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If you know one thing about me, it’s that I love to talk about the state of the legal industry. We may love to joke about lawyers’ reluctance to change, but truthfully, the industry is no stranger to evolution. And as we close 2024, a year marked by shifting economic priorities and political upheaval, the question on everyone’s minds is: What comes next?

With a new U.S. administration poised to reshape policies that impact both business and law, we can draw from the trends of 2024 and 2023 to anticipate where the legal market might head in 2025 and beyond.Continue Reading State of the US Legal Industry: As We Head into 2025, What Comes Next?

On average, a person engages in 145-200 interactions daily, both in-person and online. However, only 10-20% of these interactions are truly memorable. Among all these interactions, approximately 5-10% are negative, while 7-20% are positive. This means that despite the sheer volume of daily exchanges, only a small fraction will leave a lasting impact.

When you look at all of that data, and what each individual rates as important in their own lives, consider for a moment where their attention on YOU as a lawyer or your firm as a brand may rank.Continue Reading Kindness in a Digital World: Building Positive Brands and Relationships

In today’s ever-evolving legal landscape, maintaining strong client relationships is more crucial than ever. Clients expect not only legal expertise but also personalized service, empathy, and a deep understanding of their unique needs and concerns. To truly succeed as a lawyer, you must adopt your client’s perspective and tailor your approach accordingly. Here’s how you can achieve that in today’s legal environment:Continue Reading Beyond Legal Advice: Understanding Your Clients for Better Service

Lawyers understand better than most the significance of words – after all, who comprehends more than a contract lawyer that a subtle clause can either seal or sabotage a deal?

Yet, who better than your marketing team realizes that “marketing” often carries negative connotations?Continue Reading Lawyering 101: Marketing is in the Fine Print – How Every Interaction Shapes Your Brand

This week, we’re excited to bring you a guest blogger to Zen! Ilona Tkachenko is with PETERKA & PARTNERS, the ILN’s member firm in Ukraine. She is the Marketing Manager for Ukraine for the firm and brings us an excellent post on innovation for legal excellence, which is certainly something that she and her colleagues know something about – and she does my favorite thing, which is to offer practical advice for how to achieve what she’s talking about.

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In the ever-evolving landscape of the legal industry, where tradition and convention have long been seen as the foundations of practice, the integration of innovation has emerged as a game-changing force. The strategic implementation and development of innovation within a law firm are not just trends; they signify a paradigm shift that holds the potential to redefine legal excellence in the 21st century. But what exactly does innovation in the legal industry entail? Continue Reading Innovating Legal Excellence: A Paradigm Shift in the Modern Law Firm

In today’s interconnected world, the concept of relationship marketing has become a cornerstone of success for lawyers seeking to expand their practice. If you’re already familiar with the power of cultivating connections or if you’re looking to formalize a strategy you’ve been using, this post will delve into the essence of relationship marketing and how to leverage it for your legal practice.Continue Reading Strategic Relationship Marketing: Elevating Your Legal Practice in the Modern Era

We all know the adorable adage about lawyers that they don’t want to be first, but they want to be first to be second.

Having worked in legal for almost 18 years, I’ve seen this proven to be true over and over again. And as a result, it means that we can learn a lot from what our competitors are doing. It doesn’t mean that we copy them, by any means, but it does mean that when we ask ourselves some challenging questions in the context of our own firm or business activities, we can improve our own goals and focus.

I’ve found there are four key questions that we can ask about our competitors that help us identify what we could be strengthening in our own firms and businesses, and when we review these regularly, we can stay ahead of the marketplace. As a note, when you’re reviewing your competitors, you want to limit this to 3-5 of them, since these are in-depth tactics.
Continue Reading Four Key Questions to Ask About Your Competitors

Almost ten years ago, I attended a general counsel panel about achieving greater collaboration and the clients who participated shared their top takeaways for lawyers and law firms. I’m not sure whether it speaks to the constancy of the legal profession that this advice holds true for today, or we are just still not getting it, but while there are definitely some sophisticated clients needs in the market today, the basics remain the same:
Continue Reading Lawyers – What do Your Clients Want? Hint: It Hasn’t Changed

As we edge towards the end of the third quarter of 2020 and a great deal of uncertainty still remains, the one conversation I’m having over and over again with lawyers is around how to keep current clients happy and bring in new work with them. While we’ve already addressed the importance of business development activities here on Zen, we haven’t talked much about client retention, which is clearly also essential – we all know the adage that it’s cheaper to keep a current client than to do the work of bringing on a new one.

Some of us may be walking on eggshells at the moment, hoping that if we are just quiet enough, clients will be grateful that we’re here and keep using us as they have been without making any changes. But I think we can all recognize that that’s a false hope. We’re ALL under increased pressure to find ways to cut costs and show more value. Lawyers who are able to have an open and honest conversation with their clients about the ways in which they’re doing this will be the ones who continue to be valued business partners of their clients – now, and in the future as the market picks back up. So, how do we do this?
Continue Reading Client Retention: Tips for the Pandemic’s Secret Weapon