#Day1
Derek Maine
I knew exactly where I was headed
for the first breakout session when I read this excerpt from the conference
program, “Social Media can either be a complete waste of time, or a key
strategic plank for your firm.” It was the “or” that caught my eye. If I was
charged with leading this session (which would be a terrible idea for a number
of reasons, my stark lack of experience chief among them), I would have just
put a period after ‘waste of time’ and been done with it. But, “a key strategic
plank for your firm?” I grabbed a coffee and headed off to listen to the crazy
man.
Setting aside some glibness,
there are [obviously] lots of different types of law firms and lots of
different types of lawyers [no, really]. Social Media may work as a strategic
plank for some firms. I can certainly see how it can be effective for lawyers
as individuals. Social Media is a great tool for keeping you updated on the
things that interest you. But that’s all it is and turning it into a platform
for brand synergy is so transparently cheeky that I suspect it achieves the
opposite effect. Social Media works for personal brands, like the individual
lawyer, because we can get a sense of who s/he is and what s/he is interested
in. The rumblings of a shared connection can take hold in the digital space
before we even meet. I work for a civil
defense law firm. We, as a firm, represent other businesses and, typically, we
are defending them. To what end would it serve to tweet our Super Lawyer
results and, more importantly, who would care? We, the faceless firm, are made
up of incredibly interesting individuals doing outstanding legal work. I was
interested in learning how I could tweet that and have you believe it and
have you care.
It turned out that the man was
not crazy at all, just Canadian. So he was unnaturally kind and approachable. I
went ahead and put my guard up. Randall
Craig, President of 108 ideaspace, put on a very professional, organized presentation
that focused on tangible ways to manage our time when dealing with Social
Media. He addressed risk and specific catch-all internet directories (he
instructed us all to claim our own listing and encourage firm members to do the
same, on www.zoominfo.com) that we should
be monitoring. I absolutely wrote a note to myself that I should definitely put
that on my to-do list which I have every intention of following up on in the
very near future. I didn’t come out of his presentation any more sold on the
strategic plank of Social Media, but that’s not his job. Onward!
My job, I suspect all of our
jobs, sometimes involves begging. I am not too proud to beg for data. And there
is nothing more seductive to an attorney than, “other firms are doing it.” It
is their catnip. So I sat in the front row for “Big Data for Legal Marketers,”
fully prepared to write down an exhaustive list of what some folks much smarter
than me were doing, handing it over to leadership at my firm, and getting my
numbers. I was not disappointed. I believe that the secret to more business,
and varied, interesting work, is right here at my office somewhere amidst the
data. Existing clients already know the quality of our work and have our phone
number. Relationship management, and coordination among different attorneys in
different practice groups, strikes me as the single most effective and
profitable path to business development. Alina
Gorokkhovsky, Partner at RCT Partners, was really impressive. The panel
delved into process improvement. If it’s true that marketing is part science
and part art, this panel focused on measuring our successes and failures in
such a way that the business owners (partners) would have a better sense of the
importance of legal marketing. It wouldn’t just be buzz words and copying the
firm down the street with one extra floor, but assigning statistics to what
worked and what didn’t and then deploying our resources appropriately. This may
seem obvious, intuitive and elementary. It is in many ways. But law firms have
consistently been late adopters of successful business strategies. Big Data is
here now, in our industry and making our jobs much more efficient.
By now most attorneys understand
that asking clients what they need is more effective than telling them what
they can do. Many of the attorneys at my firm, and across the country, are
focusing in on the industries their clients work in; diving in and becoming a
partner to each other’s success. I went to the panel discussion on Competitive
Intelligence not to learn how to spy on the firm down the street but how to
wisely gather and present market intelligence on the industries we service. The
panel delivered by focusing on the tools; SEC filings, industry reports, white
papers, google alerts, broad macroeconomic trends. If we accept that a
conversation with a client about their needs is effective, then it is no legal
industry secret that calling with, “I saw where the weather was predicted to
shut down the Bakken transportation routes for a few weeks, is there anything
we can do to help you plan for this,” is the ticket to that ‘true partnership.’
The “Just Right” formula panel enticed
me with project management techniques. The speakers really were very good and
they played a version of “Cards Against Humanity” that was clever and well
received. So why is my notepad for the session still unstained by ink? Probably
it’s my fault for not spotting the key takeaways, for not sensing and adopting
the messages behind the case studies. I walked out of the room, looked at my
clean notepad and felt like I had failed. The Legal Marketing Association
Southeastern Chapter had graciously awarded me a scholarship to attend the
conference. Now I had an empty notebook for one of the sessions. And it was a
session with good speakers and relevant content. But there’s no “Just Right”
formula. Kelly Harbour, Manager of
Client Relationship Management at Bingham McCutchen LLP and Jim Jarrell, Business Development
Manager at Barnes & Thornburg LLP went through a project each of them
worked on and identified the steps they took to complete the project. Both
projects sounded great and I am convinced they did a wonderful job and their
respective firms are better off now than they were before. But we all know,
generally speaking at least, what needs to be done. We all know, eventually,
after some research, how to do it. There are countless books on organizational
methods for project management. There are a billion apps. You can pay someone
to speak at your organization that is an unquestioned expert in the field. The
field is large. There are a lot of projects. Someone needs to manage them. But
really, you take a notebook and you write down step one. Then you write down
step two and step three and so on and so forth. Then you start the work, you
work in sequence, you cross off and move on. That is, in essence, every
technique. There are some cool tools and there are certainly people who are
much better at project management than others and our panel was comprised of
such people. But there’s only so much you can teach or pass along. You pick a
system, any organizational system will do, and you commit. That’s the formula.
Wed
4/16/14: Buying In and
Selling Out
(#Day2)
Thurs
4/17/14: There is no “New
Normal.” There is Normal & There is you
(#AirportGiftShop)
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