Marketing and Business Development for Law Firms

Folks, the 24^th running of the Annual Legal Marketing Association Conference, Grade 1 Stakes, hosted this year Denver, Colorado is about to take off…..they’re all loaded and they’re……OFF! Out in the lead is Pre-Conference Session, followed on the rail by Darling Nathan, Twitter, and #LMA10, neck in neck for third is Tweet-Up, Your Honor Award and Concurrent Break Out, following about three lengths off is Exhibit Hall, Night Out and Akina AfterParty, trailing the pack is Say Good Bye and dead last, is Long Flight Home. Looks like he has a lot of ground to make up.  Folks, this IS a horse race! They’re rounding the club house turn now, it looks like #LMA10 is taking a run for the lead…oh, no, no,no,  it’s Darling Nathan out in front and leading ALL THE WAY TO THE FINISH LINE…..It’s Darling Nathan!  LMA10 and YourHonorAward finishing out–in the money!

Okay, so now that I got that little bit of fun behind me…tomorrow, I’ll be joining my colleagues Heather Milligan @heathermilligan and Russell Lawson @russ23229 for a panel discussion on Social Web Strategies for Mid-size and Small Law Firms #LMA10SM. But you already knew that because I’ve been yapping about it for months now. We’re just so excited to join lawyers and marketers who’ll be attending our session at 4Pm on Thursday and for those who can’t here’s a preview.

This is a list of questions we’ll be taking during our session. Anything we don’t get to will be found in posts on our blogs and on our Twitter streams.

1. What was your greatest PERSONAL challenge when you first jumped on to the social web and what is your greatest PERSONAL challenge on the social web TODAY?
2. What is your greatest challenge in your role as MARKETER today and how has that changed from when you first introduced online social to your firm?
3. ­­­­­­­­What would you say is the greatest overall challenge for your LAW FIRM and THE LAWYERS? How are you, or how do you plan, to address these challenges as a marketer in your law firm?
4. How do you, as a marketer or attorney responsible for your firm’s marketing efforts, influence and organize the law firm’s overall objectives with social web tactics? Do you have a master plan and if so, what does that look like? Does it integrate offline tactics or is it a stand-alone plan?
5. How important is it to your overall plan to strike a balance between micro-managing the process and giving attorneys the freedom to experiment? Or, in your experience do they lean on you to experiment, guide, teach and lead?
6. How do you help your attorneys keep up with the volume of info on the social web and make sure they’re tapped into the right people? How important is it for the marketer to help attorneys set realistic and achievable goals that match their individual style, time restraints, and comfort levels? And how do you do that? With a small in-house staff, do you ever outsource that work?
7. What in your opinion are the pros and cons of hosting an attorney blog on the firm website vs. independently? How did you make your decision, what does it look like, and is it working?
8. How aggressively does your law firm cross promote its blogs and what does that look like? Who does it? Where? Etc.  Have you added or do you intend to add any social networking and social sharing features to your home website?
9. How important is it to your strategy to get attorneys to post comments on other people’s blogs?
10. What advice do you have about comments on lawyer or law firm blogs? How have you addressed that in the disclaimer or not?
11. Some law firm’s have editorial or ethics committees that want to approve posts. How does content approval work in your process? Do you have any advice on the process?
12. What do you believe is the marketer’s role in coaching, training or policing issues of attorney ethics or even simply social web engagement?
13. To be or not to be on a social network is still a hot topic. What are common objections and how do you respond?
14. Do you have a specific strategy for spreading out attorney participation across social networks or do you leave it up to them? In either case, how do you monitor or measure their involvement?
15. When you are introducing a lawyer to the social networking space, do you help them lay out objectives or let them just explore? If objectives are in place, what key strategies do you emphasize, how do you help them in an ongoing way?
16. What does transparency on the social web mean to you personally and is that any different than what you try to teach your attorneys? Is transparency and collaboration a deal killer for some of your attorneys? What, if any, is the difference in an AmLaw 100 firm, a small firm or a mid-sized firm? Is there a noticeable difference between their comfort zones regarding transparency?
17. The social web is a BIG topic with lots of nuances, but if you could pass along one piece of advice, what would that be?

Okay, that’s a lot when I see it in black and white,  so maybe we’ll never get past the first 10 questions, but we’re going to try to cover all this stuff. I hope you’ll follow along: #LMA10SM.  Or  visit VMO, legalwatercoolerblog.com and progressivemarketingblog.com for an after session round up.