woman – since my name is not suggestive of my gender. Later, that I have an inordinate capacity for and store of trivia.

What has been your most memorable ILN experience?
It’s the fellowship which ensures that you seek out fellow ILN members even at non-ILN events – the most recent being chasing down a fellow member through five days, multiple venues and over 3000 delegates at the IBA conference to meet finally on the last day.

What career would you have chosen if you weren’t a lawyer?
Public Relations, Writing, Mystery Shopping or a combination of all three.

If a movie were made of your life, who would you want to play you?
Sandra Bullock.

How would you like to be remembered?
As someone who could be counted on.