Programming Schedule
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7:30-8:30 |
Breakfast & Registration |
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8:40-8:50 |
Conference Chair Welcome |
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8:50-9:00 |
Presenting Sponsor Welcome |
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9:00-10:30 |
Keynote Address & Fireside ChatThe Three Selves – A New Framework for Being Authentic in How You Live, Work, and LeadRitu Bhasin In order to build more empowered, inclusive, and innovative environments, we often encourage our teams and leaders to bring their “whole selves” to work. We know that this is important, because research points to authenticity as a critical component of engagement and well-being in the workplace. But how can we reconcile the message to “be yourself” with the simultaneous message to adhere to workplace culture? How can we bring more of our authentic selves, including our differences, to work without compromising our ability to succeed? In this fascinating presentation, Ritu introduces an innovative new framework called the Three Selves, which provides a methodology for choosing how and when to be your authentic self at work while achieving the success and belonging you need to feel engaged, purposeful, and empowered at work. |
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10:30-11:00 |
Networking Break: Vendor Expo |
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11:00-12:00 |
Plenary SessionSoft Skills Are The New Hard SkillsRuth Catney (Fifth Element Inc.) Great leadership is a tricky thing to pin down and understand and yet we all know a great leader when we’re working with one. Ruth believes that for many years now, leaders have been sold an inaccurate checklist of the so-called “hard-skills” they need to exhibit in order to get business results. Traditionally, those hard skills were sufficient to get leaders into a leadership position but in today’s evolving workforce, they’re no longer enough to keep them there successfully; especially with the younger generation of workers that are coming up through the ranks that demand this soft-skill brand of leadership. During this session, Ruth will explore the idea that if leaders want to reside in that zone of excellence and get sustained results, their number one priority must be a focus on building deep, trusting relationships with their employees and clients. In order to be able to do this, they will be well-served to begin actively practicing the following 4 Leadership Soft Skills:
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12:00-1:00 |
Lunch & Networking |
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1:00-2:00 |
Marketing & Communications StreamBreakout A1Mass Personalization: Client Experience Optimization in the Digital World
With rapidly changing technologies and the market’s demand for more personalized and relevant client experiences, firms need to implement strategic changes in the way they market and deliver services to meet ever-evolving client expectations. In this session, we will look at how professional service brands are evolving to deliver customized experiences at scale. Through a deeper understanding of your market, rethinking your firm's brand positioning, and implementing tools that will allow you to deliver the right information to the right visitor at the right time, firms can deepen their level of client engagement and create frictionless, engaging, and customized experiences. Key takeaways will be:
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Business Development StreamBreakout B1#winning - A Proposal Practicum
Come on down for your chance win fabulous prizes—the most lasting being a solid understanding of winning new business! Learn the key elements to create a winning proposal from two certified Business Development professionals. Attendees will receive practical tips and instruction on proposal best practices for the following:
With insight, knowledge and real life examples provided by APMP-certified Proposal Professionals, attendees will apply practical tips and insights to practical scenarios. These tips will help them through the whole pursuit lifecycle, including opportunity evaluation, gathering and using competitive intelligence, strategy and research, crafting client-focused pricing models, drafting winning proposals and preparing lawyers to attend client interviews. And did we mention the prizes? |
Technology & Operations StreamBreakout C1Data Driven Marketing & Business Development for Law Firms
With the availability of tools and data, we often talk about becoming more “data driven”, but why and what does that mean for law firms? In this panel discussion, we will survey the phases of becoming data driven, sources of data at the disposal of law firm marketing and business development departments, the process of pulling your data together to ask questions of it, the tools available to view and explore your data, and the process by which you can tackle a meaningful project at your firm. We will look at helpful tools such as Microsoft Power BI and data standards, such as the SALI Legal Matter Specification Standard to help you classify your data for analysis. We will even touch upon some AI tools being used in marketing and business development. |
Management & Leadership StreamBreakout D1Being in the 3%: Strategic Planning That Actually Gets Executed
While strategic planning requires a huge investment of hours and resources and is a critical component of firm health, according to a recent study published in Forbes magazine, fully 97% of these plans never leave the paper they’re written on. Only 3% of all strategic plans ultimately have any meaningful impact on the vision, mission, activity, or revenue of the organization for which they’re painstakingly created. In this highly informative and interactive workshop, participants will learn and discuss the unique process we’ve developed to ensure their strategic plans will be among the 3%. Participants will learn and work with the specific systems our client firms utilize to achieve greater clarity than they’ve ever had about their current situation and to then develop, prioritize, and execute upon a strategic plan they will actually deploy. Participants will receive samples of all the documents and discuss all procedures the BridgeField Group uses to collect data, succinctly report it to firm leadership, facilitate and prioritize the creation of strategic initiatives, and assure their complete strategic plan execution. |
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2:00-3:00 |
Breakout A2SMART-based Content Strategy for Law Firms
Does your firm publish articles that never get read? Maybe you'd like to publish content, but don't really know where to start? Perhaps the biggest thing holding you back from creating content on a regular basis is that you don't know if the investment is worth your time. Content can be one of the most powerful drivers of reputation, lead generation, loyalty, and advocacy, but it's not just any content that will achieve these outcomes. You have to understand the market, your audience and how to measure and track your goals. This workshop isn't just about writing nice articles, it's about coming up with a content mission, vision and plan that is: specific to the outcomes you desire; measurable so you can learn and understand what drives results; achievable within your budgets and capabilities; relevant to your audience and what they are looking for; realistic; and timely to your marketing needs. |
Breakout B2A Day in the Life of a Client Relationship Manager
How does a day in the life of a Client Relationship Manager look like? For one thing, you wear many hats! A Client Relationship Manager serves as a liaison between a law firm and its clients, developing relationships, providing guidance and advice. Our roles are seen as an extension of legal services. Our clients want to build relationships and interact with business services. They are seeing the value in what structured account management brings to their relationship with law firms. Norton Rose Fulbright has embraced a structure where its legal marketers have direct relationships with clients. During the presentation, we will discuss how our role as a Client Relationship Manager help support a law firm in reinforcing client relationships by presenting the six (6) key elements: (a) Understanding the Organisation, (b) Account Planning, (c) Sales Management, (d) Client Service Management, (e) Reporting and (f) Driving Accountability. Once combined, these 6 elements help create a strong client relationship team and ultimately, they can benefit clients in succeeding globally. |
Breakout C2STAMP of Approval: Building a Strategic Technology and Marketing Plan
When firms implemented CRM technology years ago, a lot of them did so to follow what other firms were doing. However, there has been a huge change in the business development technology landscape with new platforms emerging and “CRM adjacent” technologies to work alongside the main CRM platforms. So how do you pivot from what you were originally intending to do, to now what you're being asked to do? In this session, our expert panel will discuss how marketers can build a strategic (and successful) plan for marketing technology, audit what they currently have to establish how well it meets their changing needs, create a business case and win the approval of their lawyers, and maximize the return on investment for CRM. Broken into easy steps, attendees will leave the session armed with the knowledge they need to conduct a technology assessment and write a strategic plan. |
Breakout D2Building a High Performance Team (Without Burning Them Out)
From the moment an offer of employment is extended, professionals are challenged to prove their worth to their colleagues, clients, and leadership. A nose well-worn down on the grindstone becomes a badge of honor. The cumulative effect of this is the deleterious effects on health, relationships, and emotional stability, which ironically leads many to retreat back to the office. However, some organizations and teams seem to have figured out how to get the best performance out of people by placing them on teams and creating a culture of collaboration. Surprisingly, teams that learn to deal with “terminal consequences” do this better than most: NASA, Navy Seals, firefighters, police, and professional athletes are the model. Our research has found how they plan, prepare, and practice is predictive to how they can take care of their people in the most stressful circumstances—on and off the job. In this groundbreaking keynote, the following critical topics are covered:
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3:00-3:30 |
Networking Break: Vendor Expo |
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3:30-4:30 |
Breakout A3No One Knows How Toilets Work: Changing Minds and Building Support for Your Ideas
You have good ideas and work hard to make the case for positive change. So it’s frustrating when colleagues and decision-makers say “no” to those ideas or decline to follow your advice—especially without compelling justification. Why does this happen? What can you do about it? No One Knows How Toilets Work uses storytelling, research, and case studies to explain practical tools for getting legitimate buy-in from even the most skeptical people. Participants will learn about the Silicon Valley start-up that raised millions on false pretenses—all because investors refused to consider evidence that anything was amiss—and then unpack this case using research into opinion formation. (Research involving, of all things, toilets.) This 60-minute interactive session will teach participants how people form opinions, what makes those opinions durable (even in the face of compelling counter-arguments), and practical tools for building support amongst team-members, stakeholders, and decision-makers. |
Breakout B3Playing to Win: Turning BD Challenges into Opportunities for Our Diverse Lawyers
As diverse lawyers create a path to success in their firms, business development becomes an increasingly important piece of the puzzle. The ability to generate business affords diverse lawyers more opportunities for advancement, greater ability to reach the highest ranks of partnership, and more overall security in their careers. And yet, for a multitude of reasons, diverse lawyers tend to lag behind their majority counterparts when it comes to building and sustaining their own books of business. A marketing and business development professional who understands their challenges and knows how to counsel diverse attorneys for success can be an invaluable ally. |
Breakout C3Driving Firm Revenue with a CI Centric Approach
An effective and efficient CI program is essential for driving growth in legal services, as it delivers across the board from strategic planning and opportunity spotting to pitch support, key client management and thought leadership. The most successful law firm understand this and encourage collaboration across functional areas to maximize the impact and value of CI efforts. The largest legal services clients are continuing to move forward with the changes in their in-house structure, purchasing practices and additional requirements for transparency and efficiency that began in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Stronger understanding of – and alignment with – client requirements is one way to ensure long-term performance remains ahead of the pack. This session will cover the top trends that we have identified in legal service purchasing, including innovation trends that are generating new opportunities, as well as the threat of disruption. We will also review the top five CI best practices for law firms in a way that will enable participants to compare their own CI functions, and to jump-start initiatives that will drive revenue where gaps may be present. |
Breakout D3CMO Summit - Building A Successful Client Feedback Program
Client interviews are one of the most valuable strategies a law firm can undertake. Whether you are interviewing clients on behalf of your firm, overseeing your firm's client feedback program or hoping to launch this important initiative in the future, this practical workshop will give you the information and takeaways to ensure the interviews are as productive as possible and maximize the value of these important contacts with clients. The session will include hands-on exercises, discussion of real-life client interview scenarios and an interview role play. It will provide attendees with information on: (1) ways to structure and implement the process to increase effectiveness; (2) roles the marketer can play; and (3) techniques that can hamper or improve the effectiveness of interviews. The workshop facilitator, Sally Schmidt, has conducted thousands of client interviews and will share best practices and process information to equip marketers to conduct interviews or make sure their firm representatives are getting the most from the process. The CMO Summit is part of the LMAExec program and is designed for in-house CMOs and first-chair marketing and business development professionals.
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4:30-5:30 |
Breakout A4Becoming The Source: Building Online Credibility Through Video
While video marketing has been around for some time, most would agree the legal community is not using its full potential. Eighty-seven percent of online marketers use video to get to their clients and video drives a 157% traffic increase from search engine page results. It’s become an essential part of a potential client’s online decision making. In this age of YouTube and Netflix people have much higher expectations for what video should be – boring corporate videos just don’t cut it anymore. In our talk we’ll explore creating and sharing professional videos that people will engage with and that build credibility for your lawyers online. In this session you’ll learn:
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Breakout B4Mapping the Client Journey to Create Exceptional Client Experience
According to a study from Salesforce, 51% of leaders in the marketing field measure success with revenue growth. Only 22% look at customer satisfaction, and a mere 18% look at customer retention rates. Yet, clients are any businesses most valuable asset. This is especially true for law firms where statically 80% of new matters are derived from existing clients. This interactive workshop will teach marketing professionals the client journey mapping process. Client journey mapping has been utilized by companies like Deloitte, PWC and many others to help them step into their client’s shoes and see their business from the client’s perspective. It helps firms gain insights into common client pain points, how they can improve the client experience, and define what clients, and prospective clients, need in order to select and retain their firm. This highly interactive workshop will discuss traditional ways law firms have worked to determine their client's experience and then walk them through each step of the client journey mapping process. Once the steps are discussed attendees will discuss the potential benefits of client journey mapping and how they might introduce this concept to their firm’s leadership. Attendees leave with a handout that can be used as a guide for them once they return home and begin to determine what their clients experience when working with their firms. |
Breakout C4The Joy of SEO – How PR and SEO are BFFs and Other Fun Facts
In this session, we explain what ‘search engine optimization’ means, and present an overview of a successful SEO strategy. We provide a foundational understanding of various factor that affect SEO, including: onsite (technical), offsite (public relations, list building, Google Maps, Youtube). We’ll guide you in how to audit your current website’s status with Google and explain which tools are the best to use to track and monitor growth. For those who have outsourced SEO we’ll give you the questions to ask and the tools to use to either bring SEO in house or be able to better monitor your vendor. Learning Outcomes:
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5:30-6:30 |
Cocktails |
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6:30-12:00 |
LMAEC Your Honour Awards Gala |
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