Strategic Plan Update — Q1 2019

Goal #1 — Define Identity

Define a clear, compelling organizational identity that reflects who/what the association represents and that effectively focuses its programs, services and activities.

Strategic Initiatives: The Defining Our Identity initiative will continue throughout Q1 2019. It is anticipated that the Visioning workshop sessions led by Debbie Foster at the January Board of Directors meeting will tie together several pieces from previous work, including:
- ALA manifesto compilation
- New ALA mission statement
- ALA governance strategy
Coming out of the January meeting, next steps will be set to further advance the outcomes in to member messaging and delivery. The 2019 Annual Conference & Expo will be looked to as a showcase for the outcomes and new news from the DOI initiative.
2019 Membership Renewal Campaign: The renewal campaign began nine days later than last year and is keeping pace, which could be partially attributed to the free webinar incentive offered if members renew by the due date of January 1. Results as of December 16 are as follows:
2018: 3,172 renewals for $1,296,005 which is a 39.68% renewal rate
2017: 3,329 renewals for $1,361,990 which was a 39.87% renewal rate
Membership Marketing: A recruitment campaign launched in December for former members who lapsed in 2017 and 2018, showcasing the new Job Description Toolkit. As of this writing and a week past launch this campaign has netted five new members to date. A member referral incentive campaign will begin this month pending online join process modification and will offer a free webinar to the current member for each new member referred.

Goal #2 — Increase Member and Business Partner Value

Develop relevant, actionable, timely, responsive resources to increase value of ALA to members, business partners and other legal management professionals.

Newsletters: The second phase in the revised email communication strategy has launched!

The new strategy, and resulting templates, create standard content topics for each day, so audiences will learn to expect specific information (education, or events, or leadership, etc.) on set days during the week. Each day of the week delivers focused content:

Services could include:

MON – BOLD Bites
TUES – E-Learning
WED – Events
THUR – Membership News
FRI – Thought Leadership

Job Description Toolkit: ALA has designed a format for a toolkit to assist legal management professionals and their employer organizations in the writing of job descriptions using the UPBMS Taxonomy classifications/codes that will be integrated into developing job descriptions. A PDF version is currently available (free to members) in the ALA e-store. There will be multiple stages of this project, leading to the final goal of an online tool to generate job descriptions using the UPBMS Taxonomy classifications/codes.

Event Planning Plus: The 2018 debut of the Speaker Services portion of Event Planning Plus has 21 speakers registered with accompanying sample agendas as potential content for various chapter and partner meetings and retreats. EPP will allow members to hire ALA to help plan events and retreats for their firms and chapters, with a range of services offered including logistical support and education planning.

Services could include:

Determine purpose and objective of meeting.
Decide when to hold meeting (time of year, hours, weekday or weekend).
Decide who will be invited (staff, guests, business partners, vendors, etc.).
Create a budget.
Determine location.
Consider speakers and entertainment.
Confirm transportation, parking.
Create an agenda.
Set up and distribute invitations and monitor registration.
Consider any giveaways or gifts.
Miscellaneous (anything unique to your event, not on the list).
Facilitate and supervise on-site activities.
Post-event evaluation — book next event.

Two speakers were hired through the program, with one potentially scheduled for 2019.

Goal #3 — Enhance Thought Leadership

Become recognized as a thought leader in the legal industry by conducting critical industry research and developing new ideas, innovations and solutions to guide the legal management industry.

Global Legal Hackathon: The Global Legal Hackathon is scheduled for February 22-24, 2019. We have been invited to host and field a team again, but we have not received confirmation of our selection as a host, nor any additional details on requirements. As the conference space in ALA’s HQ building will not be available, we are looking for downtown Chicago venues instead. This should also generate more interest from those who would like to participate, either as team members, judges or mentors.
Global Legal Blockchain Consortium: ALA will serve as a co-host for the Global Blockchain Consortium’s Chicago briefing, January 15 from 7:30-9 a.m. at the offices of K&L Gates. The purpose of the briefing is to connect GLBC members in various regions, raise awareness of the consortium and solicit participation. Oliver will attend and provide brief remarks regarding ALA’s interest in supporting the consortium. GLBC representatives will discuss the history of the effort and showcase blockchain use cases. An attorney from K&L Gates will also speak.

Teresa Walker will present a webinar on behalf of ALA on blockchain’s impact on delivering legal services. A firm date for the webinar has not been secured but will likely be some time near the end of January.

SALI: The first release of the matter coding standard is slated for January 28 during LegalTech (January 29–31, 2019). A SALI membership meeting is scheduled for January 28 from 1:30–4 p.m., location TBD.

Diversity and Inclusion: The content and publications team is working to connect members from the Committee on Diversity & Inclusion with a publishing house that is writing an article on diversity in the legal profession. The article is set to be a 12–16 page “Diversity in Legal Professions” multi-platform campaign published within USA Today, networking events, top industry conferences across the United States and online through a targeted business site in March.
UPBMS: The Standards Review Committee worked on the final revisions to version 2.0 of the UPBMS. Changes and updates included some reclassification of tasks and processes and new and revised definitions of processes and substantive areas. ALA’s Board of Directors has adopted this version and it will be opening up for public comment this month. Staff and volunteers (Teresa Walker and Bill Mech) have had conversations with representatives of Big Hand and the Accord Project on how the UPBMS might be useful in their respective initiatives.

Compensation and Benefit Studies: Plan is moving forward with LMA to expand inclusion of marketing-related positions in the 2019 survey. Initial discussions with LMA indicate that the marketing section will expand by 3-6 positions. The ALA team will be working on developing a pull-out report focused on the marketing positions and data that can be marketed to the LMA audience.

Goal #4 — Advance Legal Management Professional Development

Advance the knowledge, skills and leadership of legal management professionals and strengthen the role of legal management professionals in the legal industry.

CLM Exam: The overall pass rate for the November 2018 CLM exam was 63%, with 17 of the 27 test takers successfully passing the exam. 2019 exam registration will open on January 1 for both the May 13 and November 4 exams, and application deadlines will close two months prior to each test date.

Resource Portal: To kick things off in January, a temporary landing page will be created titled, “Your Legal Management Resource Hub” and will showcase Human Resources education including a new bundle with 2018 Annual Conference HR recordings, HR webinars, and easy links to whitepapers, Legal Management articles and podcasts. This is an initial step to creating the ALA Resource Portal. The goal of the portal is to provide a web-based platform that pulls together information and applications from different sources into a single user interface. It’s a way for users to get all the content they need in one place. It’s a way to increase member value through simplified retrieval of legal management resources.

Webinars/Other Online Education: The 2019 webinar schedule has been posted online and all sessions are open for registration, including subscriptions and bundle packages. Promotion of the 2019 eLearning courses has begun and will continue with a combination of full membership emails and emails targeted to HR and Finance specialists. In January, the first of the Annual Conference 2018 conference recording bundles will be available for purchase. The HR bundle will be released first, followed by finance, law firm management essentials and C-Suite. 2019 is expected to see the development of two more Summit Series Webcast programs, as well as the continuation of the Solutions Series Webcasts through business partners.

Goal #5 Build Community and Engagement

Build a stronger sense of community and shared purpose and increase engagement among members, chapters, business partners, and other stakeholders.

2019 Annual Conference & Expo: Registration opened on Wednesday, November 14, two and a half weeks earlier than the last few years. Some of the highlights you won’t want to miss are:

Keynote Speaker Molly Fletcher, hailed as the “female Jerry Maguire,” is a trailblazer and is sure to inspire attendees with her business wisdom, relationship brilliance and unwavering optimism. She spent two decades as one of the world’s only female sports agents — and is one of the most successful in the modern era to boot.
General Session speaker Nicole Malachowski, the first female Thunderbird pilot, is an experienced leader with an incredible life story of overcoming hardship and achieving seemingly impossible dreams. Every obstacle she encountered she saw as an opportunity to grow.
The Exhibit Hall will provide an excellent opportunity to visit with valuable business partners who are already invested in your firm’s success, as well as explore new products and services offered by other industry experts.
Our Wednesday evening Grand Finale caps off an exciting week of renewing old friendships and forming new connections with colleagues from around the world. You won’t want to miss this always fun event, sponsored by our VIP business partners just for you.

Fall Conferences: ALA’s full fall schedule of events was announced.
C4 The Legal Industry Conference
Wednesday, September 18–Friday, September 20, 2019, Boston Park Plaza Hotel

ALA Master Class: Leadership for Legal Management Professionals
Monday, October 21-Wednesday, October 23, 2019, Westin Seattle

Large Firm Administrators Retreat
August 1-3, Nashville, Tennessee

Legal Lean Sigma Yellow Belt Certification Course
September 17-18, Boston, Massachusetts

Intellectual Property Conference for Legal Management Professionals
October 21, Seattle Washington
International Program: For the second year, ALA had a presence at Fenalaw Conference in Sao Paulo in 2018. The International Relations Committee (IRC) is currently evaluating the experience, considering the value of possible future participation and discussing what the scope of that involvement would be. In addition, the committee is discussing support opportunities for a group of legal management professionals in Nigeria. The group has approached ALA to discuss ways they can get more involved with the association; there are currently 8 active members from Nigeria, but there is a group of 30+ legal managers who meet regularly in Nigeria who could be interested in becoming ALA members or even forming a chapter. The IRC is working with the NYC Chapter to see about establishing a Nigerian Section of that chapter, much like GLA has done with Brazil. The IRC will be focusing on establishing a social media presence in 2019. They are also looking at writing an article for inclusion in Legal Management magazine.

Foundation of the ALA: The Foundation has a new three-part focus in 2019:

Part 1: Student Visibility and internships. Building on programs already in place among many chapters, the Foundation will seek scholarship applicants from chapters with student internship programs, to support students looking to enter the legal management profession. Some possible avenues to explore — providing seed money to chapters to get this started; starting a course for CLI about how to develop internships; partnering with chapters to put together a road map for starting a successful program. Trustees would also participate in college and university career fairs to educate students about opportunities in legal outside of being an attorney.

Part 2: SUSAN FRENCH SCHOLARSHIPS. The Foundation will offer fewer scholarships but will increase the amount of the awards and the resources given to the recipients — in effect, changing from an emerging leader scholarship to an emerging leader program. As part of the program, more would be required of the recipients (some kind of explicit demonstration of leadership). A subcommittee has been created to flesh out what a program would entail.

Part 3: BREZINA MEMORIAL SESSION. As the Foundation’s showcase event, the session is a prime opportunity to tell the Foundation’s story. The goal is to make the session more dynamic, showcasing the Foundation’s work, scholarship recipients, and the contributions the Foundation is making to the future of the profession. The length of the session can also be limiting, so perhaps the allotted time could be extended.