Click for InsideLegal's LMA 2013 Conference Photo Album

We have spent the last 14 years working within the legal community and a central connection point has always been attending industry events ranging from
LegalTech to ABA events and legal administrator programs as well as technology
conferences such as the annual ILTA educational conference. For some strange, ‘bad timing’ reason, we have
never participated in the Legal Marketing Association’s (LMA) Annual Conference so when we spoke with LMA's Executive Director, Betsi Roach, and discovered the 2013 conference was directly after LexThink.1 and the ABA TECHSHOW, we decided to join 1,200+ legal
marketers and law firm marketing-specific vendors at the Aria Resort in Las Vegas, flying directly there from Chicago.

We thoroughly enjoyed the high caliber educational sessions and numerous
networking and collaboration opportunities. In the spirit of voicing our 'clean
slate' opinion, and with the intention of ‘keeping the marketing innovation ball
rolling’, we are sharing our 2013 LMA Conference session take-aways and marketing
observations:

• Be
  proactive and timely with marketing outreach & client communication: One
  of the big themes all week was the heightened expectations general counsel and
  corporate legal departments have when it comes to the marketing and content
  efforts put forth by law firm subject matter experts and legal marketers. The
  two biggest ‘must provides’ focused on timely
  and relevant content—new case
  rulings; relevant legislation; opinion and thought leader pieces by law firm
  leaders; and email alerts with dynamic, real-time content versus static,
  re-packaged dated information. As stated by a few panelists during InsideCounsel’s General Counsel Panel, law
  firms need to be their corporate clients' ‘eyes and ears’ in their particular
  practice area of expertise: “Before we give you our business, make it yours to
  know ours, inside and out.”
• Share
  + inspire: We left LMA inspired to implement what we learned and share
  lessons learned and examples with our community. Not everyone was so lucky as
  to attend the annual meeting, but thanks to social networks and tools everyone
  can benefit from the output of the various sessions. Case in point, we have seen several top notch LMA recap/follow-up blog posts and articles so simply search for #LMA13 on Twitter to view some of these. As you are reading this
  post, we encourage you to share your ‘take-ways’ not only with other marketers
  and business development folks, but with lawyers who might wonder
  why you are out of the office and in Las Vegas. It is your job to share this information
  and inspire your colleagues to try out new marketing efforts and at a minimum be
  open to you initiating new marketing programs that could benefit your firm.
  Also, the best way to ‘share and inspire’ is to get out of your office. Marketers need to proactively engage their attorneys – schedule some visits, take your
  partner out to lunch and find out what their biggest pains are and how
  marketing can help. Take this a step further and get involved in the next business
  pitch, be it by lending creative expertise, statistical and business analysis, a
  social media primer or something else your attorneys will value and want you to
  share.
• Bet
  on big data: While several LMA Conference sessions touched on how legal
  marketers can make better use of the client data they already have to provide
  better communication, Wednesday’s final ‘Leveraging Big 4 Consulting Best
  Practices to Bolster your Business Development Strategies’ session really drove
  home the big data mining point. As featured in BTI Consulting Group’s session
  wrap-up, the Big Four accounting firms have long been using aggregated
  client data and client preferences to determine which content, educational sessions
  and special programs their clients and prospects might be interested in. Keeping
  clients looped in on timely information and relevant educational opportunities
  not only helps marketers standout in the era of the ‘exploding’ inbox, but let’s
  clients know they know their business and needs as intimately as they do. Our
  Head of Content Jobst Elster was recently interviewed by ABA’s Law Practice Today - Digital Edge
  podcast's hosts Sharon Nelson (Sensei Enterprises) and Jim Calloway (Oklahoma Bar Association) on ‘Big Data for Lawyers’ and much of the discussion focused on law firm
  marketing’s role in pushing the big data envelope. In fact, a recent Gartner survey revealed that by 2017, marketing will have a larger technology
  budget focused on big data mining and analytics technology than IT!
• Manage
  + measure: We’ve all heard ‘you can only manage what you measure’ (and vice versa), so prioritize
  establishing metrics for your marketing efforts. This has many benefits beyond
  being able to determine the return of your marketing spend and efficacy of your
  marketing tactics. For one, being able to scientifically prove that a marketing
  effort works or doesn’t can empower you to experiment more and show your
  attorneys that say their ‘tried and true’ brown bag sessions are really not
  adding new clients. LMA Conference presenters mentioned several useful free
  tracking and measurement tools including Twitter (track new followers and
  popularity of specific content and call-to-action messages); bitly (provides custom
  shortened links for blog posts/articles/content that can be tracked revealing
  click-through rates and popularity); Google Analytics (to track website traffic
  and online content and link popularity); and Google Alerts (to keep track of legal
  issues, competitors and trends).
• 

  LMA Conference Keynote
  Professor David Wilkins, Harvard Law School

  Kiss the ‘traditional’
  sales process goodbye: We are all too familiar with the age
  old sales funnel concept which starts with a large number of prospective contacts on
  top, continues with a handful of qualified leads further down the funnel, and
  ends with one client or new customer at the bottom. The idea is that sales is a
  ‘numbers game’ and the more you pour in the top (unqualified prospects) the
  more will eventually come out at the bottom (even if not your 'ideal' client). This is conducive to mass marketing
  and cold-calling centered lead generation all of which have proven to not work
  within the realm of law firm business development. New attention must be given to client relationships,
  client loyalty and influence, and the establishment of trust and advocacy. We
  have seen this before of course but have noticed creative interactive agencies
  like One North Interactive increasingly advising their clients on how they can establish greater client influence,
  trust and loyalty leveraging personalized website content and customizing the online
  user experience based on preferences and real time needs. Client feedback and client loyalty were also central themes of Wednesday's final session moderated by BTI Consulting's principal Marcie Borgal Shunk and highlighted research findings reiterating how far ahead of BigLaw Big 4 Accounting is when it comes to client feedback and satisfaction. It boils down to knowing your clients and what they expect of you. This point was hammered home by LMA Conference keynote speaker and Harvard Law Professor David Wilkins and is clearly articulated as part of the ACC Value Challenge which goes far beyond improving legal spending and is focused on the entire law firm-corporation relationship.

• Thought leadership … is NOT dead: While it might be an overused and tired buzz
  word with much promise but lacking content substance, law firm thought
  leadership remains one of the top criteria GCs look at when engaging potential
  outside counsel. Your firm leaders not only need to know what they are talking
  about (subject matter expertise) but display leadership and a ‘voice of
  authority’ when it comes to their legal expertise. If your traditional thought leadership outreach is falling flat, explore new avenues of reaching
  your clients and prospects such as concise videos, webinars including
  actionable intelligence and content, and intimate client events.
• Don’t
  give up on social media, just ‘spoon feed’ it: While
  ignorance might be bliss, there’s nothing blissful about avoiding or ignoring
  social media for your law firm. While your lawyers may not yet see the light
  when it comes to leveraging social media tools to participate in the online legal
  conversation, chances are the competition does and within the next few years
  there will be no alternative. It’s sort of like the proliferation of smartphones these days, everyone has one; the only differentiation is the preferred mobile
  platform and scope of use aka which apps are you using. With that said, its legal marketing’s job to know
  which social tools are out there and which ones the firms should consider and
  vet. Based on what we heard this week, the two pieces of social media ‘low
  hanging fruit’ are blogs and Twitter. Both can be gradually rolled out and in
  the case of Twitter, research gathering and content aggregation can be a major
  firm benefit without actively tweeting or growing your Twitter presence. This week's InsideCounsel 'In-house New Media Engagement Survey' findings revelaed that 74% of all corporate respondents are so called 'invisible users'; they use LinkedIn and other social media tools but mostly to listen in and receive information versus actively participating and sharing. Equally intriguing is the statistic that 55% of GCs read
  attorney-authored blogs as frequently as blogs authored by professional journalists
  and 53% of counsel envision a future in which a well executed blog will
  influence hiring decisions.

While this is not an exhaustive list of ‘lessons learned’, we hope
it will inspire and motivate to keep on pushing the envelope when it comes to
your firms’ marketing effort. Stay tuned for our next post on ‘No Regrets Marketing
… Vegas Style’.