2012 LMA Annual Conference : Build your business case for attending

The 2012 Legal Marketing Association (LMA) Annual Conference is March 14 to 16 at the Gaylord Texan Resort in Dallas.

Conference co-chairs are the Twin Cities’ Jill Weber, Chief Business Development Officer Leonard, Street and Deinard and Seattle’s Mark Usellis, Chief Marketing Officer Davis Wright Tremaine LLP.

I’ve always found the conference to be a worthwhile event for any number of reasons.

• To learn. The conference committee does a nice job of bringing in speakers and panelists offering insight and practical information from professionals who’ve been there. I am sure it’s helpful to marketing professionals. The information is also also most helpful to me leading a company serving law firms. I learn what’s on marketers minds, what’s working, and what’s not. The use of technology, blogging, and social media are always hot topics in sessions.
• To spend time with clients. LexBlog’s clients are spread across the country. It’s difficult, or impossible, to get out and meet all of them. The LMA Annual Conference allows me to spend time with our clients. Not only are they good people who are enjoyable to spend time with, but it allows me to learn what LexBlog is doing right and where we can improve.
• Product development. By spending time with clients and other attendees, as well as attending educational programs, I get insight into what services and products law firms may need from LexBlog. Product development doesn’t begin by sitting at a desk, it comes by listening.

Having a hard time rationalizing the cost of attending or building the case why your firm ought to foot the bill? The LMA Conference Committee has put together a nice piece entitled ‘Conference Rational Guide : Build the business case for your attendance.’ (pdf)

What’s in it for you as an attendee? From the LMA:

• This is the largest event for legal marketing and business development professionals, attracting attendees from law firms large and small, domestic and international, and all levels of experience and focus. The opportunity to collaborate and share ideas is unparalleled.
• You’ll experience 3 days of intensive professional development including 30+ hours of case studies from market leading law firms.
• Nearly three-quarters of the speakers are attorneys or in-house legal marketing or business development professionals, to guarantee you’ll gain an abundance of insider knowledge from your industry peers.
• Targeted programming. Thanks to extensive outreach to people across the industry by our conference partner, ACI, our sessions are targeted to those topics you said were most critical. We also have more varied formats, with some large group sessions and some smaller, hands-on sessions, tailored to the needs of the particular topics.
• Targeted pre-conference programs. Responding to your feedback, we have two separate programs for first-chair marketers – one for those at NLJ250 firms, the other for those with solo or small departments. We will also have another introductory “QuickStart“session, which has been highly successful in previous years.

Look forward to seeing you there.