Track Session Time LMA Tweeters
General Session Opening Remarks & LMA Annual Report 08:30 – 8:45 @meganmckeon
General Session Your Honor Awards 08:45 – 9:00 @meganmckeon
General Session Keynote Address 09:00 10:30 @gerkmana

@jdtwitt

@lindsaygriffith @meganmckeon

@nancymyrland
One: Business of Law Recovery: Refocusing the Inside Counsel/Outside Counsel Partnership to Maximize Profitability 11:15-12:00 @lindsaygriffith
One: Business of Law Examining the Current Use of Alternative Arrangements 12:00-12:45 @lindsaygriffith

@meganmckeon
Two: Business Development Transition from a Marketing to a Business Development Mindset 11:15-12:00 @jdtwitt

@meganmckeon

@rebeccawissler

@lalaland999

@duetsblog
Two: Business Development Tactical Approaches for Developing Key Marketing Initiatives that Align with the Firm’s 12:00-12:45 @jdtwitt

@holdencalgary

@lalaland999

@duetsblog
Three: Client Service Developing a Long Term Key Client Initiative 11:15-12:00 @kateh32
Three: Client Service Relevance: Relationships: Revenue – Pathways to Profitability through Client Loyalty 12:00-12:45 @kateh32
Four: Public Relations “Wear Shoes that Match, and 7 other things I’ve learned working with lawyers in 25 years” 11:15-12:00 @katescoptur
Four: Public Relations Establishing a Comprehensive PR Strategy 12:00-12:45 @katescoptur
General Session Hall of Fame & Your Honor Awards 12:45 – 2:00 @meganmckeon
One: Business of Law Current Macro Economic Trends and the Impact on Practice Areas 2:30 – 3:30 @chris_whitmore
Two: Business Development RFP Best Practices and Emerging Trends 2:30 – 3:30 @rachaelDC

@lalaland999

@duetsblog
Three: Strategy Why Strategic Planning Matters – Especially Now 2:30 – 3:30 TBA
Four: New Media Leveraging Social Networking – Real World Applications of Web 2.0 that have led to New Business 2:30 – 3:30 @gerkmana

@holdencalgary

@jdtwitt

@kateh32

@lindsaygriffith

@nancymyrland
One: Leadership Social Media Strategies for Small to Mid-Sized Law Firms 4:00 – 4:45 @gerkmana

@holdencalgary

@jdtwitt

@nancymyrland

@rebeccawissler

@lalaland999

@duetsblog
One: Leadership Getting the Most – and Best – Out of Your Staff 4:45 – 5:30 @rebeccawissler

@lalaland999

@duetsblog
Two: Business Development Fresh Approaches for Honing Your Attorney Coaching and Negotiation Skills 4:00 – 4:45 TBA
Two: Business Development Process Improvement: Legal Lean Sigma for Law Firms 4:45 – 5:30 TBA
Three: Strategy The Rising Role of the Law Firm Business Manager 4:00 – 4:45 TBA
Three: Strategy Creative Strategies for Better Managing Limited Marketing Resources 4:45 – 5:30 @jdtwitt
Four: Public Relations Paving Your Path to Client Focused Communications – The Intersection of PR and Business Development 4:00 – 4:45 @kateh32
Four: Public Relations Managing the Media When Crisis Strikes 4:45 – 5:30 @kateh32
Track Session Time LMA Tweeters
General Session Quick Start 9:00 – 5:00 @gaillamarche

@katescoptur

@lalaland999

@duetsblog
General Session Masterminds 9:00 – 5:00 @meganmckeon

@nancymyrland

For the past week I have been pulling together the names and schedules for those planning to Tweet at the Legal Marketing Association‘s Annual Conference beginning this Wednesday in Denver. So, let me introduce you to the LMA Tweeters (I’ll post the schedule in a separate post):

Rustin Brown @WechslerRoss Wechsler helps financial and professional firms build brands, communicate ideas, interact with clients and sell their services. http://wechsler.com/
Chris Fritsch @crmsuccess Chris Fritsch helps law firm Clients be successful and get value from CRM and BD technology
Lindsay Griffith @lindsaygriffith Marketer and Events Planner Extraodinaire for International Lawyers Network; photographer; officially a runner, big military supporter and huge NJ Devils fan! http://www.iln.com
Kate Haueisen @kateh32 Business development and marketing expert for the legal and financial worlds.
Jon Holden @Holdencalgary MarCom Supervisor at Canadian Law Firm
Gail Lamarche @gaillamarche Marketing Director at Henderson Franklin law firm; seminar/event planner; social media fan; loyal Red Sox & Celtics fan
Rachael Loper @rachaelDC Legal Marketing CMO. www.nixonpeabody.com
Adrian Lurssen @jdtwitt JD Supra. Ex Yahoo! Writer. Editor. Poet. All-around word guy. www.jdsupra.com.
Megan McKeon @meganmckeon Legal marketer for an IP firm, working on my MBA after finishing my JD.
Heather Milligan @heathermilligan Legal marketer, mom, girl scout leader, 80s music chick, GF to Sports dude, Go Dodgers!! Tired. www.legalwatercoolerblog.com
Nancy Myrland @nancymyrland Social Media Consultant, Speaker & Trainer; Professional Marketing Advisor. I help firms strengthen relationships with clients using Strategic Social Media. www.myrlandmarketing.com
Jayne Navarre @jaynenavarre Web marketing strategy, communications, and biz dev for legal industry. http://http://www.lawgravity.com/
Kate Scoptur @katescoptur In-house marketer for a Madison, WI law firm. love coffee, Bucky, new hobbies & reading.
Nat Slavin @natslavin Client Feedback/Client Programs for law/prof service firms; Ex-editor/publisher. Fan of Big Ideas, music, books, food and gadgets. http://www.wickerparkgroup.com/
Chris Whitmore @Chris_whitmore Competitive Intelligence, CRM, change management, legal marketing, Lost Fan.
Rebecca Wissler @rebeccawissler Legal Marketing Communications pro with my thumb on the pulse and an insatiable appetite for PR/social media/eating.

UPDATES:

Jenn Bullett @HubbardOne Hubbard One is the leading provider of marketing, business development and information technology for law firms.  http://www.hubbardone.com/
Mark Beese @mbeese Leadership, Biz Dev and Marketing Consultant that works with lawyers and other professionals. http://www.leadershipforlawyers.com/
Laura Gutierrez. @lalaland999 @duetsblog Creative mind: Reader, writer, editor. Computer geek. Life-long learner. Random. Wine snob. Law firm communications markerter. Big smile
Karen Cariello @karencariello B2B marketer in legal/tech who’s always looking for a good conversation on strategies/tactics of growing successful B2B businesses!
Alli Gerkman @gerkmana I try to make continuing legal education better. I also follow politics.
Jeffrey Morgan @jeffreymorganCA I work with law firms, professional service organizations and publishers throughout the world on their marketing, branding and business development efforts.

You can either follow everyone at #LMA10, or follow an individual or two to cut down the chatter. In addition, here’s my list of those attending #LMA10. While many of these folks will be on Twitter, they might not necessarily being tweeting sessions. If you would like your name added to either list, please feel free to send me a DM. See you in Denver.

The ever esteemed Jayne Navarre, Russell Lawson and I are presenting at next week’s Legal Marketing Association Annual Conference on Social Networking Strategies for Small to Mid-Sized Law Firms. Unfortunately, the program length will make it difficult for us to take a lot of questions from the audience (both live and via Twitter). As moderator, Jayne will be asking questions of both Russ and myself. So, what are the scenarios challenging you most in your transition to the social web? If you’d like to submit a question, please do so in the comments section below, or to @JayneNavarre in 140 characters or less.

The Legal Marketing Association’s annual conference begins next week, and the buzz and excitement are taking off over at #LMA10 (come on, Milk & Girl Scout Cookie Tweetup Wednesday night … who’s in??). For those of you who don’t Twitter, #LMA10 is a search term being used by the conference attendees. You don’t even have to be on Twitter to follow the conversation. I am pulling together a list of the LMA Tweeters, and the sessions they’ll be attending. If you are attending LMA and plan to Tweet, let me know which sessions so I can add you to the list. I will also pull together a conference agenda listing who is tweeting the sessions. Thanks, Heather

Kevin O’Keefe asked a great question today on his blog:  Does a lawyer need to blog to make effective use of social media?

Is it prudent for a lawyer or law firm rely on third parties to maintain and protect their brand? A brand as a professional service provider that labels you as a trusted and reliable authority in a niche area of the law. I’m not sure that’s a responsible course of action.

In addition to the inherent difficulties of establishing yourself as a thought leader and an expert through Twitter, Facebook, and the like, what if those services decline in popularity or go away? Unlikely, but law firms approaching social media worry about things of lesser risk.

What if your brand is hitched to some third party social media tool when that happens? What happens to all of the content you shared? At best, no one is one looking at the content anymore if there is a decline in popularity in the social media tool you used. At worst, your content is gone.

If a lawyer is really going to network through the Internet and engage their target audience through social media, don’t they need to blog?

Obviously, I think that there is profound value in blogging for individual attorneys.

In a crowded marketplace, whether it is within an AMLAW 100 firm, or a popular practice area, blogging can help establish your presence, brand, and credibility.

I constantly encourage younger associates to blog as it can help establish their points of knowledge, and fill out those empty looking bios.

A blog, in my opinion, can be a key point of differentiation between you and your competitor.

I also like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook for their ability to expand your reach to new contacts (current and potential customers/clients), build relationships with referral sources and influencers, and its use as a distribution channel for content.

I, however, hadn’t thought about the “risks” involved in hitching your brand to a third party application until reading this post. But Kevin’s right.  There will always be the next Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. However, your blog is your own. You are not dependent on a third party application for your positioning and branding.

So, to answer Kevin’s questions. Is it necessary to blog to make effective use of social media? As an overall strategic component, I’m going to have to vote “yes.”

Great question, Kevin.

What say you??

[polldaddy poll=2788049]

Jayne Navarre and I were chatting yesterday, getting ready for our presentation next week at the Legal Marketing Association‘s annual conference, and we touched on the functionality of websites and blogs.

We both have participated in, and launched, websites, and now blogs, for law firms. In the beginning, it was about the graphics, the flash, the WOW factor.

Personally, I think we have evolved.

It’s now about the functionality. The ability to locate and access key information. It’s the ability for the blog or website to be accessed from different platforms: laptops, desktops, smart phones, RSS readers, etc. It’s about engaging people. It’s about the conversation.

It’s about being found, rising to the top of Google search results in a crowded field. It’s about SEO. It’s about “sticking” on the page and page views per visitor. You have a mere second or two to capture someone … if they get stuck with “loading,” or can’t find what they want quickly and intuitively, they’re moving on.

As I prepare to redo my law firm’s website, functionality is number one on my list. How do I not only get the viewer to engage in the website, how do I get the attorneys in our firm to engage with the website? And, yeah, I have ideas about that.

With all this in mind, I couldn’t help but dig deeper into Greg Lambert‘s post today on 3 Geeks and a Law Blog taking MoFo to task over their new site … and he has some great points:

Never mind the fact that it looks like whoever they paid to design the website appeared to be “print media experts” and not web designers, this site loads like it is running on an old 486 processor.  Why on earth would a site that is basically two colors, run so slow??

I went to IWebTool.com to see if it was really as slow as I thought by comparing it to some other law firm websites.  Sure enough, it was.  On average it took over 1.5 seconds to load the initial webpage.  Click on some of the links and it sometimes took 3 seconds to load.  When I compared it to Skadden’s website, or DLA Piper, the MoFo site was significantly slower.  Skadden’s and DLA Piper loaded 1kb of data in .05 seconds or less compared to MoFo’s site taking 1.26 seconds.  That’s means it takes MoFo 25 times longer to load the page!!

I’m going to add this: I’m not going to a legal website for gimmicks. I’m there for information. Usually something like this:

  • I need more information on the attorneys that presented at today’s beauty contest.
  • Can this firm handle my business?
  • Does this law firm represent clients like me?
  • Can these lawyers help me solve my business problem?
  • Ugh?? What’s the address where I’m going for that deposition?

Flash, video, cool graphics and “branding” are all fine and good, and they’ll win the designers and marketing team some really nifty awards, but will they “differentiate” you from the pack of other AmLaw 100 firm? Will they encourage or discourage returning viewers? Does the home page provide enough content-rich information to push the firm in search results? Can the user find the information they need, or are they going down a rabbit hole of “click here”?

Websites and blogs today are about information, engaging people, about conversations. For retailers, it’s about selling a product. For a law firm, it’s about selling services (the people!). And, we all know, that all things being equal, a client will hire the attorney that they know, like and trust.

Hey, Coolerites! Welcome to the new look and feel for The Legal Watercooler. I wanted a place where we can continue the conversation, but where I can upload documents, presentations, and other legal marketing resources for a more well-rounded website. I’d love your feedback … but, keep in mind, I don’t do CSS coding (YET!!)

I had to chuckle at the following e-mail exchange captured by Scott Greenfield over at Simple Justice because I am always on time and would never think so highly of myself as to walk into a room an hour late under any circumstance. Time management (or lack thereof) is a huge pet peeve of mine. I’m just like that. I always leave time for traffic, plane delays, little emergencies, etc. and have little tolerance for others who don’t. If I am leading a meeting, or moderating a panel discussion, I begin at the stated time, and I end at the stated time. There’s even a term for this. It’s called “honoring your time commitment.” I don’t know if this story is urban legend, or actually happened, but I remember hearing how George W. Bush on his first day as president calling an 8:00 a.m. meeting. At 8:00 a.m. he stood up, walked over and locked the conference room doors. At that moment you were either in the meeting, or not. No one was ever late again.I love that! So, here’s my take on people who are late. They are late because they find that THEIR time is more important than yours. Period.  They took too long getting ready that morning. They didn’t put the paper down. They didn’t get off that call. They chose to run a “quick” errand. You get the picture. I live in Los Angeles. Traffic capital of the world. I always leave an extra 20 minutes to get from the Westside to downtown. An extra 45 minutes to get to the Valley. If my appointment is at 10:00, I schedule myself to arrive at 9:30, “just in case.” If by luck there is no traffic and I’m early, there’s always a Starbucks I can hit, or a phone call I can return from the parking lot. Why am I peeved about late people? Because my time is limited and it is extremely valuable to me, and I get angry when you waste it. I don’t care if you are a doctor, lawyer, teacher, my boyfriend or my 9-year old Junior Girl Scout. I don’t care if you’re a very important person, on an important call with another really important person. Honor your time commitments. Lighten your schedule, or learn how to manage your time better. If you’re running  more than five minutes late, call and let your party know. Be respectful. Ok. There’s one excuse for being late … my doctor had to run out and deliver a baby across the street at the hospital this morning, leaving me in the waiting room with some really bad magazines. But, I must say, she said she’d be back in 30 minutes, and she was.

Next month I’ll be speaking at the Legal Marketing Association’s annual conference on … drum roll, please … Social Media Strategies for Small to Mid-Sized Law Firms (along with the esteemed Jayne Navarre and Russ Lawson).

In addition, I have partners speaking or attending conferences across the country on issues that impact their client base. So, I really appreciated Jaffe PR‘s latest newsletter post: The Event Isn’t Over Once You’ve Finished Speaking.

The best way is to create a follow-up plan prior to attending and implement it immediately following the event. Prior to attending the event, ask the conference organizer what kind of information can be shared with you.  Sometimes speakers are given full contact information and allowed a one-time use; other times this information is only available to sponsors.  If that’s the case, you and your firm may decide a small sponsorship is worth it.

  • If you are able to reach out to attendees prior to the event, have a plan for when you follow up and decide what information you will give them to continue the conversation.
  • Network — as much as you can.  Talk to the people who attended your presentation, get business cards, connect with them on LinkedIn.  You never know what might lead to new business.
  • Draft a brief summary of the event and post it to your LinkedIn profile.
  • Use Twitter to reference your presentation and post a link to it.
  • Send a summary of the event, with a presentation link to clients that you think might be interested.
  • Participate in any post-event activities that the conference has planned and stay in touch with the conference organizer for future engagements.

I’m going to add a few more bullets to this list: Continue Reading Maximize that speaking opportunity!