Last week, we had the first part of our recap from Tim Corcoran’s excellent webinar on Legal Project Management. Today, I bring you the second half, which covers:
Continue Reading ILN Webinar Series – An Introduction to Legal Project Management Part II
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, I attended the LMANJ city group’s session on "Teachable Moments from Dewey," a presentation taking place in New York that we were remotely accessing. Our speakers were Bruce MacEwen, founder and President of Adam Smith, Esq and Sara Randazzo, a reporter with American Lawyer.
While I’ve been watching the Dewey coverage with interest, I haven’t gotten as involved as some in the details, so it was a fascinating presentation. Bruce said that it’s been a topic of near obsession among his readers for the last few months – he started writing an analysis of this in March.
As Bruce and Sara spoke, I took notes all over the handouts that we’d been given, so I’ll try to make sense of them here! Continue Reading Teachable Moments from Dewey – An LMANJ Recap
Now, as I mentioned in my summary of the GC Panel at the LMA Conference this year, Jeff Carr says he’s banned the word "alternative," because there should be nothing alternative about alternative fees.
But, for the sake of this recap, we’re going to use it, as that’s what the session focused on. Tim Corcoran shared with us the salient points from the alternative fees session that he attended at LMA (and often speaks on himself).
There were so many good tidbits that came out of our LMA New Jersey meeting last week! Amy Adams shared her comments on the session she attended about mentoring associates in business development.
Amy’s comments were particularly helpful, because she’s speaking from the perspective of an in-house marketer, so she’s implementing the advice from the Annual Meeting in her daily activities. Using a phrase from the SMORS session, Amy said she’s deploying a pilot program for mentoring – she’s identified a couple of partners who work well with associates, and using the formula of one partner to four associates. Continue Reading Mentoring Associates in Business Development
One of the other sessions that we covered during our LMA recap was about using video. There aren’t many law firms doing it right now (or doing it well, for that matter), and is it really just another fad?
Tim Corcoran says no – video is on the rise, not just on your PCs, but
I’ve been so excited that the LMA has formed a NJ city group of the NY chapter, and it’s been wonderful to connect in person with other legal marketing colleagues outside of the Annual Conference. Last night, we met up again to re-cap the LMA conference for those in the group that hadn’t been able to attend. I added my experiences, but was able to learn a lot from Wilentz’s Amy Adams and Corcoran Consulting Group’s Tim Corcoran, who shared about sessions that I had missed.
One of the sessions that Amy re-capped was taken from the pre-conference SMORS session – Smart Marketing on (Limited) Resources. She focused mostly on the presentation on managing your workload and gave us some valuable tips:
Continue Reading SMORS – They’re Not Just for Campfires Anymore
My final session of the first day of the conference was “The Evolution of the Law Firm Brand: How to Promote the Individual Attorneys within the Parameters of the Firm’s Brand.” Panelists included Aden Dauchess, the Director of Digital Media with Womble Carlyle, Robert Algeri, Partner of Great Jakes Marketing, Joe Calve, the CMO for Morrison & Foerster, and Peter Winzig, the Director of Marketing and Corporate Development for Weltman, Weinberg & Reis. The panel was moderated by Adrian Dayton, CEO of Adrian Dayton & Associates.
The room was quickly filled with interested attendees, and soon it was not only standing room only, but full enough to turn people away. Continue Reading The Evolution of the Law Firm Brand – an LMA 2012 Re-Cap
The final session that I attended during the LMA Conference this year was “Creating a Culture of Client Service Excellence” with Leonardo Inghilleri, the EVP and Managing Partner of West Paces Consulting.
I was a few minutes late to the session, and the energy in the room felt a bit low, so I was initially concerned I may have chosen the wrong session. But I was quickly proven wrong as Leonardo provided us with fabulous insight and an interesting perspective that proved most valuable.
As his bio on the LMA Conference website states:
"Leonardo Inghilleri is a recognized business expert and author, and an opinion leader in the area of organizational effectiveness and strategies, client service excellence, and business innovation. As one of the key architects behind the Ritz-Carlton’s two Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards, he has first-hand experience in creating a culture of client service excellence. During this session, you will learn about proven techniques that will help your firm improve the quality of the relationships with your clients. Leonardo will share the concepts and practices that will help to create and maintain the kind of client service environment that can produce strong bottom line results.”
Continue Reading Creating a Culture of Client Service Excellence – an LMA 2012 Re-cap
Yesterday, we covered the first part of the social media session from the Legal Marketing Association’s Annual Conference. Today, let’s jump into part two!
Next up, on the panel we had Melissa Croteau, the CMO of Nixon Peabody. Her role on the panel was to talk about how a large firm handles social media. Nixon Peabody started using social media in 2009, beginning with Twitter. They currently have 2,500 regular followers, with a majority of those being media.
Because I’m always trying to follow the tweet stream, as well as live tweet, when I’m at a conference, I also was keeping an eye on the tweets coming out of other sessions. From another session at the same time, Russell Lawson posted what turned out to be a timely suggestion for our group as well – he noted that journalists are using their Twitter stream to find interesting or out of the ordinary story ideas, so firms shouldn’t post the same old thing all the time. If Nixon Peabody has so many media followers, they must be adhering to this idea already!
Continue Reading Social Media is Here to Stay – An LMA 2012 Re-cap Part II