Marketing Attorney BlogALI CLE — Building a Better Business Network: Getting More Out of Contacts, Connections, and Clients – Live Webcast, September 7th
While the calendar year might not turn for another four months, the new “bar year” is here. Of course, for some of us, the New Year is now—with Rosh Hashanah falling days after my upcoming ALI webcast. It is a time of reflection and planning, and also atonement for the one or two sins that I may have somehow committed in the past year. This is a good time for evaluating your current business development efforts and determining which you’d like to continue or change in the coming year. Regardless of personal philosophy, your network is the centerpiece of business development. Many firms will now be asking you to figure out your BD plan for 2019, including budget requests. This is also one of the primary times of the year when lawyers put a little more effort into “non-billable” activity and involvement. I always say that the key periods are post-Labor Day until Thanksgiving; and again from post-New Year’s Day (the January 1st edition) until Memorial Day. We work most of our magic in those two sweet spots on the calendar.
Join me for this live ALI webcast on Friday, September 7, 2018, from 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. Eastern. In one hour, pick up a CLE ethics credit and learn about the best ways to build your network within the ethical boundaries that we all follow in our respective states’ Rules of Professional Conduct. We’ll also go through the recent changes to the ABA Model Rules as they relate to marketing, advertising and solicitation in 7.1-7.5, just approved by the House of Delegate in August during the ABA Annual Meeting.
Recently, I had the privilege of serving on a panel at the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Division continuing legal education program on the ethics of virtual and multi-jurisdictional lawyering in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The program was co-sponsored by the State Bar of New Mexico, and took place on May 18, 2018 at the Inn and Spa at Loretto.
In the March 2018 issue of the American Bar Association’s 
Oh, remember the ‘80s? Alf, Madonna, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, Garbage Pail Kids? I was in New Orleans to see Keith Smart’s last-second shot for Bobby Knight’s Indiana Hoosier over Syracuse in the NCAA Championship Game in 1987. I watched the Baltimore Orioles defeat the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1983 World Series (when the O’s still were more important to me than the Phillies). And I was at the Stanley Cup Finals between the Flyers and the Edmonton Oilers in 1985 and 1987. Those were just some of the games I attended in person. I worked in the Major Indoor Soccer League and the NHL during the 80s—attending hundreds of games. I remember the end of high school, my college years, first jobs, and the start of law school. Little did I (we) know at the time that those babies being born were—Millennials! And that—in the here and now—it would all be about them.
In a world where every law firm is (or says) they are “full-service,” comes this issue of 
When I wrote my marketing column for the November/December 2017 issue of the ABA’s Law Practice Magazine,