LMA Body of Knowledge Domain: Business of Law
Competency: Business Structures and Trends

Driving change in a law firm is an ongoing challenge – there are competing priorities, intense competition, and demanding clients. How can legal marketers make a real impact? What tools and frameworks should you leverage to build your team and achieve your goals? In this practical discussion, we will share three strategies for igniting change, focusing on a client-centered approach. Join us for a deep dive into the latest trends in firm growth strategies, the dynamics of a high-functioning BD/Marketing team, and the power of tech integrations. Be part of the conversation that explores how to move forward with a more dynamic landscape for modern law firms.

Learning Outcomes:

• Gain actionable insights into law firm growth strategies
• Learn best practices on building and leading high-functioning BD/Marketing teams
• Explore the power of MarTech integrations that improve efficiency and impact

Speakers:

Elena Cutri, a sought-after speaker on change management, end user adoption, and professional development, brings her passion for education to her role as Director of Client Learning for LexisNexis. She and her team work closely with global clients to drive engaging software adoption strategies. Outside of work, Elena serves as an adjunct professor at a Chicago college, teaching public speaking and group communication skills. She is also actively involved in her community, volunteering as Chair of a 3,000-parent network dedicated to building Special Education Resources. Elena holds a Master's degree in Corporate Communications and an MBA in Global Management. She credits her family as her most significant source of knowledge and insight.

Rachel Watson is Director of Business Development, Client Development and Campaigns, currently responsible for Revenue Technology and Digital Marketing at Akin. She specializes in Intent and Behavioral modeling and marketing and has worked in Big Law, B2B Service Providers, Retail Ecommerce and SaaS. She is responsible for building the firm’s revenue technology stack and digital marketing program which actions data through programmatic campaigns to account based marketing.

Sponsored by: Small Firm/Solo Marketer SIG
Domain: Communications
BoK Competency: Reputation Management

Nearly all legal marketers are asked to develop directory submissions at some point in their career. For many of us, these submissions are woven into our roles; a seemingly never-ending process. From start to finish, this presentation will provide tips and tricks to help you effectively manage each step in the submission process.

You’ll learn how to:

• Create an in-house process that works for your firm
• Manage lawyers’ expectations for directory submissions
• Leverage practical tactics for completing directory submissions
• Use important steps you should be executing during research
• Establish a relationship with directory editors and researchers

Learning Outcomes:

• Identify ways to streamline the development of directory submissions
• Discuss current challenges and ways to effectively address them
• Create robust directory submissions

Presenters:
Jenna Darling, Communications Project Manager, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP
Aileen Hinsch, Manager, Practice Group Business Development & Management, Crowell & Moring

Sponsored by: Marketing Technology SIG 
Domain: Business Development 
BoK Competency: Presentation Skills

Voice is experiencing a major surge in marketing and business development. The way we search for information about topics and products we care about is changing rapidly. We are shifting from typing short phrases on keyboards to speaking sentences into the smart device of our choice. This calls for a shift and a new awareness of voice marketing as an opportunity for your firms and your lawyers to stand out from your competition.

As marketing and business development professionals, it is our responsibility to stay on top of the services our internal and external clients need to improve their lives and their businesses in a manner they  appreciate and find useful.

Join the LMA Marketing Technology SIG as it hosts Nancy Myrland, Marketing, Business Development, Content, Social & Digital Media Speaker, Trainer, & Advisor, as she walks us through this emerging and evolving field. She will talk about taking advantage of the massive marketing machine called Amazon by reviewing how she created the first legal marketing Alexa Flash Briefing on the site, and how you can repurpose these Flash Briefings in numerous ways to reach more clients and prospects.

She will also talk about podcasting and the opportunities present with this digital marketing tactic. On the level of familiarity that social and digital marketing can help create, audio is a major step forward in creating and nurturing relationships.

Learning Outcomes:

• Discuss voice marketing and if it has a place in the legal profession
• Uncover the latest in “Voice First” technology by learning about Amazon Alexa Flash Briefings
• Learn how to repurpose what is created via voice marketing in order to reach more people

Presenter:
Nancy Myrland, President, Myrland Marketing & Social Media

Exclusive for LMA Members

Sponsored by: PR & Communications SIG and Diversity & Inclusion SIG
Domains: Communications & Marketing Management and Leadership
BoK Competencies: Reputation Management, Media Relations/PR & Firm Organizational Structure and Dynamics

Law firms are under the microscope, for what is on the whole, a dismal track record on diversity & inclusion. Clients and reporters are watching closely, and speaking out, when they don’t like what they see. The few brave law firms that are venturing out to promote what they do externally are sometimes criticized or ridiculed. Meanwhile, the scant number of firms that are working to communicate efforts internally are struggling to get internal engagement around diversity and inclusion. Are law firms in a Catch 22?

1. Hear from a range of experts from the communications, reporting, diversity & inclusion fields to help your firms create engaging communications strategies that will get reporters attention and clients respect.
2. Get insights from leading organizations that have mastered diversity & inclusion communications
3. Gain understanding on some of the diversity & inclusion work that is leading the industry

Learning Outcomes:

• Discuss the important happenings in the diversity landscape to ensure your communications reflect an understanding of the context
• Learn what reporters and clients are looking to hear from firms (and what they hear too much of)
• Gather real life examples of campaigns and templates for creating your own communications strategies

Presenters:
Arielle Lapiano, Director Communications and Public Relations, Paul Hastings
Tiffany Yarde, CEO, Motovino
John Buchanan, Senior Communications Manager, SheppardMullin

Exclusive for LMA Members

Sponsored by: CMO SIG
Domain: Marketing Management and Leadership
BoK Competency: Firm Organizational Structure and Dynamics

Join the CMO SIG during this very interactive program where you will explore new methods to engage your leadership and learn how you can add value. This program will be held on Zoom where video and participation will be encouraged!

How as CMOs can we weather the downturn and pandemic? Impress your leadership with how quickly you are able to pivot and respond to new questions or demands. How can you up your game and add value to keep or get that seat at the table?  How do we do this in the age of Zoom, Webex, RingCentral, etc.? Develop coaching skills to help you train your chair, managing partner, and other leadership to engage with the screen and your virtual audience. Setting online meeting expectations and engage with purpose and meaning, through breakout rooms, polling, chat, and improvisational techniques etc. can overcome meeting fatigue.  

Learning Outcomes

• Learn how to engage your audience, build relationships, and develop new communication strategies in an online environment.
• Practice skills in thinking on your feet and responding in the moment to improve responding in a time of uncertainty.
• Explore new methods to engage your leadership, your chair, managing partners and clients.

Presenters:
Dave Bruns, Director of Client Services, Farella Braun + Martel
Heather Barnes, Founder, Improv@Work

Exclusive for LMA Members

Sponsored by: RDA
Domain: Technology Management 
BoK Competencies: Website Management and Social Media & Engagement 

According to Law Technology Today, 42% of the time, law firms take an average of 3+ days to respond to a message from a new potential client.

The last great experience your client or prospect had is now what they want and demand from you. Developing a customer-focused environment and delivering personalized marketing has now become a strategic imperative for law firms of all sizes. The bar is constantly rising in relation to what your clients expect from you.

Understanding the value of personalization is a great place to start the journey towards delivering highly consistent and memorable experiences. In this webinar, you will learn how a leading law firm started its personalization journey and was able to strengthen the marketing team’s ability to deliver highly relevant and personal experiences.

Learning Outcomes:

• Align personalization goals to your firm’s business objectives
• Learn best practices on how to score digital engagement
• Identify locations on your website that are good candidates for personalization 
• Understand basic personalization rules
• Leverage engagement data to understand your customer's behavior and segments 

Presenters:
Michelle Woodyear, Director of Digital Marketing, Covington & Burling LLP
Jaina Baumgartner, Personalization MVP, RDA
Chad Solomonson, VP of Marketing & Alliances, RDA

Exclusive for LMA Members

Sponsored by: Marketing Technology SIG & Small Firm SIG
Domain: Technology Management
Competencies: Website Management, Analytics and SEO, Communications Software and Platforms, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Today’s digital marketers are tasked with delivering results in increasingly complex and demanding environments. The technological aptitude of marketers is expanding, but the time to assess, purchase, onboard, and integrate technology solutions to deliver business results is a growing challenge—especially as new technology is rapidly invented and brought to market.

This webinar will define the marketing technology stack and provide a visualization of how disparate systems come together to achieve marketing and business development objectives. Then, through the lens of Motown and The Temptations, we’ll share a scenario that highlights the tech stack in action before discussing a legal marketing case study with an in-house expert.

Participants will gain a visualization of the marketing technology stack, challenge them to develop their own, and provide practical, implementable recommendations for marketers to bring back to their firms.

Specifically, this session will:

• Survey the abundant technologies available to marketers, legal and otherwise
• Provide an overview to the marketing technology stack concept
• Identify common pain points experienced by legal marketers in choosing and using marketing technologies
• Highlight actual solutions to selecting, adopting, and scaling marketing technology usage through primary and secondary sources
• Prepare audience members to bring ideas and options on how to alleviate marketing technology pain points to decision-makers at their firms

Learning Outcomes:

• Have a more comprehensive understanding of the marketing technology stack
• Understand how other law firms and marketing technologists are approaching technology adoption and implementation
• Be prepared to return to their firms, irrespective of size or resources, and more effectively put their marketing technology to work

Presenters: 
Jaron Rubenstein, President and Founder, RubyLaw
Mobina Panicker, Director of Digital Technology and Operations, Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP

Exclusive for LMA Members

Sponsored by: CMO SIG and the Small Firm SIG 
Domain: Marketing Management and Leadership
BoK Competency: Budgeting and Marketing Planning

Whether a CMO or the senior marketing leader of your firm, no skill is more essential to the operational success of your department than budgeting.  Join us as CMO’s discuss best practices on surviving the budget gauntlet.  In this session panelists will discuss:

• Their own unique budget process
• How they structure and manage their budgets
• How they align firm strategy to their budgets and ensure that expenses support firm strategy versus individual attorneys (maximizing ROI and ensuring accountability)
• How they address large, unbudgeted expenses
• What challenges they have right now such as the recent tax law changes
• How effective budgeting and processes helped them be successful

Budget season is around the corner … do you have a handle on your budget? 

Learning Outcomes:

• Learn budget processes, structure, challenges and best practices
• Learn how to align firm strategy and practices to ensure properbudgeting
• Understand the value of effective budgeting and processes

Presenters:
Allen Fuqua, Principal, Allen Fuqua Strategies
Michael Blachly, Chief Marketing Officer, Gray Reed & McGraw
Clinton Gary, Chief Strategy and Business Development Officer, Burr and Forman LLP
Ryan Pasquali, Chief Marketing Officer, Brooks Kushman P.C.

Exclusive for LMA Members

Sponsored by: CMO SIG & Diversity and Inclusion SIG
Domain: Marketing Management and Leadership
BoK Competencies: Consultant and Vendor Management & Firm Organizational Structure and Dynamics

Supplier diversity programs can bring competitive advantages and tangible value to Corporations. When done well, supplier diversity programs help an organization grow its top line and drive shareholder value. Learn the basics of Supplier Diversity and how to effectively integrate a program within your organization.

Learning Outcomes:

• Identify why Supplier Diversity efforts bring value to Corporations
• Discuss the fundamental components to start or grow a Supplier Diversity Program
• Understand how to integrate a program within your organization

Presenters:
Ashlee Nelson, Vice President, Business Development & Client Success, CVM, a supplier.io Company

Exclusive for LMA Members

Sponsored by: LMA International
Domains: Business of Law and Client Services

In “normal” years, as legal marketers, we are typically looking for the “thing” that can distinguish and differentiate our firms, help us drive more business – and frankly, can let us excel in meaningful ways inside our law firms. But 2020 isn’t normal – and 2021 isn’t likely to be either.

We are united in the workday fatigue we feel because of fears of our families or us getting sick, sheltering in place, working from home, videoconferencing, having little or no face-to-face contact with our teams and lawyers, and the uncertainty of how long this will last. Our lawyers and clients are experiencing these and other challenges.

In conversations with CMOs and marketing directors, we hear that their days are busier and longer than ever. Triage has been the unifying theme – fast-on-your-feet responses; forced to make binary choices of this, not that; re-budgeting and reprioritizing things at the speed of light; plus more and more and more. As we continue to emerge from the triage into our new way of doing business, client retention, growth and service is a priority.

To respond to this, our 2020 Next Big Thing Co-Chairs, Brenda Plowman (CMO, Fasken) and Deborah McMurray (CEO, Content Pilot) have pivoted to design an interactive regional session that will elevate service in a way that is relevant to what clients need most from their lawyers today and as they plan for tomorrow.

Our over-arching goal for the regional program is to help marketers break through the triage and design an active service strategy and tactics that reflect the current business environment.

Attendees will learn ways law firms at any stage of the Service Metamorphosis spectrum can shift by considering new ways to deliver service and run their law firms in a more streamlined way. The pandemic requires us to get back to the basics in service, focus on what matters to clients and build this into a sustainable model. 

Highly interactive program (via Zoom):

During this session, speakers and attendees will review five disruptors that will focus on better service.  We will come back together to hear what each team recommends, have time for Q&A and conclude – all within 75 minutes.

Learning Outcomes:

• Discuss how to bridge the delta between where you are in your triage mode to where your firm needs to be as we approach 2021
• Understand five pandemic-inspired disruptors that will help you deliver better service at a sustainable speed
• Take away a Service Metamorphosis 2.0 Law Firm Assessment tool, which helps you analyze the state of service in your firms – it’s more relevant than ever
• Evaluate your service approaches to ensure they are relevant in today’s environment and modify where necessary

Presenters:
Terra Liddell, Chief Marketing Officer, Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner LLP
Jonathan Mattson, Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer, Stinson LLP
Deborah McMurray, Founder, CEO, and Strategy Architect, Content Pilot LLC (2020 NBT Co-Chair)
Brenda Plowman, Chief Marketing Officer, Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP (2020 NBT Co-Chair)
Thomas D. Smanik, Director of Business Development & Marketing, Warner Norcross + Judd LLP

Exclusive for LMA Members