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Visibility & Business Development for Law Firms & Legal Professionals

Visibility & Business Development

Nine Ways to Leverage LinkedIn

1. Build relationships with potential clients. If you deal with corporate business, small business, or real estate issues, you can use LinkedIn to network with potential clients—and educate them so they will want to come to you with their problems.

2. Identify and connect with potential referral sources. A lawyer who specializes in banking laws can network with lawyers at Debt Recovery Tribunals. Business lawyers can network with general counsels, accountants, and business advisors. Lawyers who work in the real estate industry can connect with realtors who can refer business to them and so on.

3. Create a community of like-minded professionals. A real estate attorney can share information with a group of real estate agents who may refer business when their clients need advice. Within this group, you can develop conversations and link prospects, referral sources, and the media back to your blog or website where they can get even more information. Your LinkedIn group is part of the lead generation funnel.

4. Build relationships with the media. More media professionals are on LinkedIn—92 percent— than on any other social networking site. That means editors, journalists and reporters of local, regional, and national publications and other media types are available to you on LinkedIn. Reach out and invite them to your group so they can see the type of information you offer their readers, listeners, or viewers.

5. Spread your content and prove you’re a thought leader. Placing your content—and expertise—in front of targeted prospects is the absolute best way to attract new clients and referral sources. That’s why you need to join the groups your prospects are going to for information. That is where you can provide and engage in conversations.

6. Nurture relationships with existing clients. Your marketing and relationship-building efforts should not stop once someone becomes a client. Consider creating a LinkedIn group specifically to provide exclusive content and information just for clients. This can help you with client retention.

7. Conduct market research then promote it (and yourself) via articles and press releases. Recently, a client who is a workplace communication expert used LinkedIn to conduct a study of CEOs, presidents, vice presidents, and managers. From his research, he found that 44 percent of the executives surveyed were unhappy with their employees’ performance and their own communication style. Through survey questions, he was also able to uncover the specific problems they were encountering. With this knowledge, he then created: ` A report that showcased the results ` A Press release to reveal the results and position him as a thought leader ` Webinars to discuss solutions to the problems his audience were encountering ` Articles and LinkedIn discussions to promote the study, the report and the event ` A complete marketing and public relations plan based on the study

8. Stay in touch with what’s happening in your specialty. Join groups that your peers, colleagues, and competitors belong to. It will help you stay current on trends, problems, concerns, and even specific cases. You will be able to see what others are talking about and what they have to share. And you can use this as an idea bank for articles and press releases you can write to promote your own firm.

9. Showcase the abilities of every lawyer in your firm. Every attorney in your practice should have a LinkedIn profile, and there should be a link to each LinkedIn profile on the individual lawyer bio pages on your firm website. This enables clients or prospects to reach out to your practice in another way and on a more personal level. It is often easier—and less expensive—to keep your LinkedIn profile updated than it is to update your own website biography.

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Mental harassment is punishable or not?

Mental Harassment is punishable or not?

Mental Harassment is no good, or is it? We all suffer mental harassment of one form or the other at least once in our lifetime. Nevertheless, we hardly realize that we just added a burden of a harassment on our head. For most of us, mental harassment means the domestic violence, abuse, stalking or workplace abuse, but trust us, the horizon of mental harassment is much wider than we think. Any disturbing incident that occurs in your surroundings, irrespective of you being in your social circle, workplace, home or anywhere else is termed as a kind of mental harassment. Of course, the intensity of the same can vary.

What is Harassment?

We already explained what a mental harassment could be, nevertheless, let us understand it by way of an accurate definition.

Mental Harassment or Emotional Abuse is any kind of non-physical attitude or behaviour that intimidates, controls, sub judicates, punishes, demeans, or isolates another person by way of humiliation, fear or degradation. The following are some of the common examples of mental harassment:

  • A constant abuse from a person again and again.
  • Cheating by spouse or mental torture for dowry.
  • Any kind of abstinence from something that a person loves to do.

Many a time mental harassment is caused by bad words or emotional thrust. However, it can be even be physical in some extreme cases.

Fortunately, the Indian Penal Code has established strict and stringent laws against any kind of harassment. There are various sections under which a case can be registered for such harassments and abuses. Seek shelter from law and it will protect you against any form of cruelty or torture you are experiencing in your life.

Section 498A of IPC

This section covers any physical or emotional harm caused to a married woman by her husband or in-laws. Any such kind of offense is punishable under law and the punishment can be an imprisonment of three years or more and the culprit shall be liable to heavy fines. Further, this offense is non-bailable.

Section 294 of IPC

If a person does an obscene act in public, recites or utters obscene words to annoy and torture a person in public, is punishable under the law. The offender would be booked under section 294 of the Indian Penal Code and would be liable for an imprisonment up to three years or with a fine or both.

Section 304B of IPC

When a married lady die within seven years of her marriage and the reason for her death is due to the emotional abuse she experienced by her husband and in-laws, and the cause of the harassment was non-payment of dowry is termed as dowry death. The term for imprisonment ranges from seven years to a lifetime.

Section 509 of IPC

This section is established purposely to punish any person who demean the virtues of any woman intentionally by any physical or verbal conduct. The person would be liable to an imprisonment of up to three years

Apart from the above-mentioned IPC sections, there are specific acts such as The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 and the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961. These acts help woman fight for his or her rights and that they support the feminine fraternity to steer a cheerful, peaceful, and equal life within the society.

Mental Harassment at the Workplace

Besides the domestic abuse and violence, we should not forget about the mental harassment at the workplace. As per a survey, 50% of the women experience workplace harassment. They suffer humiliation, and defamations regularly, but only a few of them dare to report it to the law.

Most of the people believe that mental harassment at the workplace can only be sexual, but the mental harassment and tortures are categorized. Look at the classification below:

  • Distinction based on the grounds of age.
  • Defaming or demeaning an individual in public.
  • Discrimination on the grounds of caste.
  • Discrimination on the basis of sex or marital status.

It is sad that there are still no laws protecting the rights of the employees against such kinds of behaviour, but there are plenty of HR and labour laws that help the employees fight for their rights. The acts such as Payment of Wages Act, 1936, Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, Maternity Benefit Act, 1961 are quite helpful in securing the rights of the employees at workplace.

Every citizen of the country has the right to live with dignity. Mental Harassment or emotional or physical abuse is a punishable offense and by any means, if you are a victim to such acts, you should report to the police immediately.

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Building your Legal services brand

social media blog

Legal services marketing as a discipline is mostly unheard of, at least in India. As marketers, we did not get the opportunity to learn this in any school. There are no specialized legal/professional services marketing firms that can provide a 360-degree view either.

Those who work in this field must know the business of law, policy environment and deal market in order to understand the dynamics that bring in work for law firms. Marketing is impactful only when it is in line with business goals. Public relations (PR) agencies carry out media relations, which is a small part of the whole mix.

The Indian legal profession is one of the last few sectors to remain closed to foreign players. Indian firms bill in US dollars for work that comes in through the “best friends” system, which consists of warm and reciprocal business ties with foreign counterparts. With newer firms growing bigger and expanding their reach globally, this will become tougher. Therefore, marketing professionals need to consider all the elements to create a robust strategy that focuses on below-the-line activities such as content marketing, social media marketing and PR.

So, what are the measures that Indian law firms can put in place to ensure that they are strategically positioned for success?

Content is king

In global firms, a marketing professional supports roughly 20 legal practitioners, while in India, he/she supports over 50 fee earners. The overall strategy rests primarily on: (1) content to establish thought leadership; and (2) client engagement, which can build the brand and provide visibility.

For any professional services firm, content plays a major role in marketing efforts. Law firms generate a huge amount of content but the challenge is to make it more usable for clients. The legal marketing professional needs to make use of their business and legal knowledge to do this. Since a lot of high value work comes from overseas, activities must be chosen wisely in order to reach clients from different parts of the world in a more focused way.

With intense competition among firms and almost no differentiators (as everyone claims to be a full service law firm), doing good work and collecting client testimonials is a great way to be remembered by prospective customers. Client referrals work wonders for business development and they help in improving your ranking and visibility in legal directories.

With a complex and evolving regulatory scenario, covering the legal angle is a growing need for business media, and provides a good opportunity for law firms to be visible to their target audience. Law firms must be quick to react to policy changes and be able to provide legal insights to media and their clients on a regular basis. Law firms should also be able to understand business challenges and provide clients with commercial solutions to legal problems.

Indian firms regardless of size need to focus on areas such as business intelligence technologies like their international counterparts. Activities regardless of firm size include tracking industry trends and financial markets. The commonly deployed tools to execute these tasks are customer relationship management, litigation tracking, news aggregators, and return on investment analytics. Among firms that outsource to external agencies, the objectives typically include online presence management and audio-visual content creation.

Big disruptor

Social media are seen as a big disruptor with more than half the international firms increasing their digital marketing budgets in the next two years. It is an important aspect of an omni-channel approach to marketing and widely regarded as a game changer for lawyers who want to build relationships at a scale required to sustain their legal practice. Notably, law firm social media profiles are emerging as a valued digital asset for firms looking to go global.

The focus on marketing and business development is essential and needs concerted efforts and professional support. There are already some good examples being set by global law firms and the “Big 4” consultancies that Indian law firms should take seriously if they want to build agility and resilience in what may soon become a hyper-competitive marketplace.