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Newsletters

Our newsletter provides members with information on current industry trends and recent chapter updates.

Winter 2020

President’s Message
Chapter Business Updates
Mind
Body
Soul
BP Spotlight
National Events and Info
Our Business Partners
Insights From Our Sponsors

Summer 2019

Message from Our 2019-2020 President, Rose A. Jaworecki
Chapter Business Updates
Mind
ALANYC Chapter – Member Spotlight
Body
Soul
National Events and Information
Welcome Our New Business Partners
Business Partner Listing
Insights From Our Sponsors

PRISM 2019

ALANYCis Learning!

Who doesn’t like an all-inclusive package?

ALANYC supports ALA members working throughout New York City by providing high quality, competency-based education and opportunities to develop and enhance leadership and organizational skills through Chapter participation.

As you plan your educational year, keep in mind all of the members-only content available to you including:

- Monthly Educational Sessions and Handouts
- Luncheon Program and Handouts
- Educational Symposium and Exposition for 2017
- Labor Law Updates for 2017
- CLM Study Group Review Material
- Updated Forms and Templates
- Access to industry experts through our Business Partners
- Unlimited access to idea exchanges with peers and Business Partners via the community forums
- Attendance at the Annual Managing Partner Luncheon

Barbarians at the Gate: The Case for a Comprehensive Security Posture
By Jacob Borger

Former CEO of Cisco, John Chambers, made a sweeping claim that there are only two types of companies; those who have been hacked and those who don’t know they’ve been hacked. Given the almost daily revelations of new incursions at even the largest companies, it would be difficult to disagree with this assertion. As the I.T. frontline for a small, medium, or even large Firm, what can you do against the combined weight of today’s cyber-threats? While I wish there was an easy answer to this question, we believe that our mothers were on the right track, wear layers.

As a legal specific consultancy, we are exposed to Firm of all sizes and specializations. In nearly every instance, the Firm has concerns regarding its security posture and wants to harden its attack surface. The problem we see, however, is that the technology and work habits are mutating faster than the organizations ability to keep up.

It was not so long ago that a well configured firewall and complex passwords which expired every ninety days represented the acme of network security. Today these aren’t even table stakes. As our applications march inevitably to the cloud, we must respond to meet the challenge. We must become more sophisticated and more nuanced in how we view network security as we expand our understanding of what exactly makes up a network.

To begin a realistic assessment of your security exposure you must begin with the question, do I know exactly where all my data lives? Even when all your data sat within your four walls it still found a way to “leak” out. As access to corporate data becomes more distributed this situation only gets worse.

A modern security posture must place equal importance on both data repository, be it public or private cloud, and endpoint. Tens of thousands of dollars spent in security at the datacenter is of little value if nothing is invested in the attorney’s increasingly mobile workstation. This machine should be just as secure off the network as on. To control access to local data we have a plethora of choices ranging from hard-drive access via Bit locker, the deployment of one of the many MDM solutions, enabling two-factor authentication with RSA or Duo, or investing in the new kid on the block, Windows Hello for Business.

Moving up the stack, think about how connections are made to your data. As we move to the cloud will your users be well served by a Citrix, VMware or remote desktop connection to a datacenter? Will this even make sense when they would simply be making a hop back out to the cloud? We must embrace the reality that the local workstation becomes the hub for data transfer, not the datacenter. Again, look at layering your solutions with tools like Duo/RSA, ADFS, Azure AD, Direct Access and Auto-VPN.

While this article may have painted a fairly bleak picture of the security landscape I believe we have cause for hope. Increasingly, our vendors and partners are adopting a security first mindset in their development and implementations. Rather than an afterthought, security is a baked in part of the solution. Access to these solutions is also becoming much more democratized. Superior security is no longer the privilege of those with the deepest pockets. Truly excellent results are well within the reach of every Firm and just like momma said, remember your layers.

Adam is a partner and CIO at Adaptive Solutions, Inc. He oversees the company’s Professional Services, Cloud and Managed Services and Support Services teams to pair the appropriate technology portfolio with a Firm’s culture and business needs, ensuring projects and outcomes provide significant value to the organization.

Going Long: Thought Leadership’s Role in Your Marketing Strategy
By Patricia Ann Nagy

When you’re doing content marketing, short may be sweet, but longer turns out to be stronger. As law Firms ramp up their business development and marketing efforts in the scramble for competitive advantage, there are many avenues to pursue as they respond to the challenge of “differentiate or die.”

Content creation remains a pillar of these amplified marketing efforts. At least one-fifth of the Firms responding to the most recent joint survey by the Legal Marketing Association (LMA) and Bloomberg Law listed content generation and management as the top area of investment over the last two years. That could include – but isn’t limited to — blog posts, social media outlets like Twitter and LinkedIn, and commentary in trade publications.

Something important – and a little surprising in a business climate where nearly limitless information is accessible in the seconds it take a web site to load – is that longer content often gets better results. Marketing experts have explored this phenomenon, which runs counter to a media climate where the leader of the free world communicates in 140-character bursts and social media prowess is measured by the brief effort it takes to click a “like” button. Results vary, to be sure, but when it works, it works well. Neil Patel, a social media guru who founded the analytics Firm KISS Metrics and Crazy Egg, says changes to Google’s search algorithm have helped longer pieces of content shine in search results and remain effective over longer periods of time.

For law Firms, genuine thought leadership (content that reflects real thought and demonstrates industry leadership) can reach clients and potential clients best. What better way to demonstrate your Firm’s depth of knowledge than insightful pieces that reflect your strongest practice areas? There’s no magic formula for successful, effective thought leadership, but here are some commonly shared principles from around the legal industry:

Concentrate on a few sweet spots – This will allow more focused approaches to the clients you want to attract.
Embrace longer articles – case studies, novel legal strategies, or analyses of key industry developments fill three objectives quickly: they distill your Firm’s strategic focus, they provide content that can be shared across social media platforms, and most importantly, they have enough substance to begin a conversation with prospective and recurring clients.
Don’t forget to mix it up a little – Use graphs and other visual aids to back up the data you’re suing. A well-written piece of thought leadership can lose its effectiveness if it’s just a long block of text.
Dialogue is a good result – High quality interactions with clients and prospects that make it clear your content has informed and educated readers. It’s an invitation to demonstrate how your Firm can help.

A 2,500-word analysis of regulatory changes in pharmaceutical licensing might not win a lawsuit, but if your Firm depends on growing revenue though working with biotech startup clients, that content will display your best attorney’s analytical prowess, establish and reinforce your industry expertise, and help define Firm strategy. Whether it’s found through a link on Twitter, a catchy headline on a LinkedIn post, or it’s headlining a well-maintained blog on the Firm website, it’s the same message. If it’s done right, it will grab and hold the right readers’ attention, and begin a discussion that could lead to new business.

But what’s the best way to create that content and use it to your Firm’s strategic advantage? While plenty of attorneys are engaging writers – President Abraham Lincoln, poet Wallace Stevens, and the mystery novelists Lisa Scottoline and John Grisham come to mind – the current legal business climate doesn’t leave much time for penning desktop sonnets or generating engaging marketing content.

Particularly if your Firm doesn’t have a strong culture of publishing, it may be useful to get some outside help. Content co-creation can combine your Firm’s subject matter expertise with the skills of marketers and writers who can tailor that knowledge to the appropriate audience. An outside consultant can also work with your marketing department to increase the visibility and reach of your thought leadership, and help measure the effectiveness of your targeting efforts.

Regardless of whether thought leadership is done entirely in-house or gets an outside boost, it’s a vital pillar of today’s legal marketing strategy. And in an age of Tweets and high-speed communications, it should comfort leading legal minds that a persuasive, well-expressed argument can still have the desired impact and help give your Firm a path to standing out from the competition.

Patricia Ann Nagy is the founder of Proxy Public Relations LLC. She can be reached at patricia@proxypr.com.

Newsletters

Winter 2020

Summer 2019

PRISM 2019

Year End 2018/2019

Fall 2018

PRISM 2018

Year End 2017/2018

Mid-Chapter Year 2017

Winter 2017

November 2016

September/October 2016: Fall Into Central Park

Prism Summer 2016

August 2016: Summer in the City

June 2016: The Spirit of Freedom

Prism 2015

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