Legal Marketing & PR

"Green is Good" at LMA Midwest Conference

By Larry Bodine, Esq.

I'm at the LMA Midwest (new name) conference in Chicago.  The theme is "Green is Good" as "promoting environmentalism is good for your law firm."  The nametag can be planted in the ground and flowers will grow.  All the conference materials are recyclable.

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Clients are now asking in RFPs: "What are your firm's sustainability practices and how is the firm going 'green?'" according to Alvidas Jasin, Director of Business Development, Thompson Hine.  Use his travel tips:

• Always hang up your towel and reuse it, don't throw it on the floor.

• Put the 'Do Not Disturb' hanger on door during the entire time of your stay. There's no need to change the sheets every day.

• Shorten your showers by two minutes. Hot water consumes a lot of energy.

• Shut off computers and printers at the end of the day – otherwise they continue to draw power.

For more info on how you can run a green law office, visit www.massbar.org/ecochallenge -- the Massachusetts Bar Association Energy and Environment Task Force.

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Lawyer Roy Ginsburg knows that most lawyers don't like networking -- it makes them feel awkward, they have no time and makes them feel unprofessional or manipulative. Here are some great tips:

• Be persistent. If you make 10 calls to network contacts, and on 2 respond, you're doing great. This means you need to increase you contact list to 90 people, so you'll get 20 responses.
• Remember details.  Make small talk by asking where other person is going on vacation, if they got a new pet, where their child going is going to college.  This way, the next time you talk, you can say 'the last time we talked you said your daughter was going to the University of Missouri, how's that going?'
• Be confident. No one wants to hire a lawyer who is unsure of himself. Even as a new associate, a lawyer can network and say ay 'I work for one of the best law firms in the city. If I don't' know the answer, someone just down the hall does.' You just need to sound like you know what you're doing.
• Enthusiasm. People love to hire lawyers who love what they do.  "Do you think I want to hire someone who's wishy washy, or someone who's passionate? I've known many lawyers who got the job because of the enthusiasm they showed," Roy said.

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Full post as published by Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog on September 25, 2009 (boomark / email).