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Be Strategic About Demonstrating “Firm Citizenship”: Quality Over Quantity for Lawyer Career Advancement
How to balance law firm committee work with business development for maximum career impact As a lawyer, actively participating in your law firm's committees is critical for career advancement—but here's the challenge many attorneys, especially women, face: how do you...
The Lawyer’s Dilemma: Urgent vs. Important
Do you often feel like you’re constantly helping others achieve their goals but rarely have time to intentionally work toward your own? If so, you’re in good company. As a lawyer, your job is to serve your clients and, by extension, respond immediately to your...
Follow Up, Follow Up, FOLLOW UP! The Key to Building Lasting Professional Relationships
You've heard it a million times: "It's not what you know, it's who you know." While legal expertise is absolutely essential, the truth is that building a thriving law practice requires more than just being an excellent lawyer. Many attorneys with whom I work focus...
Lawyers’ Top 7 Obstacles to Rainmaking Success
It’s amazing what you can learn about lawyers when you take the time to ask. For the last 15 years, I have been formally and informally surveying private practice lawyers about the biggest obstacles they face to engaging in and succeeding at business development. For...
3 Ways to Grow Your Network When You HATE Networking Events
I frequently hear the following from lawyers: “I detest them.” “They stress me out.” “I would rather poke my eyeballs out with needles.” Yikes! What on earth are they talking about? What could be so unappealing? While holiday dinners with politics-obsessed relatives...
Stop Listening to “Conventional Wisdom” About Your Rainmaking Potential
There’s something I frequently hear from law firm leaders that makes me a little crazy. Okay, I might have lied a smidge. It makes me a LOT crazy. When I hear this “conventional wisdom,” it’s usually from a male partner with a substantial book of business, and it goes...
This Common Behavior is Limiting Your Career Growth
I don’t know about you, but lately, I feel like I’ve been running around with my hair on fire. Serving clients, running the biz, kids, parents, friends, household, volunteer activities, holidays…there is always SO. MUCH. TO. DO. As someone who frequently works with...
How can YOU develop deep, authentic business relationships?
On my 32nd wedding anniversary last week, I was delighted to receive these beautiful flowers. ...They were not from my husband. I received the flowers from an attorney I know, and the card read: “Elise, thank you so much for hosting me on your podcast, and inviting me...
Is Business Development Different for Women?
I recently gave a TED-Style talk at the Legal Marketing Association's Northeast Regional Conference titled Fueling Business Development Success: How Rainmaking Differs for Women Lawyers. The subject sparked quite a bit of conversation both in person and online! So......
How to Foster Your Law Firm’s Business Development Culture
Clients are the lifeblood of every law firm, yet most firms don’t have a plan in place to encourage their lawyers to develop business and collaborate with one another to attract ideal clients. Even worse, many firms’ policies and behaviors actively discourage business...
6 Business Development Tips for Lawyers During COVID-19
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to impact the global community, lawyers are asking me whether engaging in business development activities is permissible right now. It’s a reasonable question – for many of us, the idea of “selling” or asking people for business...
A Tale of Two Video Calls: Watching and Learning from Public Relations Professionals
With coronavirus moving the workplace from the office to the home, legal professionals, like many others, are suddenly being called upon to be adept at joining meetings and running webinars on video platforms like Zoom and GoToMeeting. As someone who has worked from...