Tonight, we kicked off the ILN’s 25th Anniversary Annual Meeting with our welcome reception and dinner! We’ve been busily preparing for the conference, so today, I’ve got a great rainmaking recommendation from expert, Jaimie Field!
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The part of Rainmaking that I try to pound into my client’s heads is “follow up, follow up, follow up.”
But how many times should you try to get in touch with someone before you become a pest?
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With less than a week to go until the ILN’s 25th Anniversary Meeting, things are very busy here at the ILN! So just a quick roundup for you today – happy reading!
Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of speaking with a Canadian reporter who is doing a series of stories about the importance of networking for lawyers. She wanted to get my thoughts based on my eight and a half years of networking experience with the lawyers in the ILN, and I thought I’d share some of those tips here on Zen too. These are all tips I use myself, as well as recommending them to our attorneys!
At this year’s LMA, we were fortunate enough to have not one, but TWO sessions with General Counsel. This one took place at the end of the first day, and included a procurement guy – a first for the LMA. The session was titled “GC Focus: Project Management. Position Your Firm in Alignment With the Unique Challenges Faced by In-house Counsel.”
Panelists included Keith Isgett, the Managing Attorney-General – Global External Legal Relations, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Justin Ergler, Sourcing Group Manager, Legal Services Procurement, GlaxoSmithKline, and Nat Slavin, Founder and Partner of Wicker Park Group, along with Moderator Alicia Brown, Director of Strategic Relationships for Bloomberg Law.
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Jaimie Field is back on this cloudy Monday afternoon with another rainmaking recommendation which may seem like common sense to most of us, but she’s absolutely right in pointing it out – manners matter.
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Lately, I have noticed a horrific lack of manners (even more so than usual):
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We’ve reached the end of another busy week here at the ILN, which means that there is under two weeks left until our Annual Meeting is under way!
So without further ado, here are this week’s top posts:
In yesterday’s post, we learned that building relationships is still of primary importance to clients – and some of the ways to do this including figuring out what benefits the client the most, and focusing on what business solutions will make them look good.
The panelists agreed that the role of their lawyers needs to be that of strategic partners, and for their part, they need to inform outside counsel about what they need. But outside counsel can also be proactive to learn more about their clients. The panelists suggested that attorneys read company filings and public documents before they meet with them. They emphasized that outside counsel should understand their customer before asking them to be their customer. Post-matter debriefings, at no cost, are also helpful.
Another of my all-time favorite conference sessions at LMA is always the client panel. For me, the panel always makes the investment in the conference worth it, because I can impart what I learn from the GCs there to my lawyers, to help them to understand their own clients better, and that adds value for everyone.
This year’s client panel didn’t disappoint. It focused on best practices for building and maintaining your law firm’s relationship with in-house counsel and featured Megan Belcher, the VP and Chief Employment Counsel for ConAgra, Kevin Schubert, the Associate General Counsel, Transactions for LV Sands Corporation, Simon Manoucherian, the Assistance General Counsel/Director of Litigation GRIFOLS, and Karen Cottle, Senior Counsel for Sidley Austin and former in-house counsel. The panel was moderated by Inside Counsel magazine.
So if you’ve been hiding under a rock instead of reading my blog posts, you may not already know that my favorite session from LMA13 was “Delivering Happiness: Fresh Ideas for Service-Driven Brands Deploying Social Media Tactics, Seeking ROI” with Graham Kahr, Social Scientist for Zappos and Jayne Navarre of Law Gravity LLC.
Rather than a typical session, Jayne and Graham let us know right away that it would be different when they introduced themselves in the third person. Their session took on the tone of more of a conversation, which also included those of us in the audience.
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As of yesterday, we are now only three weeks away from the ILN’s 25th Annual Meeting, and our 25th Anniversary celebrations! We’re really looking forward to celebrating with everyone, taking a look back as well as looking toward the future. But while we’ve been focused on getting ready for our conference, our members are putting out some high quality content.
This week’s top posts are: