Legal Marketing Association

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The very last session I went to before our wrap up at LMA14 was "Can the C-Suite Lead the Social Media Law Firm?" with presenters Deborah Grabein (@dgrabein) of Andrews Kurth and Michael Hertz (@michaelhertz) of White & Case and moderator Kevin O’Keefe (@kevinokeefe) of LexBlog. 

The description of the session in the conference book reads:

While Fortune 500 executives are beginning to leverage social media, law firm executives are lagging." 

Two C-Level decision makers (not practicing lawyers) in Am Law 200 firms made the decision in the fall of 2013 to start using social media, personally . They wished to experience how their use of social media could help change the perceptions of their brand, better equip them to lead their marketing and business development teams, and help them guide individual lawyers in their use of social." 

With five months of strategic consulting and coaching, these executives became active content creators and social media contributors on blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+."

Learn about the personal and firm wide challenges and rewards these law firm executives experienced, and will continue to experience in their personal use of social media." 

Continue Reading Key Takeaways from “Can the C-Suite Lead the Social Media Law Firm?”

I’ll be kicking off my recaps starting a bit later this afternoon, but first, I want to bring you a Two for Tuesdays, courtesy of a couple of great things I heard at LMA14. If you really listen to those in the LMA who are smart, thoughtful, hardworking and constantly challenging and improving themselves, you end up learning a lot and being a better marketer yourself. 

One of the best sessions of the conference was the wrap up on Friday afternoon, moderated by conference co-chairs John Byrne & Jose Cunningham, along with LMA president, Tim Corcoran. The moderators invited us to share the takeaways we’d gotten from the conference, and there were two that really stuck out for me – lessons that we can use to make ourselves better at our jobs.

Tip One: "When there’s a gap between exactly what we do, and what we hear from speakers, it’s our job to bridge it."

This is a HUGE pet peeve of mine, and has been for several years – you may remember my comments about it here and here. Continue Reading Two for Tuesdays: Using LMA14 to be a Better Marketer

LMA14 is gone as quickly as it arrived, and it’s left me feeling like I’ve been hit by a truck! As I expected, the networking and the programming were the two most valuable pieces for me, and there are many, many things I’ll be sharing with you all here on Zen in the coming days. 

This year, I really felt that the conference chairs stepped up their game with the programming – almost all of the sessions I went to weren’t just good, they were excellent, and I came away feeling that I’d learned a lot to share with my attorneys, but also a lot that I can use myself in my daily work.  Of course, that means I feel like I’ve been trying to drink water from a fire hose for the last few days, which is a bit overwhelming, but I’ll work to distill it all for you over the next few weeks.

First up, I’d like to share some of the great takeaways to come out of LexBlog’s interviews of LMA attendees – there are some SUPER smart people in our organization, who shared their thoughts with LXBN. You can check out all the interviews here, but I wanted to share a few of my favorites. Pay particular attention to the advice from the General Counsel in the first interview and Toby Brown’s thoughts on the current pricing model. Continue Reading LMA14 – It’s a Wrap!

If you follow me on social media this week, you’re going to see a LOT of talk about #LMA14 – that’s the Legal Marketing Association’s annual conference, which takes place in Orlando this week (a welcome respite to those of us in the cold, cold north who have pretty much forgotten what sunlight looks like). …

In yesterday’s post, we learned that building relationships is still of primary importance to clients – and some of the ways to do this including figuring out what benefits the client the most, and focusing on what business solutions will make them look good. 

The panelists agreed that the role of their lawyers needs to be that of strategic partners, and for their part, they need to inform outside counsel about what they need. But outside counsel can also be proactive to learn more about their clients. The panelists suggested that attorneys read company filings and public documents before they meet with them. They emphasized that outside counsel should understand their customer before asking them to be their customer. Post-matter debriefings, at no cost, are also helpful.

Continue Reading General Counsel Panel: Separate from the Pack – a Recap Part II

So if you’ve been hiding under a rock instead of reading my blog posts, you may not already know that my favorite session from LMA13 was "Delivering Happiness: Fresh Ideas for Service-Driven Brands Deploying Social Media Tactics, Seeking ROI" with Graham Kahr, Social Scientist for Zappos and Jayne Navarre of Law Gravity LLC. 

Rather than a typical session, Jayne and Graham let us know right away that it would be different when they introduced themselves in the third person. Their session took on the tone of more of a conversation, which also included those of us in the audience. 

They began their conversation by saying that they wouldn’t be talking about social media per se, but really focusing instead on creating experiences for clients (which is something we could all identify with). Graham said that Zappos doesn’t push their own brand stories – they want their customers to tell the brand story for them.Continue Reading “Delivering Happiness” – A Zappos Session Recap

This morning, I had the pleasure of speaking with my fellow co-leaders in the Legal Marketing Association’s Social Media Special Interest Group (LMA Social Media SIG for short). Our main purpose was to debrief on our group’s activities at the conference, to see what worked well and what didn’t, but by virtue of the conversation, we ended up talking about the conference in general and some of the anecdotal feedback that we’d heard. 

One of the interesting points that was raised was it had been suggested that the Zappos session, bringing in an outside-of-the-industry speaker, was either loved or hated. Loved, because, as I’ve mentioned before, it was excellent, or hated because people didn’t understand how a customer-driven organization like Zappos could have any relevance to legal marketing. 

Sigh. Continue Reading Legal Marketers – Let’s Raise the Bar

It’s been a week since I returned home from the LMA’s Annual Conference, and I’m still digesting everything that went on there – it was a non-stop whirlwind of networking, meetups with social media friends and ILN marketers, face-time with new attendees, and conference sessions (as well as a LOT of food). LMA served its purpose once again though, and I’ve returned to the office with new vigor, feeling more inspired than when I left! Even better for this Social Media Special Interest Group Co-Leader? Not only did I get to see my friends and make new connections face to face, but #LMA13 was trending on Twitter! (Pictured are fellow co-leaders Gail Lamarche of Henderson Franklin and Nancy Myrland, Myrland Marketing with me. Not pictured are Lance Godard of JD Supra, who was unable to join us, and Laura Toledo, Tenrec, who was ill). 

There will be several recap posts to come, but while I’m still ruminating on those, I thought I’d share with you my three favorite sessions, as well as what’s on my reading list now that I’ve returned home. Keep an eye out for the recaps on these sessions! 

Continue Reading LMA Annual Conference – A Quick Debrief

Social media is the perfect medium for someone like me – someone who’s an introvert, a bit on the shy side, and prefers to have the safety of being behind a computer screen rather than face-to-face. 

But if you’re using social media to be…well, social…and you’d like it to lead to business development opportunities, you’ve got to take it offline. While it’s possible to build relationships online, and to nurture them there, you cannot discount the benefit to meeting someone face-to-face. 

A conference is the perfect opportunity for this, and I’ll tell you a story about how social media has enriched my conference experience at the Legal Marketing Association’s Annual Meeting (which I’m currently en-route to – I love airplane wifi!). Continue Reading Taking it Offline