10 Post-Event Tips to Get the Most Out of Conference Attendance

By Gina F. Rubel

What do you do to follow up with people you met and things you learned about at a meeting or conference? Do you just take the business cards that you received and stuff them in a drawer or do you do something with them? Do you take the conference materials and put them on a shelf?

This past week, I spent several days in San Diego at the Legal Marketing Association International Conference (#LMA15) where I had the opportunity to both teach and to learn. I co-presented a program with three other experienced legal marketers: Roy Sexton of Trott & Trott (Ann Arbor), Heather Morse Geller of Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger (Los Angeles) and Megan McKeon of Katten Muchin Rosenman (Chicago). We discussed collaboration and coexistence among marketers and lawyers, touching on law firm culture, the generations in the workplace, how to communicate effectively with lawyers, and much more.

After a long, cross-country journey and time reconnecting with old friends and making new ones, I took time upon my return (that I had set aside) to follow up and process information I had acquired. Here are some of the things that I do to get the most out of the conference after attending:

1) Connect with everyone that I met for the first time on LinkedIn and follow them on Twitter.
2) Send hand-written notes to people with whom I want to follow up.
3) Add select individuals to my personal contact database and CRM system and update contact information for those who are with new companies.
4) Download all important materials and review them for a second time.
5) Share conference take-aways with my marketing and public relations teams.
6) Make notes on the restaurants we visited (and perhaps rate them on TripAdvisor) in the event we end up back in the same city for a future conference or meetings.
7) Capture the Twitter stream using TweetArchivist.com (assuming I remembered to set one up pre-conference) and review it for trends and nuggets of important information.
8) Send thank you notes to anyone who took the time to do something special such as invite me to dinner or pay for a taxi.
9) Download and begin using valuable apps that I learned about at the conference.
10) Follow up and schedule meetings with people who I said I would follow up with.

While these 10 post-event tips to get the most out of conference attendance seem simple, it takes hours to complete them and most people say they are simply “too busy” to do anything once they return to their offices. Take the time to capitalize on all of the great relationships you developed and information you learned. Otherwise, it all just falls on deaf ears.

Developing an App for Your Law Firm

By: Laura Powers

Supurb case study session today on mobile app dev from @BGLLP @nakosar #LMA14
— Laura Powers (@LPPowers) April 4, 2014

We have been studying the landscape of law firm apps closely this past year. Many firms are reluctant to invest the required time, resources and energy into app development - and with good cause. Most apps developed for law firms are simply an extension of the firm's website. This neither benefits the user, who can access the same information just as easily online, nor the law firm which inevitably will have invested heavily in the app's development and marketing.

The key to building successful apps for the legal industry is in the strategic development of the idea that makes the app useful to the firm's target audience. Firms that are interested in apps need to think critically about what makes an app valuable for users and different from existing apps.

This year, at the Legal Marketing Association’s Annual Conference, I attended a superb presentation by a team from Bracewell & Giuliani. The team described the planning, development, design, integration and marketing of their ShalePlay app, a resource for news and information related to shale gas and hydraulic fracturing. The process took two years of hard work, many hours of critical thinking and in-depth strategic planning, but it has been tremendously successful for the firm as a result.

As I typically do at the presentations I attend, I live-tweeted information from the session. Below, I've distilled some of the main points from these tweets.

• There are two primary areas of concern in app development. The first is targeting the right market - knowing the audience for the tool. The second is "doing mobile right" - considering that, to app users, mobile means immediacy, simplicity & context.


• The team from Bracewell & Giuliani recommends that if you're not going to enable push notifications, don't bother with an app at all. You need to ping users in order to keep the app top-of-mind. If you do plan on sending out push notifications through your firm's mobile app, it should be at a frequency of three to five times during the week.


• The team from Bracewell & Giuliani also recommends that the firm take into serious consideration how the app will fit into the overall brand. In considering what direction to go in the planning phase, start with what the firm knows best. In Bracewell & Giuliani's case, it was their environmental strategies work.


• When developing an app for a law firm, always start with a content plan. Ask yourselves, what content do we usually generate and what is lacking in the app marketplace?


• A critical concern for law firm to consider is that apps need to be useful for potential users, fit into the context of each particular firm and provide a unique value.


• Creating an RFP (request for proposal) for third-party app development is a process that will involve many teams within the firm: marketing, business development, knowledge management, IT and procurement.


• Careful consideration must be given to content management platforms, graphic design and creating the name of the app.


• The extra benefits of mobile apps for law firms include the opportunity to reach out to your audience with a useful tool through direct outreach, article writing or speaking publicly on the benefits of using the app.


• Just like your website, your firm's mobile app is an evolving tool that serves the business – it works to promote the firm to various target audiences.


• Don't overlook measurement and ROI. By measuring the app's performance, Bracewell & Giuliani can demonstrate how the mobile app has opened doors to new clients and generated beneficial conversations with current clients.


• Paul Grabowski, from Bracewell & Giuliani, notes that firms must start looking at new ways to distribute information and ShalePlay is a primary example of this.


• Three key elements of digital marketing to remember: target your market, generate relevant content and stay socially engaged. Launching a law firm app should support all three.

However, there is one caution to keep in mind when evaluating how an app would enhance your law firm's marketing plan. In order for the apps to be successful, people must already know the firms they belong to. In most cases, potential clients must know about a firm before downloading their app. This means that firms need to be reaching out to prospective clients through other marketing techniques first.

Discussing Inter-Generational Communication at the Legal Marketing Association

By Gina F. Rubel

During my presentation at the Legal Marketing Association Annual Conference in Orlando this week, I had the opportunity to speak alongside Kim Huggins, CEO of K HR Solutions, Inc. on Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and the Four Generations in the Workplace. We spoke about how legal marketers can harness their EQ and an understanding of generational similarities and differences to be more affective managing their marketing teams and getting the lawyers they serve to embrace marketing and new technologies.

One of my favorite parts of the program was when we broke out into groups to talk about how we, as marketers, could handle various scenarios.

Scenario 1: Lawyer Doesn't Know What a Podcast Is

You have landed an interview for one of your senior attorneys with a well-known online publication that also records and podcasts the interviews. This outlet reaches your firm’s target audience. How can you use emotional intelligence and generational understanding to successfully solicit buy-in from the attorney who doesn’t know what a podcast is?

Audience suggestions included:

• Have a reference point; provide examples to demonstrate the reach the podcast will have and the relevant demographics it will reach
• Explain how the attorney can repurpose the video and how it enhances the law firm brand 
• Demonstrate value and explain limited costs 
• Share the benefits - i.e. “what’s in it for me”
• Provide the attorney with case studies of other lawyers who have successfully leveraged podcasts in order to demonstrate peer validation 
• Play off of the attorney's competitive spirit by giving examples of competitors using podcasts 
• Make the attorney comfortable by providing coaching and media training so he or she is confident when using the medium

Scenario 2: Managing Partner Believes all Law Firm Business Comes From Referrals and Word-of-Mouth

You have been asked why the firm’s website “doesn’t show up” in search engine rankings. You have decided that one way to increase SEO is to have all of the attorneys create robust LinkedIn profiles, take ownership and complete their Avvo profiles and join JD Supra. How can you use emotional intelligence and generational understanding in your law firm to successfully solicit buy-in from the managing partner who believes that all of the business comes from word-of-mouth and referrals?

The attendees who worked on this scenario almost all decided that the managing partner was a Baby Boomer. Here's how they decided to tackle this opportunity:

• Have an agenda to meet with the managing partner to discuss SEO 
• Define what SEO is - many don't understand the term 
• Demonstrate the value of SEO and why it matters
• Educate the managing partner on how to accomplish SEO 
• Demonstrate the ROI of various platforms including LinkedIn, Avvo and JD Supra
• Feed into the competitive nature of lawyers by highlighting what other lawyer influencers are doing
• Share successes internally 
• Utilize engagement tools 
• Demonstrate competitive intelligence 
• Provide time management resources and tools 
• Give the managing partner an action plan 
• Follow up with the managing partner to secure buy-in

One of the things I enjoyed most about this program was hearing from the smart attendees, all of whom are in the trenches of legal marketing every day. We shared great ideas, we sometimes commiserated, and we always came up with ways to approach legal marketing more effectively.

If you want to follow our conversation, jump on Twitter and check out the hashtag #LMA14.

The 12 Days of Legal Social Media

By Sarah Larson

Social media can be a field of landmines for lawyers and their marketers. It's all too easy to tweet a statement or post a blog piece that ends up running afoul of ethics rules for legal marketing.

That's why so many legal marketing agencies, Furia Rubel included, spend so much time advising attorneys and their marketers on the ins and outs of social media. We field questions from clients and colleagues and write about both the opportunities and the things to be wary of when attorneys and law firms turn their attention toward social media.

In honor of the holidays, the Legal Marketing Association Social Media Special Interest Group has pulled together some amazing resources in their 12 Days of Social Media list. The 9th day's list is a handy compendium of legal marketing blogs that should be on everyone's daily reading list. Furia Rubel was honored to be listed among them, but there are plenty more to check out.

To see which legal bloggers are leading the way in thought leadership, check out LMA's website.

While you're at it, be sure to check out the previous days' offerings. From advice on using LinkedIn to funny videos of LMA leaders to 12 Tips for Twitter, you'll find plenty of great information to help you make some new year's social media resolutions.