Conference/Webinar Session Re-caps

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On Tuesday, December 1st, the ILN participated as a marketing partner in The Economist’s 7th General Counsel Roundtable in Washington, DC.  The theme of the conference was “navigating through the new regulatory landscape,” and the morning kicked off with a session with Seth Harris, the Deputy Secretary of the US Department of Labor, entitled “How will the new regulatory environment impact the GC?”

Moderated by Matthew Bishop, the New York Bureau Chief and US Business Editor for The Economist, Harris gave a brief overview of the current unemployment situation and talked about the Recovery Act.  Bishop asked him for his thoughts on the outlook for unemployment, and Harris started by saying that when President Obama took office, 700,000 jobs were being lost a month and the economy was frozen and declining.  Though the US hasn’t dug its way out entirely, there is some improvement, with recent job loss at 180,000 a month.  Jobs lost claims are the lowest they have been since September of 2008 and banks are doing better.  The Administration is working to turn job loss into job creation.  Harris observed that the 2.8% growth in the GDP during the last quarter, which should continue, will likely lead to job growth as well, which generally lags behind by a couple of quarters.  He added that he hopes the workers will see a share of growth next year.  That being said, he cautioned that there will be continuing rates of unemployment for a long time, and that the economy will take a long time to recover.  Though it’s not an utterly jobless recovery, Harris would like to see more growth.

Continue Reading The Economist’s General Counsel Roundtable Session Review: How Will the New Regulatory Environment Impact the GC?

One of the hottest topics up for discussion at last week’s Legal Marketing Association’s Annual Meeting was social networking. From Twitter to Facebook, blogging and tweeting, it almost sounds like a foreign language to the uninitiated. The LMA even warranted its very own hashtag (#LMA) on Twitter to keep track of all the comments flowing through the twitterstream. My own affinity for social networking brought me to Friday’s breakout session, “Emergence & Benefit of Social Networking for Legal Professionals,” led by John Lipsey, LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell’s Vice President of Corporate Counsel Services. The session turned out to be a broader look at social networking than some of the attendees would have liked, but a number of valuable points could still be gleaned. If you’d prefer to read my comments in tweet form, my tweets from the session follow this post.

Social networks involve reputation management: In a Web 2.0 world, you lose control over your own messaging, so a shift is necessary from attempting to control the message to managing your reputation and that of your firm. Because everyone has a voice on the internet, you never know where your next opportunity, or public relations crisis, will come from. As recent incidents have shown, what you say online can affect your career and is not easily erased. Similarly, what others say about your and your firm online can also impact your reputation. The key here is understanding that whether or not your are participating in social networks, the conversation is happening. So getting involved in social networking allows you some control over what is being said about you and your firm, and the ability to react to what others are saying. To monitor the conversation about you and your firm, John suggested setting up Google alerts for your name, your firm’s name, and considering extending these to specialized practice areas to keep abreast of what online chatter might be affecting your reputation. Continue Reading LMA Session Recap: Emergence & Benefit of Social Networking for Legal Professionals