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How Law Firms Can Build Stronger Internal Culture Through Employee Recognition by Packed with Purpose

By Merc Smith posted 5 days ago
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Thank you to Packed with Purpose for supporting the LMA Midwest Region! Retaining top talent in the legal industry has never been more challenging- or more important. Arguably, the greatest asset a firm has are its people. As firms navigate hybrid work, rising client demands, and shifting employee expectations, the most successful leaders are those who prioritize internal culture as much as external results. At the center of a strong culture? Recognition. It sounds simple, but consistent, thoughtful employee recognition can dramatically improve engagement, reduce burnout, and strengthen loyalty across the firm. And when done with ...
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Doing More with What You Have: Tech Hacks for Legal Marketing by Amanda Bekric

By Merc Smith posted 11 days ago
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Thank you to author Amanda Bekric , Marketing Coordinator at Dady & Gardner, P.A., LMA MN LSC Chair, and 2025 LMA Midwest Regional Conference planning committee member. Session Title : Tech Hacks for Legal Marketing: Doing More with What You Have Panelists : Anne Heathcock, Heathcock Marketing Consulting Amy Wisinski, Heathcock Marketing Consulting Rachel Shields Williams, Sidley Austin LLP (2026 LMA President-Elect) As legal marketers, we often hear the phrase “do more with less.” At the 2025 LMA Midwest Conference, this message came to life during the session “Tech Hacks for Legal Marketing: Doing More with What ...
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The Human Side of Change: Key Lessons from LMA Midwest 2025

By Merc Smith posted 13 days ago
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Thank you to author Mia LaFlore , Sr. BD/Marketing Manager - Intellectual Property and Technology at DLA Piper and Planning Committee for the 2025 LMA Midwest Conference. Session : The Human Side of Change: How to Lead, Influence, and Thrive in Times of Uncertainty Speaker : Brianna Leung Conference : LMA Midwest Regional Conference Date : October 9-10, 2025, Chicago, IL You know that moment in a conference session when someone says exactly what you've been thinking but were too exhausted to articulate? When a whole room of people collectively exhale because finally, finally , someone gets it? That's what happened ...
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The Power of Connection: Turning Relationship Data into Growth Strategy – 2025 LMA Takeaways by Amanda Bekric

By Merc Smith posted 15 days ago
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Thank you to author Amanda Bekric , Marketing Coordinator at Dady & Gardner, P.A., LMA MN LSC Chair, and 2025 LMA Midwest Regional Conference planning committee member. Session Title : The Power of Connection: Turning Relationship Date into Growth Strategy Panel Panelists : Roy Sexton, Chief Marketing Officer, Vedder Price Linda Moss, Chief Business Development & Marketing Officer, Dykema Dave Southern, Director of Marketing, Mayer Brown Moderator : Adam Stewart, Vice President, Introhive At the 2025 LMA Midwest Regional Conference, a standout session, "The Power of Connection: Turning Relationship ...
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Confessions of a First-Time LMA Midwest Conference Attendee by Elegra Davis

By Merc Smith posted 21 days ago
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Thank you to author Elegra Davis , Business Development & Client Success Manager. I confess. When I visited the registration page of the LMA Midwest Region Conference, I was still carrying a bit of post-COVID “conference-apathy.” After over 15 years in the legal marketing and business development domain in several capacities, I’ve had the opportunity to attend several non-LMA conferences. These conferences ranged from personal development to client-specific industries, focusing on business development activities. I thought I had pretty much seen it all. I hadn’t. From the start, LMA provided two seasoned conference mentors, Sherri Gutman ...
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The Power of Impactful Gifting: A New Era of Client Appreciation by Packed with Purpose

By Merc Smith posted 22 days ago
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Thank you to Packed with Purpose for supporting the LMA Midwest Region! In an increasingly competitive legal landscape, where services are often seen as interchangeable and pricing pressure continues to mount, the firms that stand out are those that invest in meaningful client relationships. And while legal expertise is the foundation, the overall brand experience is what shapes client loyalty. One powerful, often underleveraged component of that experience? Purposeful gifting . Gone are the days of generic holiday baskets or last-minute tokens. Today’s clients are looking for more than transactions, they want to feel known, valued, ...
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Critical Thinking as Client Service: A Roadmap for Marketing Empowerment by Kate Kasella

By Merc Smith posted 25 days ago
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Thank you to author Kate Kasella , Communications and PR Strategist at Robins Kaplan and Planning Committee member for the 2025 LMA Midwest Conference. Session Title : Critical Thinking as Client Service: Why Giving Lawyers What They Ask for is Seldom Enough Presenter : Matt Plavnick, Axis Marketing Strategies It’s a familiar scene in legal marketing: a lawyer sends a last-minute request, the team scrambles to respond, and everyone walks away a little frustrated — either because the final product fell short or the process felt rushed and reactive. In his session, “Critical Thinking as Client Service: Why Giving Lawyers What They Ask for ...
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Memorable Presentation Start with You - Not Your Slides by Kate Kasella

By Merc Smith posted 25 days ago
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Thank you to author Kate Kasella , Communications and PR Strategist at Robins Kaplan and Planning Committee member for the 2025 LMA Midwest Conference. Session Title : Leading with Memorable Presentations Presenter : Anne Gallagher, Anne Gallagher LLC Whether you're stepping up to the podium for the first time or a seasoned presenter fine-tuning your craft, Anne Gallagher’s “Leading with Memorable Presentations” session offered both inspiration and actionable tools to level up your presentation game. With a thoughtful blend of neuroscience, storytelling, structure, and self-awareness, this session reminded us that you — not your slides — are ...
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LMANE NYC General Counsel Panel - November 18, 2025

By Dave Olson posted 26 days ago
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On a beautifully sunny and cool NYC November morning, Chicago-based Sidley Austin Chief Marketing Officer Erin Baxendale moderated the LMANE NYC General Counsel panel featuring Avita Delerme, General Counsel at The Channel Company; Melissa Schoffer Farber, VP and General Counsel at BroadwayHD; Cara Ciuffani, former General Counsel at Veho and Equinox; and Jonathan E. Goldin, Chief Legal Officer at Pearl Health. Baxendale opened by asking: "What is one shift inside business or legal impacting how you and your teams are working today?" One panelist shared that CEOs and private equity owners are increasingly asking how legal teams are using AI to manage ...
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Leading Boldly: Unlocking Growth Through Guard, Grow & Get

By Merc Smith posted 28 days ago
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Thank you to author Linda Moss , Chief Business Development and Marketing Officer, Dykema and 2025 LMA Midwest Conference Planning Committee Member. Session : Lead Boldly: Unlocking Growth, Strategy & Influence Speakers : Melissa Marshall, Chief Marketing Officer, Levenfeld Pearlstein (“LP”) and Deb Knupp, Managing Director, GrowthPlay Presented : LMA Midwest Region Program, October 9, 2025 Redefining Growth in Modern Legal Marketing What does it really mean to “lead boldly”? For Marshall and Knupp, it means replacing traditional notions of marketing as a reactive resource with a disciplined, measurable growth engine. Their joint framework—G3: ...
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Rethinking Cross-Selling: Lessons from LMA Midwest 2025 by Mia LaFlore

By Merc Smith posted 11-13-2025
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Thank you to author Mia LaFlore , Sr. BD/Marketing Manager - Intellectual Property and Technology at DLA Piper and Planning Committee for the 2025 LMA Midwest Conference. Session: Driving Profitability Through Cross-Selling Speakers: Rob Randolph (Yate Collaborative) and David Sheppard (Sidley Austin) Conference: LMA Midwest Regional Conference Date: October 9-10, 2025, Chicago, IL If you've ever sat in a cross-selling meeting where everyone's focused on filling white space on a spreadsheet, you know the drill. We look at our client list, identify what they're not using, and figure out how to push more services their way. Labor ...
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Finding Creativity in the Unscripted by Rebecca Wenglinski

By Merc Smith posted 11-10-2025
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Thank you to author Rebecca Wenglinski , Founder & CEO, Lotus Business Growth Consultants and Chair, LMA Michigan Local Steering Committee for this recap blog of the LMA Midwest Conference session, "Improv Tools to Improve Your Skills and Advance Your Career" from presenter Tom Keller, Director of Business Development at Kerr Russell. At the recent LMA Midwest Conference , attendees explored an unconventional yet transformative approach to professional growth: improv comedy . The session, titled “Improv Tools to Improve Your Skills and Advance Your Career,” was led by Tom Keller , Director of Business Development at Kerr Russell in Detroit. ...
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The Research Alternative Legal CMOs Need to Know About by Kathy Grunditz of OneNorth

By Merc Smith posted 08-27-2025
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Thank you to OneNorth for supporting the LMA Midwest Region! Legal marketers face a persistent challenge: proving marketing’s impact in a world where key buyers rarely respond to surveys or interviews. When your audience consists of general counsel at Fortune 500 companies or CEOs of global enterprises, access to this kind of market research has long felt out of reach for legal CMOs— it’s too expensive, too slow, and frankly, too complex to justify. When you’re under pressure from partners to validate every dollar spent, it’s easy to deprioritize research in favor of more immediate tactics. But here’s the irony: the very thing that could help ...
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Tech That Connects: How the Right CRM Can Supercharge Collaboration and Growth by Chantal Williams of InterAction+

By Merc Smith posted 08-19-2025
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Thank you to InterAction+™ for supporting LMA Midwest Region! Legal marketing and business development teams are under constant pressure to deliver results faster, with fewer resources and higher expectations. Collaboration isn't just a nice-to-have, it’s mission-critical. But without the right tools, collaboration becomes a bottleneck instead of a boost. This is where the power of a legal CRM comes into play. High-growth law firms are turning to purpose-built platforms like LexisNexis® InterAction+™ to break down silos and connect teams in meaningful, data-informed ways. InterAction+ goes beyond just contact management, acting as a complete ...
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Tips for Managing a Website Project by Vanessa Schaefer of Clockwork Design Group

By Merc Smith posted 08-12-2025
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Thank you to Clockwork Design Group for supporting LMA Midwest Region! Are you considering (or in the throes of) a website redesign? Are you feeling overwhelmed by all the work that’s involved? We understand! At Clockwork, we manage multiple website projects concurrently and know that effective project management is a game-changer in ensuring a smooth and successful execution, from website kickoff to launch. Read on for our 7 steps to help you stay on track, on budget, and reach your goals: Step 1: Pre-Planning Build a Business Case for a New Website Document limitations of your current site. Define goals for a new website. Connect the goals ...
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Turning Legal Marketing and Business Development Insights into Strategic Impact by Jessica Goldberg of INform54

By Merc Smith posted 07-30-2025
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Thank you to INform54 (Powered by Society 54 ) for supporting LMA Midwest Region! For years, legal marketing and business development (MBD) teams have worked to shift the perception that their departments are simply cost centers. While their work has long been viewed as essential, it hasn't consistently been recognized as central to a law firm's long-term success. However, as law firms adapt to an increasingly competitive, data-driven environment, this view is shifting, particularly when MBD teams utilize data not only to track activity but also to drive outcomes. Today's most forward-thinking firms recognize that MBD functions can be growth ...
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Clean, Connected, and Actionable: The New Data Standard for Legal Marketing by SigParser

By Merc Smith posted 07-21-2025
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Thank you to SigParser for supporting LMA Midwest Region! Legal marketers know the pain of working with messy data. Outdated job titles. Duplicated records. Contacts with missing context. CRMs built for storage, not strategy. So yes— clean data matters . It’s the baseline for any successful marketing strategy. But here’s the thing: the firms winning in 2025 and beyond won’t just be the ones with the cleanest spreadsheets. They’ll be the ones with the most useful data —the kind that’s clean, connected across systems, and actionable in real time. It’s not about more tools. It’s about better systems —ones that reflect how relationships ...
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Activate, Automate, Advance: How High-Performing Firms Are Using CRM to Scale Impact by Chantal Williams of InterAction+

By Merc Smith posted 07-16-2025
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Thank you to InterAction+™ for supporting LMA Midwest Region! Legal marketing and business development teams are being asked to do more than ever. More lead generation, more visibility into ROI, and more support for firmwide growth initiatives. But when resources are stretched thin, how can teams scale without burning out? High-performing firms have cracked the code: they activate smarter strategies, automate wherever possible, and advance their impact by putting the right tools to work. At the center of this success? Legal-specific CRMs provide law firms with a unified hub to source client data. LexisNexis® InterAction+™ helps firms do ...
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Houston, We Have an Engagement Problem: Three Things to Activate Now by Holly Barocio of GrowthPlay

By Merc Smith posted 07-10-2025
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Thank you to GrowthPlay for supporting LMA Midwest Region! According to Gallup’s 2025 State of the Global Workplace report, global employee engagement declined to 21% in 2024, representing approximately $438 billion in lost revenue due to lost productivity. Additionally, employees have reported a decline in well-being since 2022. Of the twelve engagement elements Gallup tracks, three elements saw the most significant decline: Clarity of expectations . Just 46% of employees clearly know what is expected of them at work. This is down ten points from a high of 56% in March 2020. Feeling cared about at work . Thirty-nine percent ...
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Mastering Event Management in the Legal Sector by Nexl

By Merc Smith posted 07-08-2025
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Thank you to Nexl for supporting LMA Midwest Region! The Role of Technology in Legal Events Legal event management has evolved. Once relying on Excel spreadsheets, paper tickets, and hours of manual labor, technology has transformed how organizers plan, execute, and evaluate legal events. From online event registration platforms to attendee management solutions, event planning software allows planners to offer memorable and profitable experiences without getting buried in the logistics. These events, ranging from small networking events to large-scale international conferences, provide lawyers with opportunities to network with peers, ...
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