From time to time I use this blog not to opine on legal marketing, but as a vehicle for my voice. That is what this post is about today. I am not anti-gun, I never have been. I am, however, a mom, a sister, a daughter, a wife. I cannot shake what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School this week. We have a problem in this country that we continue to avoid. While others look to Congress, or the White House, or their local legislatures for change, I say the change begins with me. With you. With us. 

For those who don’t know my background, before my career in legal marketing I was a lobbyist. A gun control lobbyist. As in Handgun Control, Inc. and The Center to Prevent Gun Violence. I was a Republican, working for a Republican, trying to make a difference.

I was in the White House the day President Clinton signed The Brady Bill. I even have a personalized signed copy hanging in my office.

I was there when we got the news about Luby’s, Columbine, Waco, Ruby Ridge, 101 California. I stood alongside the California Attorney General in Sacramento as we pushed new legislation, gave testimony before the Senate and Assembly. I walked the halls in Sacramento with victims as we worked to enhance our state gun control laws. Continue Reading Before I was a legal marketer, I was a gun control lobbyist

I write and speak frequently on the generational shifts and divides in law firms, along with my colleague Jonathan Fitzgarrald. We first started to identify generational trends and the impact on the law firm in 2013. We always mentioned the “next” generation, the “swipe” generation, but there was no data on them. Yet.

The studies are starting to come out, and if you’re worried about your Millennials, you need to start to panic about your iGen, a term coined by Dr. Jean M. Twenge. I just saw her on CNN, just read her article, Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis.

Continue Reading Here comes the iGen: And we all need to be worried

“Be curious, not critical,” was the advice of Peter Guber at the Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment Commission’s recent board room program on eSports. The impressive panel of industry leaders were speaking to an audience filled with impressive Los Angeles business leaders about the rise of eSports (and a brief education on what eSports is), along with how it will impact the various businesses represented.

Be Curious, Not Critical.

This was Guber’s first piece of advice that I found particularly relevant for lawyers when approaching something new, like eSports, or business development, or the idea of blogging/social media, or insert the last thing your marketing professional suggested. Continue Reading Be curious, not critical. Business advice for lawyers.

I wrote in part one of The truth behind lawyer jokes: The “business of law” is tough about the challenges facing the business of law. Namely, the people involved.

In this post, I want to turn to the solutions. Or some ideas for solutions as each firm and its challenges are different and unique to them, but not unique as a whole.

For every problem there are many solutions. Continue Reading The truth behind lawyer jokes (Part 2): The glass is leaking

The Legal Marketing Association‘s annual conference is just around the corner. I’ve got my flight, my hotel, my conference registration, and my custom badge ribbons ready to go. But before we all head out, there are a few things we should all be doing to prepare so that we make the most of the conference, our time, and our opportunities.

From a post last year:

We all attend professional conferences. Some are close-knit groups, such as the Legal Marketing Association’s Annual Conference; others will have 10s of thousands in attendance, and take over a whole city (ACC Annual Meeting, CES, NRF’s Big Show).

Sometimes we will know no one attending, other times hundreds due to our level of involvement in the organization.

No matter how many people you know or don’t know, speaker or not, first time attendee or not, you need to prepare to maximize the time you will be there, and out of the office.

I start to prepare for a conference  approximately two weeks or so before my departure. When I say I do these things, I really do them, and I coach others to do so as well for one reason: They work.

YUP, gonna make you click to the original post to read more … 

Don’t be a lurker. 6 Things to Do BEFORE Attending a Conference

What it comes down to is that we’re all really busy trying to get out of the office. Many of us will be distracted at the conference by the office. But your firm is spending good money to send you. Take advantage of the opportunity. However, it’s a big conference, with a lot of people, and a homecoming with old friends. Planning today will make your experience all the better.

If you’re looking for me, here’s my schedule:

Sunday

  • Flying in with the Sports Dude and headed to the pool. Trying to gather some people for dinner and a show (DM me if interested in going).

Monday

  • CMO Summit on Monday. Then I’ll meet up with my First Time Attendee Mentees at the First Timers Reception, then we’ll head over to the full reception, and then I have dinner plans.

Tuesday

  • I’m doing the AI Track. Really looking forward that. All the breakouts for networking in the exhibit hall (looking forward to winning some prizes), and off to the reception. Playing it by ear Tuesday night.

Wednesday

  • After everyone wishes me happy birthday and bestows upon me lots of gifts, I’m headed to a couple more sessions before flying home so my kids can bestow me with gifts as well.

Thursday will be spent getting caught up in the office, sharing great content, and preparing to head out again on Sunday for the ALA Annual Conference where Jonathan Fitzgarrald and I will be presenting on Generational Marketing: Strategies and Tactics for Engaging Different Generations.

2016 will be an election studied for decades to come. Professors, politicians, pollsters, statisticians, the media, Main Street, and Wall Street will try and make sense of it all. How did everyone (except the LA Times poll) get it wrong? From Dan Schnur this morning, his tip for us all:

I suggest we bring the lessons of #Election2016 back to the law firm: How often are we ignoring the voice of the client? The voice of the differing generations? The voice of the non-equity partners, or the rising associates? The working mothers (and fathers)? Not to mention the staff?

Rarely does a client fire a law firm. They just stop giving you new matters.

Take a look at your client originations. Are they stagnant? Have the new matters slowed down? When’s the last time you had lunch to see how your client is doing? What’s new in their world? Their industry?

Here’s a freebie for you. Go to lunch and be prepared to ask the following: Continue Reading Lessons for lawyers and legal marketers from #Election2016

Jonathan Fitzgarrald and i started speaking about the generational divide several years ago. Our primary focus was on how the law firms, by not passing on leadership rolls to the younger generations, were putting themselves at risk, as their clients had already made the generational shift.

As time passed, and we began speaking at other conferences beyond legal marketing, we began to discuss the shifts within our firms.

So. Millennials. What are we going to do about  the Millennials? Aren’t we all asking the same question?

I had my own recent experience that I want to raise to the level of a warning to us all. My marketing manager left us to work for the do-good-work start-up where she had been volunteering. She felt she could balance her corporate life by doing good outside of work. Until they offered her “enough” money to join them full-time. Continue Reading A new Millennial conundrum

There are approximately 1.4 million licensed lawyers in the United States versus 250 million adults. As a legal marketer I am often called upon to edit lawyered-authored materials for a non-lawyer audience and mediums other than legal briefs. In other words, for the other 248.6 million adults. Needless to say, the editing process can become a very sensitive conversations between lawyer and marketer.

At a prior firm, I got into a very heated conversation with a partner as to why his 50 to 100-word paragraphs did not translate well into a blog post. I tried to explain that online “walls of text” were difficult to read, and he needed to limit himself to one to two sentences per “paragraph.” He refused to budge and it really impacted our relationship.

Another partner and I got into the whole “period-space” versus “period-space-space” controversy a couple years ago. After some heated debate (yelling) in the hallway, I went and sourced it for him. While he didn’t like it, he agreed and period-space became the rule of grammar in our firm’s marketing materials (see Oh, Brother. The Period Space v. Space Space debate. Again.). Continue Reading A Tale of Three Style-Guides

Senior legal marketing professional partnering with lawyers on business development strategies and the business of law.

Heather Morse began her career in legal marketing in 1998, after spending 10 years working with non-profit and member service organizations. After serving in senior marketing positions with AmLaw 100 law firms, Heather is currently the Chief Business Development