Last month, the Legal Marketing Association’s Annual Conference, LMA24, brought together 1,000+ legal marketers from across the country and around the world! Featuring 140+ speakers, 35+ sessions, and 80+ exhibitors in the beautiful city of San Diego, attendees had the opportunity to learn about hot topics and issues within the legal marketing industry while building relationships with industry colleagues.
LMA Minnesota members were on the ground at LMA24 – here are key highlights and takeaways from a few Minnesota members:
As a newbie to legal marketing, attending the conference solo was initially daunting. However, the mentor-mentee program quickly connected me with peers, easing any sense of isolation. The warmth and generosity of the LMA community created a welcoming atmosphere, encouraging me to approach seasoned professionals with confidence. The standout for me was the "Building Better Bios" session, providing actionable insights I could swiftly apply at my firm. What I loved most was that it didn't just tell me what to do, but why it mattered, showing real-life examples that inspired me to make our firm's bios truly stand out.
- Julia Camnetar, Marketing Assistant at Hellmuth & Johnson
My favorite session was “Research Reaps Revenue,” which highlighted the value of proprietary research for law firms. Studies show that the #1 content preference for in-house counsel is articles but #2 is research reports. Clients want lawyers to “go deep” on subjects of interest, which Barnes & Thornburg did with a bespoke study on challenges faced by private equity fund managers. Research like this provides an opportunity to become “the authority” on a subject and the results provide myriad opportunities to position a firm among its targeted audience.
- Sally Schmidt, President at Schmidt Marketing, Inc.
As a second-time LMA Annual Conference attendee, I was thrilled to reconnect with LMA friends and colleagues and I was ready to soak up as much knowledge as possible! One of my favorite sessions was “AI in Legal Marketing: Leadership, Risk Mitigation, and Innovation,” which provided examples of ways in which firms are leveraging AI technologies for enhanced client engagement, market analysis and competitive positioning. These tools focus on litigation spotting, social media mining, analytic cross-sell models and more. The speakers also shared an overview of practical AI tools and strategies that legal marketers can leverage in their day-to-day work to enhance productivity and make certain tasks easier. Depending on firm policy, one could use Generative AI (GenAI) tools to help identify industry trends, conduct data extraction, help with brainstorming (such as ideas for thought leadership), summarize large amounts of text and more. Learning how to write prompts for GenAI is a valuable skill for making the most of these tools in the future.
- Levi Wick, Client Development Specialist at Faegre Drinker
Whenever the LMA brain trust gets together, I always walk away feeling recharged, with my marketing toolkit full of cutting-edge new tools. This year’s annual conference was no exception. Here are my top takeaways from #LMA24. Let’s rewind to sunny San Diego!
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- Jamie Lawless set the stage for an inspiring conference with her opening keynote that encouraged us to go all in on being human. We learned to find mentors who are generous with investing time in your future and to seek out stretch opportunities that take you out of your comfort zone.
- Barbiecore was having a moment with a sea of pink power blazers. Wayne Pollock even dressed up as “In-Line Skating Ken” to moderate Thursday’s small firm session. To cap it all off, Nancy Myrland handed out bespoke “I Am Enough” pins this year.
- A well-crafted LinkedIn profile that tells the story of who you are is key to driving business development success. In the “Building Better Bios” session led by David Weinberger with One Story Branding, we learned that GCs go to LinkedIn first because it provides a greater ecosystem of legal players.
- AI will continue to evolve and change the way we work. Putting guardrails in place and experimenting with prompt engineering will help us work alongside GenAI tools instead of against them. I chose to embrace AI at the conference by using a tool called Sembly to take notes for me so I could fully immerse myself in the sessions.
- E Ink tablets like reMarkable are the future of notetaking. Seeing it in action (thanks to fellow Midwest board members Tanya Riggan and Sara Pierson) gave me tech envy!
- Lauren McNee Doherty, Marketing Manager at Pritzker Hageman