
CMO Best Practices: Some Tips to Make a Really Tough Job a Little Easier
The issues that I confronted a dozen years ago when I became a CMO for the first time are very much the same issues that my CMO brothers and sisters face today. Irrespective of whether you've had decades of experience or not, the job is tough. Well, the job is relatively easy, but ensuring that your team members get all the credit and your firm hits its success metrics, while maintaining your visibility and growing your perceived value, remains very much a challenge to even the most seasoned professionals.
Features

<i>Leadership</i><br>Executive Presence
Lawyers who exhibit "executive presence" are more likely to make partner, to gain clients' trust and loyalty, and to receive referrals from others. Executive presence is easy to spot, but difficult to define. A lucky few are born with it, but, in most cases, it is learned. This article discusses what executive presence is and how you can learn it.
Features

How to Fail at Collaboration
For firms or teams with historically non-collaborative cultures (and that describes 99.9% of them), this "whole collaboration thing" has become a huge annoyance, an attempted interference with "how we've always practiced law." For these folks, the challenge is thorny: Convince everyone that their culture is changing with the times while continuing to conduct business as usual. When they fail, there is often a huge — and demoralizing — gap between the cup and the lip.
Features
<i>Professional Development</i><br>Survey: Today's Am Law Chief Marketing Officer
<i><b>Dramatic Change Defines the Position</i></b><p> Perhaps no non-practicing lawyer position has changed as dramatically as that of the leading marketing professional, which bears no resemblance to the position in the 1990s. Twenty-five years ago, law firm marketing executives were asked to put together brochures and prepare seating charts for client and partner functions. It's a different world today.
Features

<i>Media & Communications</i><br>Getting Quoted on Breaking News
When news breaks, reporters want a source immediately — not in an hour, later that day or first thing the next morning. Reporters who can get to a source first and fast — and are confident that source will provide reliable and insightful analysis — win the day. If you want to be considered and quoted as a thought leader on timely topics, understanding the compressed timing of the news cycle is critical. To get on a key reporter's speed dial, here are three tips you can incorporate into your PR and marketing activities.
Features

Retiring Boomers Pose Big Challenges For Firms
The boomer generation — 75 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 — and a tiny cadre of over-70s Silent Generation lawyers currently make up just under half of partners at Am Law 200 firms. As partners with the greatest seniority, they constitute a majority in the equity and management ranks, and control an outsize share of client relationships. The impacts of retirement are amplified because a long surge in hiring and promotion that began when boomers entered law firms has halted since the financial crisis.
Features

Essential Qualities of Successful Rainmakers
Although a handful of law firms has hired non-lawyer sales teams, most still rely upon individual attorneys or practice groups to generate new client matters (i.e., to sell) even though the majority of them have never received business development skills training. This article describes some of the important characteristics and habits shared by attorneys who have built successful practices.
Features

Moving from Good Law to Great Law™
Law firm leadership is at a proverbial fork in the road. The people running law firms can continue to do business as usual, or they can lead their firms toward a model of business that reflects the new and still evolving client expectations and market demands.
Features

Culture of Collaboration
<b><i>Optimal Insights Through Inter-Departmental Initiatives</b></i><p><p>As dizzying amounts of resources and the need for the timeliest insights grow, the conduit and collaboration between business development and an organization's information management department, especially, becomes more critical than ever.
Features

Highlights of 2016 and Predictions for 2017 Attract Year-End Media Interest
By guiding your colleagues and lawyers to focus on the business consequences of timely legal issues, you introduce them to reporters as sources whose opinions and predictions will be quoted in these look-back and look-ahead review stories that executives and prospective clients will be reading to gear up for the new year.
Need Help?
- Prefer an IP authenticated environment? Request a transition or call 800-756-8993.
- Need other assistance? email Customer Service or call 1-877-256-2472.
MOST POPULAR STORIES
- The 'Sophisticated Insured' DefenseA majority of courts consider the <i>contra proferentem</i> doctrine to be a pillar of insurance law. The doctrine requires ambiguous terms in an insurance policy to be construed against the insurer and in favor of coverage for the insured. A prominent rationale behind the doctrine is that insurance policies are usually standard-form contracts drafted entirely by insurers.Read More ›
- The Brave New World of Cybersecurity Due Diligence in Mergers and Acquisitions: Pitfalls and OpportunitiesLike poorly-behaved school children, new technologies and intellectual property (IP) are increasingly disrupting the M&A establishment. Cybersecurity has become the latest disruptive newcomer to the M&A party.Read More ›
- A Lawyer's System for Active ReadingActive reading comprises many daily tasks lawyers engage in, including highlighting, annotating, note taking, comparing and searching texts. It demands more than flipping or turning pages.Read More ›
- Abandoned and Unused Cables: A Hidden Liability Under the 2002 National Electric CodeIn an effort to minimize the release of toxic gasses from cables in the event of fire, the 2002 version of the National Electric Code ("NEC"), promulgated by the National Fire Protection Association, sets forth new guidelines requiring that abandoned cables must be removed from buildings unless they are located in metal raceways or tagged "For Future Use." While the NEC is not, in itself, binding law, most jurisdictions in the United States adopt the NEC by reference in their state or local building and fire codes. Thus, noncompliance with the recent NEC guidelines will likely mean that a building is in violation of a building or fire code. If so, the building owner may also be in breach of agreements with tenants and lenders and may be jeopardizing its fire insurance coverage. Even in jurisdictions where the 2002 NEC has not been adopted, it may be argued that the guidelines represent the standard of reasonable care and could result in tort liability for the landlord if toxic gasses from abandoned cables are emitted in a fire. With these potential liabilities in mind, this article discusses: 1) how to address the abandoned wires and cables currently located within the risers, ceilings and other areas of properties, and 2) additional considerations in the placement and removal of telecommunications cables going forward.Read More ›
- The New York Uniform Commercial Code Comes of AgeParties in large non-consumer transactions with no connection whatsoever to New York often choose its law to govern their transactions, and New York statutes permit them to do so. What most people do not know is that the New York Uniform Commercial Code is outdated.Read More ›