Just as Corporate America is readjusting its business strategies in the wake of faltering low consumer confidence and economic instability within the financial markets, how will law firms seek to develop new business opportunities to replace those hardest hit? What role will you as Marketing, Business Development, and PR professionals play in your firm’s success or failure?

Building on our April program, Marketing the Marketing Department, in which we emphasized ways to enhance your individual and group brands, we invite you to join us for a thought-provoking panel discussion that will focus on strategies to navigate through the current economic downturn and will feature leaders from the financial and legal media as well as two CMOs whose experience through several waves of economic crises (think tech-bubbles bursting, post-9/11, and election-year economics) illustrate how you can make an impact on your firm’s success.

The panel will be led by Mary K Young, formerly the CMO of Howrey and now a consultant with Zeughauser Group. Mary K is one of the legal community's most accomplished marketing professionals and well known for bringing her extensive corporate marketing experience (10 years at Kraft Foods), to bear as she  created and managed one of the nation's most progressive and effective legal marketing program.

Our other distinguished panelists include:

• Wendy Bernero, Chief Marketing Officer of McKee Nelson LLP, a firm that has employed innovative strategies to successfully navigate its way through the credit market disruption when all bets were against them. Wendy has more than 20 years of marketing and business development experience in the financial and professional services sectors. Prior to her current role, Ms. Bernero was the CMO of Paul Weiss. The sub-prime market collapse occurred roughly one week after she joined McKee Nelson so we count ourselves fortunate to have the luxury of her experience.
• Paul Braverman, a Senior Editor with The American Lawyer and  editor of Bar Talk as well as other anchor features of TAL, is a well known and respected member of the legal industry on both sides of the table. He has written extensively on the recession’s economic effect on law firms in the wake of the sub-prime collapse as well as in prior bubbles’ burst. From layoffs and shortened summer programs to a boom in bankruptcy work, Paul has covered stories about firm finances during the credit crunch as well as other troubled sectors and how they recovered – or didn’t. Paul received a Neal Award (the Pulitzer Prize of B2B journalism) for Best Department in B2B media.  Prior to joining The American Lawyer, Paul was a Litigation attorney with Olwine Connelly Chase O'Donnell & Weyher (Commercial Litigation) and with Lester Schwab Katz & Dwyer (environmental litigation).
• Bruce MacEwan is a lawyer and consultant to law firms on strategic and economic issues.  Bruce founded "Adam Smith, Esq.," a website which generates about 350,000 page views/month.  Bruce has published nearly 900 articles on the site about strategy, leadership, globalization, M&A finance, compensation, cultural considerations and partnership structures.  He has written for or been quoted in: Fortune;  The Wall Street Journal;  The New York Times;  Bloomberg News/Radio/TV;  Business 2.0;  The International Herald Tribune;  The National Law Journal;  The ABA Journal and The American Lawyer.  Previously, Bruce was CEO of a dot-com, practiced securities law in-house for nearly ten years at Morgan Stanley/Dean Witter in New York, and practiced litigation and corporate law with Shea & Gould and with Breed, Abbott & Morgan in New York.

NYLMA is dedicated to bringing its members timely and thought-provoking content that is presented by industry leaders across the corporate and legal markets. The panel we’ve gathered for this discussion is no exception and we look forward to hearing their front-line perspectives – past, present, and future – of how the market is changing. Most importantly the information presented will ultimately focus on how marketing, business development, and PR professionals can assist their firms in developing and promoting new business opportunities.

We are delighted to bring our members such distinguished and thought-provoking panelists. We have learned a great deal from them, and know that you will too.

If you would like to submit questions prior to the panel discussion, please forward them to me at abrown@alm.com by no later than Friday, May 9th.

Alicia Brown
NYLMA – 2008 Programming Chair