I just walked back into my office after spending four days at the Legal Marketing Association‘s annual conference where I spoke on panel, organized the LMA Tweeters, and have volunteered for the 2011 conference advisory committee. I returned to my office this morning to find hundreds of emails that need to be

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

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!

Before I begin my take on the current incarnation of the Martindale-Hubbell® Peer Review Ratings ™ system and its relationship to Martindale-Hubbell ® Connected, I’d like to make a few things clear:

  1. Anything I am about to say is nothing I haven’t said to Martindale-Hubbell and LexisNexis ® (the parent company) representatives directly, in

I’ve been enjoying, yet disturbed, by the conversations this week on my professional listserv about Twitter (and I’ll take the liberty to extrapolate that to social media for purposes of this post). Our debate, quoting this post, was even picked up by Cal Law today. I don’t get all of the resistance. Where

Authentic is defined by Dictionary.com as:

  1. not false or copied; genuine; real: an authentic antique.
  2. having the origin supported by unquestionable evidence; authenticated; verified: an authentic document of the Middle Ages; an authentic work of the old master.
  3. entitled to acceptance or belief because of agreement with known facts or experience; reliable; trustworthy: an authentic