Time to get the team in shape.

• Author: Hammerstrom, Jeanne
• Position: President's Podium

As legal marketers, we have been inundated with articles and presentations explaining that "team" and "service" and "value" are going to differentiate our firms--and how we as marketing professionals and service providers assist in defining these terms and helping our attorneys demonstrate value to their clients.

Well, I'm a diehard sports fan, and we can take a lesson from professional teams.

1. Figure out how to be a team.

2. Make sure we do everything we can to keep our clients happy (service).

3. Give them an experience that always makes them value the relationship.

Sports teams provide these elements (most of the time). They realize it's up to them to keep a loyal fan base, and they know we fans need more than one great game to feel like we're getting outstanding service and value. It's the same with law firm marketers. We have our challenging moments and times when we need to find a different way to increase our efforts or do things differently. We can't rest on one successful pitch, event or media placement--we need to keep swinging and connecting.

With this in mind, LMA is changing the game plan slightly to keep our "fan base" happy. We want to make sure to work with our fan club--members who support the organization and help to recruit more professionals throughout the industry. So, as reported previously in LMA Briefs, we are updating our membership categories to simplify our membership structure.

* A change to a calendar year renewal process, effective January 2011

* The removal of the membership initiation fee

* The addition of a discounted group rate for firms or companies with multiple individual members

Note that our group rate for membership--which launches in October...