Tag: law firm

Join the ABA in San Antonio Octoer 23-25 for the 9th Annual GPSolo National Solo and Small Firm Conference

The National Law Review is pleased to present you with information about the American Bar Association’s 9th Annual GPSolo National Solo and Small Firm Conference.

 

ABA 9th GPsolo Oct2014

Book your travel now for the 2014 GPSolo 9th Annual National Solo & Small Firm Conference (NSSFC). This year’s theme is “Building a Texas-Sized Practice on a Lone Star Budget.” Traditionally, the NSSFC attracts more than 200 solos and small firm practitioners from across the country and abroad. However, this year’s meeting in Texas is going supersize as we expect to draw record numbers. Come join the excitement and learn to build or expand your practice without spending a fortune.

Some exciting highlights of the meeting include:

–        Off-the-charts networking opportunities such as meet-and-greets with legal service plan providers and potential new business referrals

–        Rainmaking Forum; U.S. Supreme Court Swearing-In Ceremony (register now to take part); Naturalization Ceremony for new U.S. citizens; and an accreditation course for practice before the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (which, like Social Security representation, can result in a fee award). All these programs are new this year.

–        Opportunity to choose up to ten hours of CLE from more than 25 hours of offerings. This is not your everyday CLE. We will have several GPSolo book authors presenting on chapters from their recent publications, including the outstanding Run Your Firm Like a Business by Frank T. Lockwood, the timely Lawyer’s Guide to Financial Planning by Cynthia Sharp, and the ever-important Debt Collector’s Handbook by David J. Cook.

–        Sessions presented by the ABA Commission on Immigration for both immigration and non-immigration practitioners, including a mock trial demonstration with an immigration judge showing you the ins and outs of practicing before the immigration courts.

–        Difference Makers Awards Luncheon, where we celebrate the accomplishments of our honorees.

–        Training for pro bono representation with Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) to assist unaccompanied children who currently represent themselves in immigration court proceedings.

–        The opportunity to help educate high school students about being aware of debt through our Financial Literacy Outreach public service program.

 

GPSolo members will receive all of this and more for the not-so-Texas-sized price of $145—less than the cost of food and beverages alone. Why? We want to thank you in person for being a GPSolo member. So come on down and join the fun! Don’t mess with Texas, and don’t miss out on GPSolo’s signature event! For the best savings, register before September 22 and pay only $145 (GPSolo rate).

 

Special Discount: Register for the Women, Influence & Power in Law Conference – September 17-19, Washington D.C.

The National Law Review is pleased to bring you information about Inside Counsel’s Women, Influence & Power in Law Conference.

Women, Influence & Power In Law Conference

September 17-19, 2014
The Capital Hilton
Washington, DC

A Unique Conference with a Fresh Format

The Only National Forum Facilitating Women-to-Women Exchange on Current Legal Issues.The second annual Women, Influence & Power in Law Conference has a uniquely substantive focus, covering the topics that matter most to corporate counsel, outside counsel, and public sector attorneys. The event is comprised of three distinct and executive level events.

 

This unique event is the only national forum facilitating women-to-women exchange on current legal issues. This conference is led and facilitated almost exclusively by women, encouraging an exchange between women in-house counsel and women outside counsel on the day’s most pressing legal challenges. With 30 sessions, the event will have a substantive focus, covering topics that matter most to corporate counsel, outside counsel, and public sector attorneys.

The Women, Influence & Power in Law Conference is not a forum for lawyers to discuss so-called “women’s issues.” It is a conference for women in-house and outside counsel to discuss current legal topics, bringing their individual experience and perspectives on issues of:

  • Governance & Compliance
  • Litigation & Investigations
  • Intellectual Property
  • Government Relations & Public Policy
  • Global Litigation & Transactions
  • Labor & Employment

Serve Up a Strategic Marketing Approach

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Here it is more than halfway through the year and a lot of you who began 2014 committed to changing your marketing approach now realize “wow, nothing has changed.”

Below are ten steps to be more strategic in this year’s marketing planning:

1. Having good intentions in January is not the same as making marketing a priority.In other words, you jotted down some ideas, threw them in a drawer and went about your business. Marketing is often an afterthought.  If you do not make building and growing your practice a priority by scheduling it into your daily calendar and then “live and breathe” the concepts, how do you expect progress to be made, by you and other team members?

2. Develop cash flow budgets and projections are imperative so that you would have something to measure progress by. Businesses run with numbers. Law firms are no different. When creating a marketing plan, be as specific as possible. Set concrete goals as such as below:

  • Increase employment law cases by privately-held businesses cases by 15%
  • Acquire at least one new client each quarter with billings of at least $90k per quarter.
  • Increase revenue per existing top five clients by 20 percent

3. Creating metrics to measure the success or failure of your plans and activities against projections developed in number 2 is an ideal way to track your marketing initiatives by results achieved. Items such as response rates, average new billings per new clients, average billings from repeat work of existing clients…etc.  Do you have any written metrics and do you constantly monitor them? If not, this is a critical component for measuring success.

4. Assemble the right team.  Get the right people “on the bus and the wrong people” off the bus.  If your firm is full of worker bees, you will be challenged to produce marketing results.  However, if you support and empower those lawyers who are motivated to become a producer, a rainmaker, you are more likely to have a stronger marketing focus and better marketing results.

5. Retain professional training.While many lawyers “think” they know what to do, and they may, most do not know “how” to engage in high impact business development endeavors successfully. Effectively marketing and promoting a law practice ain’t what it used to be. Gone are the days when deals are just a handshake away and a matter of spending the afternoon on the golf course.

Seeking outside support to fully learn, from soup to nuts, the sales process, how to efficiently fill your pipeline AND persistently track your sales (i.e. new client engagements) are things that do not materialize from amorphous. Retain a professional trainer/coach and you will never go back.

6. Set a clear and powerful direction.  It is a powerful exercise to have regular meetings with your team to cultivate a marketing culture within a firm and to outline the marketing expectations.  Team meetings can serve multiple purposes of parlaying business opportunities, sharing knowledge, and achieving positive marketing results.

7. Turn up the focus dial. Most likely, if you do not focus like a laser on identifying targeted clients, markets and niche areas of practice, you will likely become discouraged and ease up on your marketing commitment. Thus, it is imperative to narrow down exact targets so you know who you are looking for. An example of this for a construction litigation practice may be commercial developers on the East Coast with revenues between $50-150 million a year. That description will narrow the companies you are looking for and are simple to find with basic online market research.

8. Assemble the marketing tools. Having the right tools is essential to ensuring you derive the most out of your marketing strategies. Tools are no longer limited to printed brochures, email and promotional items. Video, social media networking, SMS texting, webinars, podcasts, and creative interactive websites can also be highly effective, depending upon your marketing goals and objectives. The increase in marketing tools equates to greater options in your toolbox. It also means that selecting the right tools is more important than ever.

9.Invest in the right things.  Decadent offices, random acts of lunch, and token “shotgun” expenditures in the name of marketing do not attract new clients. Invest instead in strengthening relationships with key clients, communicating to existing clients and prospective clients how you are improving their businesses and/or personal lives.

10. Action, Action, Action. One of themost impactful ways you can be more strategic in your marketing planning is simply to execute on the plan. Marketing must be an integral part of your business, not a “set it and forget it” aspect of your business. In order to ensure that your marketing plan succeeds, you must be actively engaged in working that plan.

The means by which to instill a more strategic approach to your marketing are vast. Reiterating my mantra that marketing success comes with “consistent, persistent massive amounts of action over a prolonged period of time”, all the strategic marketing spokes (Internet marketing; communications program; reputation management, etc.) must be moving forward at the same concurrently. Anything less and the wheels just spin.

Article By:

Kimberly Alford Rice
Of:
KLA Marketing Associates

Making These 3 Errors in WordPress Makes Your Law Firm’s Blog Less Effective

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Here are three common WordPress mistakes that will make your legal website less effective than it should be:

  1. Posting content that is not unique, engaging or well designed. Unstructured information, filler materials and overly general articles do not motivate a user to interact with the site. Your goal should be to create content that users want to share or bookmark or research further by following your in-text links.
  2. Getting caught up in finding the perfect WP template and design. Many inexperienced website authors expend all their energy before even considering content development. A lot of sites use generic content that reads like it was added as an afterthought. It is hard to schedule time to generate good content but when most people say, “Oh, I’ll come back to improve that later,” they never do.
  3. Failing to design each page for its intended purpose. Out-of-the-box WordPress themes use similar forms and sidebars on every page. It is important for the design (as well as the content) to serve the page’s purpose.
Article By:

Tanner Jones
Of:
Consultwebs.com, Inc.

Tips for Growing Your Fan Base on Facebook

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One of the biggest challenges for anyone seeking to have a large social media following is growing your audience to a healthy level.  Sometimes it almost feels like we’re back in grade school, looking for other kids to like us!

Inbound marketing firm Hubspot has a number of informative presentations on Facebook marketing, but this quick slide guide with five tips on how to grow your audience is particularly useful since it visually walks you through the steps you need to take on your Facebook page to reap the rewards from each tip:

One of the biggest challenges for anyone seeking to have a large social media following is growing your audience to a healthy level.  Sometimes it almost feels like we’re back in grade school, looking for other kids to like us!

Inbound marketing firm Hubspot has a number of informative presentations on Facebook marketing, but this quick slide guide with five tips on how to grow your audience is particularly useful since it visually walks you through the steps you need to take on your Facebook page to reap the rewards from each tip:

5 Quick Tips For Growing Your Facebook Audience from HubSpot

Article By:

Stephen Fairley
Of:
The Rainmaker Institute

May 28th – NAWL Pipeline to Equity Partnership Program, Chicago

NAWLJustSeal215x260

The National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL) and Chicago’s Coalition of Women’s Initiatives in Law are joining forces to help usher the next generation of women law firm leaders into place with a program entitled Pipeline to Equity Partnership (P2P).  The program will be held at Loyola University Law School from 11:30 AM to 5:00 PM, followed by a networking reception.   P2P is aimed at women on the brink of equity partnership, in either a one-tier or two-tier law firm system.  This is the third presentation of NAWL’s P2P program nationwide, and its first time in Chicago.

The P2P program is an attempt to move the dial on the numbers of women in law firm leadership by offering a forum to identify and discuss challenges women face as they reach for the top.

The P2P program will begin with a luncheon presentation from Andrea (“Andie”) Kramer, a partner at McDermott Will & Emery.  Andie Kramer is well known as a longtime motivating force in the effort to both advance more women to leadership roles and equity partnership in law firms and to ensure that women are fairly compensated along the way.  She is a founding member of McDermott’s Diversity Committee, and chair of the Gender Diversity Sub-committee.   Andie previously served on both the Firm’s Management and Compensation Committees.

The P2P program will continue with facilitated roundtable group discussion of multiple issue-based scenarios that women face in their journey towards equity partnership.  Discussion will focus on real world experiences such as the departure of a young partner’s sponsor, the loss of previous opportunities for business pitches, handling ethical issues that used to be handled by superiors, the reluctance of a new partner’s colleague to address a client conflict, flexibility and perception of work ethic, or perhaps the overloading of a new partner with uncredited firm administration.

The scenarios will be familiar to attendees and presenters, and will offer an opportunity for both a unique, peer-to-peer discussion and the counsel and perspective of a resource panel of distinguished women law firm leaders, who will offer their counsel and advice.  The panel consisting of law firm leaders, managing partners, and general counsel includes Susie L. Lees, Executive Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary of Allstate Insurance Company, Jennifer A. Kennedy, Managing Partner of Chicago office, Locke Lord LLP, Amy B. Manning, Managing Partner of Chicago office, McGuireWoods LLP, and Angelea Ulum, Co-Chair, Partnership Promotion Committee, Mayer Brown LLP.  The panel will be moderated by Margo O’Donnell, President of the Coalition of Women’s Initiatives in Law and Shareholder at Vedder Price, and Maureen M. Reid, President of Maureen M. Reid, LLC and a co-founder of the P2P program.The resource panel will offer advice for handling the scenarios discussed in the roundtables and will answer attendees’ questions about navigating the way to equity partnership.

Program participants will leave the program with a much better sense of what roadblocks may exist on the path to equity partnership and how to overcome them.  Those interested in registering for the P2P Program can get all of the information and register at http://www.nawl.org/p/cm/ld/&fid=168.

Innovate, Embrace Change, Don't Fear Failure: Takeaways from LMA (Legal Marketing Association) Annual Conference

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One message rang true at this year’s LMA Annual Conference: innovation and change are requirements for success. Change may be scary but innovative firms stand out from the rest. At times they may fail, but these failures serve to make firms stronger, not weaker.

Build Unusual Partnerships

Look at Cinnabon’s President Kat Cole, who gave the keynote address this year.  When market share started to dip for Cinnabon, she boldly partnered with Pinnacle Vodka, and with competitors like Pillsbury and, Dunkin’ Donuts. These unusual collaborations helped to dramatically grow revenue to over one billion dollars annually for the company. She not only had to take a risk but she also had to convince management to do the same if they were to expand the brand and business. Yet, for her, being innovative was a necessity, not an option. If she didn’t do it, someone else would have. She credits her success to understanding how the business got started and what sets it apart from competitors. This formed the basis for her collaborative partnerships which proved hugely successful.

Work with Multiple Generations

Change has also come to impact law firms simply by the fact that multiple generations are now present in the market. The most senior partners are not retiring. A generational rift exists both within law firms and between law firms and their target clients. While the senior and boomer generations still hold the majority of power within the firms, clients and prospects are frequently fitting into the Generation X demographic. The different generations have completely separate expectations, motivations and desires, some of which are diametrically opposed. Understanding those generational differences and reshaping our internal cultures and power dynamics will be a key to retaining talent and attracting new business.

Help Grow Your Clients Business

Providing excellent legal work is a given. But clients expect their lawyers to understand their business, to help them mitigate their business risks, and to come up with ideas to help them generate revenue. Clients expect to see their attorneys at the same industry conferences they attend – speaking, networking and making recommendations.

The General Counsel panelists reported they have to do more with less money and time. One way lawyers can help is to personally forward client alerts and draw the GC’s attention to a specific section (e.g., see “bullet point 3”) — instead of making them read through the entire article. The GC panelists also agreed that the articles talking about the law itself are not helpful; talk about how the law affects the client or prospect’s business. Co-authoring articles with clients was another suggestion – it makes them look good and brings the relationship closer as well.

Innovate

The pre-conference CMO Summit focused on innovation, i.e., new products and services. Jordan Furlong of Edge International and Law21.ca led an interactive discussion on using research and development to establish a competitive edge in the legal industry. What are some of the new products and services, or yet-to-be-developed possibilities that lawyers could offer? A variety of apps and toolkits, a virtual general counsel set-up or client hot-line, a mobile or shared workforce to reduce overhead, and more…the key being to identify the needs of industries and clients, and respond to those needs innovatively.

Many other topics were covered at the conference but the overarching theme is that those who innovate and embrace change will be the ones to find the most success. Step out on a ledge and don’t be afraid to fail – you will find greater success and learn more than those who just watch from the window!

Article By:

Susanne L. Mandel
Ioana G. Good
Of:
Lowndes, Drosdick, Doster, Kantor & Reed, P.A.

Chasing Leads – You’re doing it all wrong.

1.  Don’t be cheap on lead acquisition.

I’m constantly amazed at how cheap many lawyers want to be on getting someone to identify themselves as in need of legal services and then closing the deal. Folks, we are in a high transaction business! Your emailed newsletter (alone) will never cut it. We must be arranging our businesses to outspend our competition on the generation of a new lead. It won’t happen overnight, but this has to be your mindset.

My view is that in order to do this, you must be very efficient in your marketing. Being “efficient” does not mean being cheap. It means being “smart.” When you sit down to create an ad, ask yourself: What exactly are we trying to accomplish? Before that ad is let loose, there are usually about 7–12 different steps/other pieces that must be created in order to make the ad work. This will usually involve at least one (and sometimes two) videos, with well-thought-out scripts, one or more physical marketing pieces that must be designed, and a funnel with follow up specific and appropriate to that ad created. Going through this process is the only way to achieve the goal of “spending more than your competition is willing to spend to acquire a good lead for your office.”

2.  You need real clarity and comfort with whatever it is you are selling.

You can’t really have any “moral ambiguity” about the fact that you are a lawyer and you are selling.  Everything I do is marketing and selling. Every conversation with a client, every conversation with a judge or opposing counsel is a marketing opportunity. (Tip: after every trial, I send my opposing counsel one of my books, congratulating them on a job well done for their client. Not necessarily a marketing book—sometimes it’s a business book, sometimes it’s “The Ultimate Success Secret.”) If you follow most of the lawyer listserves that don’t have anything to do with marketing, you will see a trend “against” the marketers. It’s just so easy to jump on that bandwagon. I see it all the time, lawyers who don’t have a clue about the quality of another lawyer’s legal work slamming them in a listserve because of the ads they run.

Here’s what to think about if they are the least bit squeamish about marketing and selling: I have two questions for you.

  • Is there a potential new client out there for whom you would be the perfect lawyer?
  • Someone with a problem that you would, in fact, be the best lawyer for and with whom you can make money? (If you can’t answer Yes to that question, then you really need to be looking for another line of work.)
  • Assuming that the answer to the above is yes, why in the world would you leave it up to that person to choose the lawyer to solve his problem by random chance?
  • It’s your moral obligation to get yourself in front of that client, just as it is your moral obligation to reject and send elsewhere that client you have no business representing.
Article By:

Ben Glass
Of: 
Great Legal Marketing, Inc.

Google+ Is (Walking) Dead? Or Simply Changing?

In response to the grievous reports of Google+’s death last week, a famous misquote from Mark Twain comes to mind: “It appears the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

In late April, a bold headline was turning heads: Google+ Is Walking Dead. The article made some pretty strong claims regarding Google’s struggling social network in response to Vic Gundotra’s announcement that he would be leaving the company. Mr. Gundotra was Google’s Vice President of Social and head of Google+.

This left online marketers with several questions: What will become of authorship? How will this affect Google search? Will this change Google+’s YouTube integration? What about the time and money we have put in to growing our Circles, engaging in Community discussions and posting content?

Once you delve a little deeper and look past the pessimistic headlines, things are not as grim as they appear. Apparently, Google+ is not dead (not even “walking dead”). However, there may be changes on the horizon—which should be nothing new for veteran Google+ users and online marketers.

How Does Google+ Fit In to the Google Brand?

Google+ has never truly competed with Facebook or Twitter. But look at it from a different angle. Google’s social network provided a way to tie together Google’s disparate services while establishing a clear identity of each user. This helps Google provide better search results and sell better targeted ads by better tracking and consolidating user data.

“Google+ is really two things: an identity layer that tracks and connects all of Google’s products and a social sharing app,” says JR Oakes, the Director of Search Marketing at Consultwebs. “I think we will see a movement towards individual teams (Android, Maps, Gmail) just leveraging the identity layer to add value to the products from the standpoint of what makes the product better instead of what makes G+ better.”

The Facts

Many Google employees have taken to Google+ to address these rumors and provide facts.

Yonatan Zunger, Google+ Chief Architect, denied the death of Google+, saying that “this entire TechCrunch article is bollocks.” He also confirmed that Dave Desbris will be the new head of Google+, which suggests the company currently has no plans for dismantling the social network.

In response to a Google+ post, Chris Lang asked Moritz Tolxdorff, Google’s Consumer Operations and Community Manager, to confirm if anyone on the Google+ team had been moved to Android. Tolxdorff responded, “No one is moving anywhere. Everything will stay as it is.”

In light of these public responses, marketers can breathe a sigh of relief—at least for the moment.

Responding to Possible Changes

Even though powerful voices of Google have spoken on this issue, online marketers know that anything can change in the blink of an eye. With a new head of Google+ on the way, we can likely expect to see some changes, even if minor.

Let’s take a look at a timeline of major changes and gradual integration that has occurred through the years:

Google+ is heavily integrated into several of Google’s most popular products: Local, YouTube, Gmail and last but definitely not least, search. The slightest change could create a ripple that affects all of these. I think that is what scared marketers the most.

google plusThe best way to respond to situations like this is logically and in the best interest of your business and clients. This is not the first time rumors have panicked the online marketing world. Does anyone remember when the buzz was that Facebook would soon be a paid service? This eventually led to the company’s slogan, “It’s free and always will be.”

It is crucial to respond quickly to changes, but only changes that are validated. Responding too quickly to false claims can result in missed opportunities and wasted time and money. It is best to relax, keep your eyes open for confirmed changes and respond accordingly.

Online marketing best practices are going to change. That is something we have to accept. What makes our jobs challenging (and interesting!) is keeping up with these changes, adapting new best practices and staying ahead of the curve. Whether it is a Google algorithm update, changes to Social Media sites or a change in popular tech devices, we must be vigilant and respond accordingly.

Article By:

Kenneth Harris
Of:
Consultwebs.com, Inc.

5 Things to Tell Prospects That Will Turn Them Into Clients

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Have you been looking for the “magic words” to tell prospects that will turn them into clients?  My experience in teaching lead conversion techniques to thousands of attorneys over the last decade shows that you need to focus your messaging to prospects on these five areas:

1. Tell them what you can do for them.   At the end of the day, clients are only interested in what you can do for them.  Your job is to tell them what your service can do for them personally and remember- they do not want to spend time looking for the answer. The answer to this question must be one of the first things your clients see on your website and in your firm-wide communications. If your clients are going to remember you, you must first answer the question “What’s in it for them?”

2. Tell them what makes you different. For every service you provide there are many other attorneys who can provide the same services. So what can a client get from you that they cannot get from anyone else? Perhaps it is your credibility or the creative way you bring solutions to your clients. You must determine what differentiates your firm from anyone else and market that point.

3. Tell them you understand their pain. The most effective way to ensure a lasting impact on your clients is to communicate with them on an emotional level. You must find their “pain.” What is it about their business, life, family, time, or environment that is causing pain? Are they not working or working too much? Is their business growing too fast or too slow? Is their family falling apart? Do they have a hard time tracking their employees? Find their pain and communicate with them on an emotional level about how you can help heal their pain and make their business, life, family, time or environment pleasurable.

4. Tell them the benefits of working with you. 
Features are what your service does. Benefits are why your client needs your service. For every feature you have, you must tell your client what the benefit is. Is your firm better, faster, guaranteed or more personal? Will your service create more clients, decrease turnover, or increase profit margins? These are all great features, but you must tell your clients how this benefits them specifically.

5. Tell them why it’s safe to hire you.
 Many of our clients work at small law firms that have services similar to those at larger, more established firms. Why should your potential client buy your service over the big firm’s service? While no one can predict the future of your firm, the savvy small firm recognizes the need to develop creative ways to reduce the risk of their clients in working with them. How could you lower the risk of your clients if they are concerned about working with a solo practitioner or a small law firm?

Article By:

Stephen Fairley
Of:
The Rainmaker Institute