Excited Utterances

Here's how to launch a successful community initiative at your firm. Make sure you have genuine support from your firm's decision makers. If they are not truly behind the effort, you won't get very far. E verything you do should be strategic – partner with client charities, align with your firm's mission and core values. Define how you will measure your community program's success, and track it.   Community is a very broad concept so start by organizing your initiative into 3 main categories: giving (i.e. financial donations), hands-on involvement, and pro bono. GIVING - Determine an annual budget, identify the organizations that you plan to support, and amount to allocate to each. You may want to support organizations in which your lawyers hold board positions. You could survey your team for organizations they already support. Or, consider forming an internal committee who will consider sponsorship requests on a case by case basis. As mentioned above, look...

Is it just me or is legal marketing the hottest topic on the internet these days? Here's a roundup of recent law firm marketing and business development headlines. An  article  in The American Lawyer by Jennifer Scalzi thoughtfully points out that an effective marketing and business development team can help to identify a firm's true differentiators, implement effective client programs, and hold lawyers accountable to their business plans. But there's a catch: lawyers have to empower their M&BD teams and get out of their comfort zones to make it happen. This requires hearing things they may not want to hear. For instance, a client program may yield feedback that is not all glowing. But, as the author wisely notes, it is in this state of discomfort where opportunities lie. A National Law Review article  addresses how firms can use culture as a business development tool. While this article reads more like a plug for an upcoming Thomson Reuters conference than a th...

What does success look like in law firms? The authors, frustrated with the abundance of anecdotal evidence and lack of empirical evidence to answer this question, set out to solve it with research. Their findings are based on studies including a comprehensive, 75-item survey completed by 343 lawyers at U.S. AmLaw 100 firms.  They examine, among other things, the differences between lawyers who made partner in less than 10 years and those who didn't.   Accelerating Lawyer Success: How to Make Partner, Stay Healthy, and Flourish in a Law Firm. By Lori Berman, Heather Bock, and Juliet Aiken.  The authors have uncovered the recipe for how to make partner in less than 10 years. In short, it involves  hard work and quality work, strategic relationship building, planning, help from mentors, and a mind-set of being the master of your own fate. You gotta build relationships strategically, invest in them, and leverage them. You need goals, to make plans, and to stick t...

Has your new year’s resolution to read more books failed 3 years in a row? This year, try these 3 podcasts instead. A hands-free way to learn something new, and you can listen pretty much anywhere, from your commute to the office or while making dinner. The best part: way less time required than reading an entire book (episodes are 20 minutes to an hour). High ROI guaranteed. Legal Marketing Association (LMA)  Podcast . Each episode focuses on a hot topic in the world of legal marketing and business development and features a panel of experts on said topic. Launched in 2016, this podcast is about 20 episodes in, so you can start with the most relevant to you – or binge listen (may require giving up your usual Netflix series).  Notable episode:  Episode 11 . Bloomberg Law's Big Law Business Podcast . "The business of law, and news and information about the largest U.S. law firms, with Josh Block and Casey Sullivan." Notable episode :  Hogan Lovells' CEO &...

Our firm's associates are a talented bunch . They graduated top of their class, have backgrounds as musical theater performers and soccer players, and are multilingual and multicultural. But brains and talent can only get one so far in today’s legal profession . Regardless of what their future career goals are - to make partner, start their own firm, join a government or nonprofit organization - everyone needs a roadmap to get where they want to go. Help your associates to make it their new year’s resolution to create a business development plan in 2018. Here’s how to coach them: Create a written plan. Writing down your goals makes you accountable to them and more likely to achieve them. Also, you get the satisfaction of crossing your action items off your list as you complete them. Find a sample template online and use it.   Don't fret that you have written down your goals and are now tied to them. Think of your plan as a living, breathing document...

I began as a skeptic: of book clubs, of self-help books, of a bunch of former Marines applying U.S. military leadership principles to the business world. But I signed up for the Legal Marketing Association (LMA) Southeast Region’s book club anyway, because when you're the mother of an energetic toddler, the only way to find time to read a book is to literally schedule it into your calendar. We discussed one chapter per week. And that’s when I became a believer. Beyond the perk of connecting with an inspiring group of legal marketers from across the southeastern United States, the book itself was eye-opening. Too many “aha” moments to mention, so here is just my top takeaway from Spark – how to lead yourself and others to greater success. By Angie Morgan, Courtney Lynch, and Sean Lynch. Understand your values and live them . This exercise is foremost about becoming aware of what you truly value. Values are the principles or qualities that are important to you – like famil...

Former employees of a firm are a great potential referral source - if you manage the relationships correctly. The business case has already been made for alumni programs, and if you're reading this you likely agree, so I will cut straight to how to ensure your alumni program is worth your effort.  (Note: this formula is for legal marketers at smaller to mid-sized firms looking to start an alumni program. I'll post a follow up article in a few months on how to step up your alumni game once you have a basic program in place. ) Collaborate with your HR team to compile a list of former lawyers’ contact info. Add them to your firm’s CRM system. (If HR doesn't have these records, look to accounting, LinkedIn, and your current lawyers to help build the list.) You may want to include business services staff as well as lawyers . Create an alumni communication, set the frequency, and send relevant firm announcements. Feature individual alumni in your communications. Make sure...