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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

There’s been a lot of chatter over the last few years about the "new normal" for law firms, and what that might mean.  Yesterday, I was reading an interesting article at Above the Law, which addressed the idea that the new normal is a lot like the "old normal" (making the boom time an aberrance and not the other way around). 

While that part was enlightening (and I recommend reading the article in full), what I found most useful were the lessons that the author felt we’d learned over the past four years and advice for BigLaw firms in dealing with the new normal.  We all recognize that BigLaw and mid-sized firms are different, but in this case, the advice are very much the same for both. We’ve been hearing it again and again, so it’s definitely time to start making some changes (if you haven’t already), to remain competitive. 

Continue Reading Mid-sized firms and How to Adjust to the “New Normal”

Yesterday, we began our recap of the Contract Lawyers & Outsourcing webinar with Tim Corcoran and Kevin Colangelo. Today, we continue the discussion. 

Who is Doing this Successfully, and How?

Tim said that one of the challenges he’s heard from law firms about outsourcing is that their work is unique, their firm is unique, and as such, their work is hard to routinize and find a common way to deliver the services. So he asked Kevin to comment on how others who have done this have found that there are practices that can be improved through this approach – and not just the low-end, simple document reviews, but some high end work as well. 

Kevin said that they analyze the tasks going on within a law firm, legal department our sourcing department to see what can be disaggregated. Those that they’ve been able to disaggregate, they rebuild in a very process-heavy, documented environment. This extends outside of just outsourcing – firms can understand both how they get their work done and improve the way they’re doing it with the people that they’re using. This blends into not only the way that clients want their firms to do the work, but also how the firm itself wants to be operating. Continue Reading ILN Webinar Series – Contract Lawyers & Outsourcing Part II

In what proved to be our most popular webinar yet, the Legal Marketing Association’s Social Media Special Interest Group held a session yesterday on using video to market legal services. We were fortunate to have three stellar presenters – Adam Stock of Allen Matkins, Adam Severson of Baker Donelson, and Mark Beese of Leadership for Lawyers. 

Their presentation was very interactive, and answered the questions I think we’ve all had on our minds about video, starting with the most important…Continue Reading Using Video to Market Legal Services

ILN members are working together all the time, and sometimes they pick their noses up from the grindstone to share one of their successes with me. Here’s a story about an excellent collaboration among ILN firms in Sweden, Italy, Liechtenstein and Switzerland. 

In 2010, Thomas Ekenberg and Johan Sund of Ekenberg & Andersson Advokatbyra, Sweden, were retained by an Italian-American client requesting legal advice regarding an investment in Stockholm – namely, the purchase of an apartment and the opening of an art gallery. The origin of the client’s financial resources, which were necessary to proceed with the investment, consisted of an inheritance of considerable value – his portion amounted to around 80 million Euros worth of real estate and other assets – received from his mother in 2002, and originating from the client family’s prominent involvement in the Italian real estate business as far back as the 1930s.

The client claimed that he had been prevented from being fully aware of the majority of the information concerning the Italian patrimony, and from having any direct control of the interests of his assets. As a matter of fact, since his mother’s passing, the client’s interests had been deceitfully managed by his elder brother.

Continue Reading ILN Members in Sweden, Italy, Liechtenstein & Switzerland Collaborate

Last week, the LMA NJ chapter once again piggybacked on to what the NY chapter was doing, and hosted a lunch where we Skyped into a panel presentation focusing on whether law firms should help promote individual attorneys (or just focus on the firm brand as a whole). The panelists included Robert Algeri, the co-founder of Great Jakes, which is listed in his bio as "a marketing communications firm that develops next-generation websites for mid-size and large law firms." 

We also had Andrea Crews, the Director of Marketing and Business Development for Levenfeld Pearlstein, a mid-size midwestern firm, and Jasmine Trillos-Decarie, the Director of Marketing and Business Development at Foley Hoag. 

Continue Reading Should Law Firms Help Promote Individual Attorneys? An LMA Recap

I consider myself to be a fairly savvy social media user, though as I often like to tell people, "we’re all still learning." And with a medium that changes SO quickly, there’s certainly always something new to learn. That was reinforced for me yesterday when I sat in on Samantha Collier’s webinar for the Legal Marketing Association’s Social Media Special Interest Group on Facebook for Law Firms. Sam offers a post inspired by her webinar here. 

Sam’s webinar covered personal Facebook profiles for lawyers, Facebook pages for law firms, some case studies, and resources. As you may or may not know, Facebook is the most prominent social network out there, with 845 million monthly active users. Continue Reading Facebook for Law Firms – A Recap of Sam Collier’s LMA Webinar

Who doesn’t love a good five-part series on Twitter? Don’t answer that. 

Today, we have the last installment from my presentation, which covers some frequently asked questions that I’ve gotten with regard to Twitter, as well as the questions that came in as I was preparing the presentation. 

What’s in a username? Should I use my name, or some fun little moniker? 

Some people will argue that it’s a good idea to have a keyword or subject as your Twitter name, but I (and many others) disagree. I think it should always be your real name. As we’ve talked about before, people want to connect and work with people they know, like and trust, and how can they really know you if you’re not transparent with your name? It’s also much easier for people to find you when your username is your real name. 

There can be some difficulties here, because Twitter only allows you fifteen characters. My full name has more than that, so I just chopped off the "s" at the end. You can work around this however you’d like. Continue Reading Twitter: Effectively Leveraging Twitter as a Business Development and Marketing Tool – Part V

We’ve now talked about a couple of uses of Twitter for law firms, but there was a third one that I snuck in there during my presentation, and that’s finding intelligence. 

Social media in general is an excellent way to research clients and potential clients, as well as competitors. The information is current and constantly updated, and it’s coming to you, rather than you having to go and find it. 

How would you do this on Twitter? Continue Reading Twitter: Effectively Leveraging Twitter as a Business Development and Marketing Tool – Part IV

In my last post, I talked about using Twitter as a broadcast tool, and Nancy Myrland added some valuable comments to the discussion about making sure to incorporate as much personality as possible.

Today, we’re going to talk about what many people consider to be the most important use of Twitter – engagement. As Nancy always says "Twitter is a contact sport." 

So how do you engage with your Twitter followers? It’s the same as you would in real life – share others’ posts and tweets, comment on their tweets, start conversations and periodically reach out to them. Then, take these relationships offline – meet people for lunch who are in the same city as you are, or when you’re traveling or at a conference. Continue Reading Twitter: Effectively Leveraging Twitter as a Business Development and Marketing Tool – Part III