Hybrid operations are here to stay, but building a successful hybrid office that also makes your attorneys happy? That’s a challenge. With 93% of firms now reporting they want to leverage some type of hoteling, you may be wondering how to balance opportunities — such as optimizing real estate — against the challenges of preserving and promoting firm culture in the office. In this session, you’ll learn hybrid can be successfully and quickly implemented when guided by three simple elements. Join in to explore the strategy for building a successful hybrid office that helps you optimize space and enables attorneys to connect and collaborate when they are in the office.

Objectives:

• Recognize the business mandates of the hybrid office.
• Identify the three simple elements of a successful hybrid strategy.
• Discover new, innovative technology that enables space optimization and attorney connection.
• Employ metrics that will help your firm create hybrid strategies.
• Describe case study examples of peer firm success stories and attorney experiences.

AshLea Allberry
Chief Operating Officer
Maptician

Every operation within your law firm is facing immense pressure to normalize their data assets and advance initiatives using deep analysis. Your top performers are moving swiftly to more robust solutions that can reveal insights that inspire action and deliver results. In this session, you’ll review how to deploy advanced analysis and measurement tools to enhance law firm operations. You’ll see how to pair analyses on breadth of work, longevity of client interaction, business development return, client stages, experience/talent management and other core areas with typical financial metrics to shape firm strategies.

Objectives:

• Outline the key sources of intelligence.
• Discover how firms are using cross-operational data.
• Illustrate new approaches, including data lakes and machine learning.
• Review new analysis firms have gravitated toward.
• Identify different consumption mechanisms.

Russ Haskin
Senior Director of Business Consulting
Wilson Allen

In this session, you’ll address how to keep your workplace safe through the development of design standards for new buildings, as well as hardware, software, safety protocols and employee training for new and existing facilities. Don’t miss this discussion of safety design improvements, historical mass casualty attacks and lessons learned, pre-attack indicators, specific action steps to take during an active violence encounter, and actions that increase survivability and overall emergency preparedness.

Objectives:

• Recognize how historical mass casualty events should be shaping the way you train and equip personnel in any workspace.
• Explain the importance of security layers and how to identify pre-attack indicators in the workplace. 
• Discuss the critical role of all stakeholders in creating and maintaining a safe work environment.

Brink Fidler
Founder and President
Defend Systems

Here’s your opportunity to unpack the key elements of captivating writing, including organization, clarity and tone. You’ll learn strategies for transforming unclear or uninspiring writing into powerful prose. You’ll examine examples of excellent writing and explore what makes writing engaging and compelling. Expect to roll up your sleeves and practice applying what you learn. 

Objectives:

• Review and edit your writing to reduce wordiness, increase readability and avoid errors.
• Produce writing that captures a reader’s attention and conveys information cogently and directly.
• Write and organize content with maximum impact.

Shannon Andrus, EdD
Speaker and Trainer
Word Nerd Consulting

Make the satisfaction, engagement and efficiency of your employees a primary concern for you and your law firm. In this session, you’ll discover when your employees are satisfied and engaged in their work, it can directly impact your bottom line. You’ll develop a new understanding of how essential your role in management is to assisting in controlling expenses and increasing profitability — no matter what your position. By the end of the session, you’ll gain new knowledge along with many employee-related expense savings measures to implement back at your firm.

Objectives:

• Evaluate your law firm culture from a fostering perspective to promote stability.
• Recognize key factors needed to invest in hiring and retention and how they affect your profit margin.
• Explain how to train and develop talent to increase productivity.
• Design opportunities to promote from within your firm.
• Create an employee experience to promote a happy and secure workplace.
• Illustrate to members of your team how to improve all levels of efficiency.

Lisa A. Waligorski, CLM, PHRca, SPHR
Executive Director
Newmeyer & Dillion LLP

How do you strategically apply Legal Project Management (LPM)? What is its value? How can it positively impact law firms, businesses and customers? Join this session for a practical overview of the basics of LPM and portfolio management. You’ll take away practical tips that you can easily implement to successfully deploy LPM in your firm and benefit from the value it brings.

Objectives:

• Recognize how and when to evaluate LPM needs.
• Apply LPM concepts business-wide.
• Collect and understand practical tips for applying LPM and its principles.

Basil Fedorchenko
Senior Manager, Legal Project Management Consulting
Perkins Coie LLP

Ema Virdi-Sehra
Senior LPM Project Manager
Perkins Coie LLP

Leadership is a journey — not a destination. Therefore, it is critical you continue to sharpen your leadership skills. This session is jam-packed with leadership tips that will help you better communicate, connect and collaborate with your team. You’ll walk away with practical tips that you can implement immediately, as well as a resource guide to refer to as you continue your leadership journey.

Objectives:

• Identify different leadership styles.
• Create a culture of candor.
• Identify ways to connect more effectively with your team.
• Model daily practices for becoming a more engaged leader.

Debbie Foster
Managing Partner
Affinity Consulting Group

In this session, you’ll get tips and advice on how to get additional value out of the IT team at your firm. Identify things you may not know you can ask for from your IT team that can make your life easier, while tackling the one-person or small admin team that does everything — including IT in small firms. Assess what things can be automated and what services you can use. You’ll leave with a new understanding of when it makes sense to outsource your IT department or some aspects of it and what to look for in an outsourcing company.

Objectives:

• Identify a list of time-saving activities your IT department can help you with.
• Examine the use of automation tools to make things easier.
• Analyze when to use outside services for additional IT expertise.
• Evaluate if outsourcing IT is a good fit for your firm.

Isidore Okoro, MBA, PMP
Chief Information Officer
Steptoe & Johnson PLLC

What’s the difference between performative and authentic behaviors in the context of diversity, equity and inclusion? In this session, you’ll address allyship, giving and receiving feedback, empathy and relatedness, effective communication and other topics. Through a case study, you’ll see performative behavior and authentic behavior in the workplace illustrated and be encouraged to share your experiences and perspectives. You’ll also address how performative versus authentic behavior impacts recruiting, onboarding, inclusion and — ultimately — retention.

Objectives:

• Demonstrate tools to build more authentic relationships and experiences.
• Identify the impact of performative words and actions.
• Summarize and articulate the consequences of not being authentic.
• Recognize how to use awkward or challenging situations to demonstrate allyship and advance understanding.

David B. Sarnoff, Esq., ACC
Director of Strategic Partnerships Certified Executive Coach
Loeb Leadership

Joy Stephens, MBA
Senior Consultant
Loeb Leadership

Co-develop solutions to common challenges by leveraging the shared experiences and collective knowledge of your industry peers. ALA’s Meeting of Minds sessions enable participants to network extensively, discuss, debate and dissect best practices and topical issues within legal administration.

Andrea D. Everage, MHR, CLM, PHR
Director of Human Resources
Meyers Nave

Taylor Aston-Nielsen
HR Manager
Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP

There are three parts of the mind: cognitive (IQ/skills), affective (EQ/emotion) and conative (instinct), but you may not be as familiar with the conative part of the mind — or how we instinctively take action. This research will inspire and motivate you to take a closer look at the power of conation and how it is used in strategic recruiting, retention and creating teams.

Former law firm administrator, Kim Brown Goodwin, along with Ben Bina (business advisor and Kolbe-certified consultant) will share their professional experience and research utilizing conation, via the Kolbe Theory.

Objectives:

• Identify how unique conative skills (based on instinct) can be used to strategically recruit top talent.
• Understand how instinctive strengths can be used to retain top performers, while improving overall engagement and productivity.
• Review case studies from organizations who have experienced success using conation to understand (and even predict) how individuals instinctively take action.

* As the only assessment tool that measures conation — and is also approved by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — this session will reference the Kolbe Index as a resource. The overall goal of this session, however, is to demonstrate how conation is used in recruiting, retention and creating cohesive teams.

Ben Bina
Kolbe-Certified Business Consultant
Command Clarity, LLC

Kim Brown Goodwin
Kolbe-Certified Business Consultant and Founder
Harmony Business Advisors, LLC

You’re facing unprecedented challenges in support staff attrition and recruitment. In this session, you’ll examine how to transform your lawyer support structures away from relationship-based support to a more sustainable model that provides improved administrative support, team-based models and automation. See how technology plays an important role, but this change manifests success through operational strategy, process and people. Learn strategies and gain operational recommendations you can leverage to drive substantive, measurable impact in your law firm.

Objectives:

• Show how to transform support delivery through investing in the right tools, processes and people.
• Develop an efficient and cost-effective working model while improving service.
• Set up a process-first approach to enhancing staff performance and productivity, underpinned by data.

Gabrielle Fischer
Chief Administrative Officer
Allen Matkins Leck Gamble Mallory & Natsis LLP

Lauren Recinto
US Document Services Manager
Mayer Brown LLP

Dan Safran
President and Chief Executive Officer
Unbiased Consulting, LLC

Eric Wangler
President, North America
BigHand

As your firm identifies revenue growth as a top priority, it’s easy to lose sight of bottom-line profitability, client satisfaction, employee satisfaction and organic growth. In this session, you’ll address the various challenges surrounding not only the growth of the firm, but the individuals within it. You’ll begin with an interactive discussion and end with a case study that will touch on virtually all aspects of law firm personnel challenges, including mentorship, succession planning, diversity and growth.

Objectives:

• Assess key variables impacting long-term firm sustainability.
• Summarize industry challenges and reframe firm dynamics.
• Discover revenue exposure points with potential remedies.
• Illustrate successful approaches to succession, transition and mentorship.
• Employ a collaborative approach to a real-world example.

Russ Haskin
Senior Director of Business Consulting
Wilson Allen

Your law firm, like most organizations, is increasingly aware of the potential for unintended bias issues in your compensation decisions. And almost everyone understands that eliminating bias is important for legal, social and moral reasons. In this session, you’ll hear about why eliminating biases is one of the more effective means for improving profits and teamwork. Come explore the unique compensation issues law firms face and examine how partner performance can be more multifaceted than roles in other businesses that are defined by singular functions. You’ll understand both the issues and how you can practically implement bias testing.

Objectives:

• Demonstrate how pervasive bias testing of partner compensation data is within the profession.
• Understand common approaches to bias testing.
• Identify the strengths and weaknesses of each approach and some of the surprising results from bias testing.
• Distinguish the difference between bias in compensation results versus opportunities that create performance and are rewarded through compensation.

Blane R. Prescott
Managing Shareholder
MesaFive LLC

As a legal professional, are you already proficient with Microsoft Excel? Then this session is for you! Attend and you’ll learn how to put the greatest Excel tips and tricks to work for you. Learn ways to make your job easier, save time and take your productivity to the next level. You’ll work your way through a series of tips for using Excel, including powerful data techniques. This session is packed with helpful tips you can use tomorrow.

Objectives:

• Recognize the LOOKUP feature and how to use it to find values in lists.
• Explain how to distribute delimited data across cells.
• Summarize and report huge amounts of data with Tables and PivotTables.
• Set up reliable data validation.

Ivan Hemmans
Senior Manager of Technical Development
O’Melveny Myers LLP

Cybersecurity is a significant business risk with massive consequences that need to be managed. In this session, you’ll learn you need to expect growing scrutiny of your firm’s data security and privacy practices from clients, regulators and cyber insurance providers. You’ll review the latest threats to law firms and gain a better understanding of what good cyber risk management looks like, including your leadership role. Walk through a hands-on exercise to assess your firm’s current risk and compliance status and leave with simple steps you can take now to successfully guide your firm toward better cyber risk management.

Objectives:

• Evaluate your firm’s current risk and compliance status.
• Plan how to successfully respond to cybersecurity questionnaires and audits.
• Apply good cyber risk management principles in your firm.

James Harrison
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
INVISUS

According to research, employees under 40 will leave their organizations if they don’t feel a sense of belonging. That was before the Great Resignation or the pandemic. It’s time to evaluate and develop your inclusive leadership. Join this session to examine how you can improve your inclusivity and influence an inclusive culture in your firm.

Objectives:

• Assess your inclusivity.
• Identify opportunity areas for your leadership development.
• Examine your firm's culture.
• Appraise your firm's prospects to elevate inclusivity.

Judith A. Hissong, CLM, PCC
President
Nesso Strategies

In this session, you’ll identify the critical questions you must be asking your broker/adviser in today’s challenging new financial environment concerning essential employee benefit programs. Additionally, you’ll examine how to articulate the value of these benefits to firm leadership. A panel representing small, midsize and large firms will discuss and describe the hottest law firm benefits and help you determine which of the out-of-the-box benefits today’s workforce is requiring are most essential and why. Walk away from this session with resources to help you successfully acquire and evaluate these benefits with your broker/agent and articulate the essential aspects and value to your firm’s leadership committee and/or senior management.

Objectives:

• Define essential benefits and why employees are asking for them.
• Outline top questions to ask your broker/adviser.
• Apply key resources to import, incorporate and improve your individual and firm’s benefits evaluation and onboarding processes.

Alan Wilson
National Program Director
GLJ Benefit Consultants

Maria S. Mason, CLM
Business Director
Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Alice N. O’Hearn
Legal Administrator
Bailey Kennedy, LLP

Lisa A. Waligorski, CLM, PHRca, SPHR
Executive Director
Newmeyer & Dillion LLP

You have been misled. Sleep is not the cure-all for burnout, fatigue or the blues. Of course, sleep is imperative for survival. But being able to rest the brain is habit No. 1 for people who are consistently performing at the top level. In this session, you’ll explore how turning off your brain through rest can turn on your natural intelligence, which minimizes psychological and physical exhaustion. Identify your own burnout risk factors and those in the firm. Plus, by planning your own burnout-busting rest habits during the session, you’ll acquire a framework to take back to the firm for others to apply.

Objectives:

• Recognize the why and how of psychological rest in relation to top work performance.
• Design your own simple habit plan based on work environment and firm objectives.
• Evaluate potential burnout risks within your firm.
• Develop a plan for minimizing short- and long-term risk.

Nancy Morris, MSc Applied Psych
Certified Business Psychologist

This session is all about financial wellness. In a survey of U.S. workers, 70% report that personal finances are their number one stress in life. Chances are, this is why some of your employees are asking if they are in the right job, if it’s worth it, or if they could find something better or work for themselves. No topic is off limits and everything is on the line. Join in to discover how you and your firm can carry the financial wellness torch and eliminate burnout for the good of your organization and your people.

Objectives:

• Formulate strategies for increasing employee participation, retention and efficiency.
• Recognize how best to grow your practice and influence by leveraging your role as a recognized professional in the behavioral science of financial wellness.
• Apply tools to make better financial decisions in life.

Brent Hines
Co-Founder and Chief Development Officer
Foundation for Financial Wellness

The most important assets your law firm has are its people and data. And talented and well-qualified people are necessary to keep your firm resilient in the face of threats to your firm’s reputation and to the security of clients’ sensitive data. In this session, you’ll learn exercises, drills and training that will ensure resiliency in the face of any threat. You’ll also outline the key steps to ensuring sensitive client data is secure, especially in the face of ever-increasing cyber threats, and putting into place a top-level business partner/vendor risk management plan.

Objectives:

• Discuss how to gain buy-in from top levels of your firm and put into place a comprehensive business continuity plan.
• Recognize exercises you should conduct to satisfy client demands, request for proposals (RFPs) and audits.
• Create checklists to frequently ensure safety and security within your firm and protect your sensitive data.

Kathryn Scourby, CBCP
Principal
KNS Consulting, LLC

Co-develop solutions to common challenges by leveraging the shared experiences and collective knowledge of your industry peers. ALA’s Meeting of Minds sessions enable participants to network extensively, discuss, debate and dissect best practices and topical issues within legal administration.

Patricia Zulaica
Controller
Johnston, Kinney & Zulaica LLP

Too busy to get important things done? This highly interactive session will give you and your team one hour or more back every day. You’ll learn where and what you focus on is a choice. You’ll see how interruptions, overcommitting, poor planning, multitasking, email, meetings, social media and procrastination are costing billions of dollars annually. Discover how to start relying on a time management system — not inspiration, to-do lists and imposing urgency — to get things done. Leave with a new mindset and strategies you can use to successfully disrupt the story of “busy” and get you and your employees back on track to reclaim your community, confidence and productivity.

Objectives:

• Identify ways to break free from procrastination.
• Breakdown and manage workflow interruptions effectively. 
• Plan how to strategically answer emails and unclog your inbox fast.
• Choose to quickly pivot from “story” and focus on the problem to solve problems sustainably.
• Prepare to leverage your values to make high-impact decisions creating massive action every day.
• Assess how to eliminate distractions and manage time wasters, like social media.

Andrew Mellen, NAPO, AEA, SAG
Author
Andrew Mellen, Inc.

Someone joining or already within your firm most likely identifies as nonbinary, gender fluid or transgender. And you’re probably feeling a growing need to support a gender-inclusive culture. In this session, you’ll learn the importance of having strong HR policies and plans in place to give support and guidance to the entire population. You’ll learn how to develop an HR communication plan to support a cohesive and understanding culture, use the correct pronouns and build an HR policy framework to support employees as they present their authentic selves at work.

Objectives:

• Develop a broader understanding of gender identity.
• Use basic terminology around gender inclusivity.
• Create a policy framework to support gender inclusivity.

Kathleen T. Pearson, SPHR
Chief Human Resources Officer
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP

Your email and other forms of electronic business communication writing speak for you. In this session, you’ll focus on how to capture the correct tone, include the right content and connect with your audience in everything you send. You’ll gain a clear understanding of how to use digital communication effectively and efficiently and produce writing that is clear and compelling. Don’t miss the chance to review the rules, expectations and “netiquette” of digital communication in the current business climate.

Objectives:

• Recognize current expectations when replying to digital communication, including using an appropriate tone, incorporating accurate content and responding at the ideal time.
• Describe the changes in digital communication that have occurred and the variations that continue to exist across professional fields.
• Produce email that conveys professionalism and is free from common errors.

Dr. Shannon Andrus, EdD
Speaker and Trainer
Word Nerd Consulting

Legal research is one of the top three overhead expense increases year after year. Combine this with declining cost recoveries and it’s clear that overpaying for a provider's services is simply not acceptable. In this session, you’ll learn what happens when firms aren’t prepared for negotiations at renewal time. Plus, identify provider tactics and how to combat them.

Objectives:

• Identify the five most common provider tactics that prevent firms from negotiating a fair contract.
• Analyze key negotiation strategies specific to legal research providers.
• Evaluate the financial consequences of accepting renewal offers versus market rates.

Ken Purce
Principal and Founder
Research Contract Consultants

You know your organization needs to innovate — to get faster, use better technology, increase retention, create succession plans and overhaul old processes that no longer work. You also know change is hard. Getting legal professionals to change is arguably an even more difficult task. This interactive session will demonstrate how change is not insurmountable when you start with a human-centered approach and employ a repeatable framework to lead your team through innovation and change. Bring one of your most burning legal practice problems and leave with action steps you can implement as soon as you get back to the office. 

Objectives:

• Differentiate your approach to the problem by starting with empathy.
• Plan a brainstorming session that gets legal professionals out of their logical brains.
• Evaluate where to begin and how to select a starting point.
• Express the importance of getting feedback, marking the occasion and starting again.

Laura Hartnett
Founder & Legal Consultant
Law By Design LLC

Increase your understanding of LinkedIn as an influential digital platform and a powerful — and inexpensive — tool to move the needle on visibility, retention and recruiting. It’s also likely the key to landing your next job. In this session, you’ll discover practical steps administrators can implement via LinkedIn to improve marketing, business development and hiring efforts. Identify common mistakes people make (like paying for Premium when they don’t need it). Leave the session with tips, tricks and answers to common questions about LinkedIn.

 Objectives:

• Choose LinkedIn as a tool for retaining and attracting talent.
• Identify strategies to generate new business leads via LinkedIn.
• Apply best practices for building and leveraging a LinkedIn network.
• Create an enhanced LinkedIn presence to achieve personal career goals.

Jocelyn Brumbaugh
Founder
Builden Partners

Abby Moriarty
Marketing and Public Relations Director
Builden Partners

Join this session to address the challenge of effectively utilizing and developing your firm’s paralegal resources. You’ll examine technologies for maintaining a skills and experience database and strategies and the process for matching available paralegals with attorney/client needs based on skills and availability. Investigate how to monitor and analyze hours and workloads to promote efficient use of paralegals and to provide a basis for making hiring and staffing decisions. In addition, you’ll discover how to champion their professional development.

Objectives:

• Employ strategies for utilizing paralegals to meet annual billable hour goals and increase revenue.
• Develop a process for the intake and management of paralegal projects.
• Give examples of approaches to managing over/underutilization of paralegals and the impact on profitability.
• Identify methodologies for professional development.

Suzanne L. Schwartz
Senior Office Administrator/Paralegal Coordinator
Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C.

Megan Wilson, SHRM-CP
Office Administrator/ Firm Paralegal Manager
Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP

Do you ever avoid difficult conversations because you feel uncomfortable, or you fear polarizing relationships? In this session, you’ll learn strategies and tactics for engaging in productive conversations to address challenges and deepen relationships. Understand where and why you avoid difficult conversations and how having effective and behavior-changing conversations can make your professional and personal life more joyful and less stressful. You can apply these strategies and improve your relationships with colleagues and clients.

Objectives:

• Practice strategies and tactics to conduct difficult conversations in an influential manner.
• Model how to build personal and professional trust between colleagues.
• Develop and lead high-performing and productive teams.

Margee Fawley
Chief Talent Officer
Davis Graham & Stubbs, LLP

Julie G. Holunga, MBA, PCC
Leadership Trainer and Executive Coach
Chinook Executive Solutions

The statistics are sobering:

• 400,000 lawyers in the United States are age 62 and older.
• 30% to 40% of practicing lawyers are at the age and stage where they are retiring or thinking about it.
• 63% of law firm partners, age 60 or older, control at least one quarter of their firm’s revenue.
• Most law firms do not have succession plans in place.

Is your firm prepared for your most active rainmaker to retire? Is recruiting and retention of top talent a challenge because you have not addressed succession? Are succession plans in place for the business professionals in your firm such as firm administrators, finance directors and other key roles? You’ll tackle these issues in this comprehensive session.

Objectives:

• Analyze challenges to succession planning in your firm.
• Evaluate succession options for various sizes of firms or departments.
• Create a successful succession model.

Camille Stell
President and Chief Executive Officer
Lawyers Mutual Consulting & Services

Learn how to organize and evaluate your firm’s costs, accurately plan and predict revenue and know your profit margins on an individual timekeeper and overall firm level. In this session, you’ll start by keeping the end in mind as you build a business plan around the owners that makes them happy and makes you, the Administrator, look good. You’ll approach this holistic business plan from an actual, projected and goal-oriented viewpoint, so your firm knows where it stands now, what to expect with continued performance and how it compares to your business goals. 

Objectives: 

• Create an actionable business plan you can monitor for success. 
• Discover how to maximize your revenue by learning revenue triggers. 
• Alter how you think about your costs. 
• Learn how to assign direct profit margins and ratios to your timekeepers. 
• Plan for the future and audit if the plan is working.

Matthew P. Sullivan, JD
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Unravel Legal

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has recently announced they’ll be conducting significantly more audits in 2023. In this session, you’ll learn the elements of careful preparation that will be vital to your organization’s success. Identify how to avoid complaints to the DOL that could create serious financial consequences and noncompliance with federal and state employment laws that could incur steep penalties and fines, trigger legal action and deeply damage your brand. Protect your strong employer brand that is crucial to landing top talent. Attend this session and learn steps you should take to ensure employees are properly classified and how to conduct internal wage and hour audits and Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) audits.

Objectives:

• Apply best practices for reducing legal risk and exposure in the workplace and protecting your brand.
• Point out the top reasons why you should prepare for audits.
• Recognize the steps you should take to avoid government audits.
• Breakdown the steps for conducting your own internal audits.

Katrice A. Miller, JD
Director, HR Accessibility and Business Excellence Engagement
Microsoft

Workplace violence incidents are significantly on the rise. And the aftereffects of a violent incident can be long-lasting and lead to reduced productivity, decreased revenue and loss of reputation. In this session, you’ll take part in a short tabletop exercise/simulation through which you’ll gain valuable information to assist you in protecting your firm and your employees. You’ll address how to create a written policy, define consequences for acts of violence, form a threat assessment team, review physical office security, and provide education to lawyers and staff.

Objectives:

• Define for law firm managers the scope of workplace violence.
• Compare types of violence in the workplace, including the characteristics and warning signs of potential and escalating violence in an employee or someone who enters your office.
• Review steps you can take to protect your firm and prevent workplace violence.

Kathryn Scourby, CBCP
Principal
KNS Consulting, LLC

Are the people in your law firm constantly in grind mode? When is the last time anyone in your firm felt super-productive, excited and invested in their work? It’s time to learn the secrets of peak performance. We’ll explore how to ensure everyone in your firm moves from burnout-prone to burnout-proof. We’ll also discuss the neuroscience of flow (what athletes, military special ops, artists and high-performing executives in the world know as “getting in the zone”). Becoming burnout-proof and mastering flow is a competitive advantage for attracting and retaining high-value clients and extraordinary legal talent.

Objectives:

• Identify the keys to reaching full human potential in the workplace.
• Develop a tactical formula to become burnout proof.
• Identify the neuroscience of flow and the four distinct phases of the flow state.
• Develop a tactical guide to achieving flow on demand.
  
  

John R. Kormanik, Esq.
John R. Kormanik Coaching

Video marketing, social media, new age content marketing ... do you understand the new marketing culture? Or do new trends and marketing styles seem way out there? Come to this session to focus on how to create and implement content into your law firm’s marketing culture and analyze what is coming in the online arena (social media, creator economy, Web3, metaverse). Plus, evaluate how to go all in when creating and building a good content strategy and adopting it to your marketing culture. By the end of this session, you’ll understand why it’s essential to the future of marketing your firm and building it up to an influencer-level online presence.

Objectives:

• Justify the view that video marketing and social media are not just fads.
• Set up and implement a true marketing culture strategy.
• Discover and use a checklist/starter kit.

Rich Wilson
Founder, Filmmaker and Director
VIBE Media

Mastering the basics of Excel formulas is critical for every administrator. You’ll spend this session exploring formulas — the cornerstone of any reasonably advanced Excel workbook. From ROUNDUP to IFERROR, you’ll learn the 10 Excel formulas you need to know to take your workbooks to the next level.

Objectives:

• Describe cell references, relative and absolute.
• Assess how cell formatting can affect mathematical accuracy.
• Demonstrate how to use AutoFill to automate formula creation.
• Recognize how to inspect formulas visually.
• Employ copy and paste special (value).
• Demonstrate status bar calculations.

Ivan Hemmans
Senior Manager of Technical Development
O’Melveny Myers LLP

The need for security awareness is ongoing and ever-changing — and security awareness programs need to be the same. Attend this session to learn how to keep your program relevant and engaging over the long haul. Learn how to address the new hybrid work-from-anywhere challenge, while gaining strategies for getting your team to really care about information security and keep them engaged. You’ll walk away with proven principles for keeping your security awareness efforts evergreen. Plus, you’ll hear stories, challenges and methods for personalizing messages that will spark ideas for helping others realize their role in securing information at work and at home.

Objectives:

• Apply proven principles for keeping information fresh.
• Review ways to engage people at a personal level through relevancy.
• Identify the proven sustainability principles behind security awareness programs.

Kenny Leckie
Senior Technology & Change Management Consultant
Traveling Coaches

Our profession continues to evolve with some jurisdictions adding new categories of legal service providers and others issuing ethics opinions that may change how your firm operates. In this session, you’ll examine several new ABA and state ethics opinions that offer guidance on when a firm must employ an interpreter, how asking your referral sources to send the firm clients might trigger ethics issues and more.

Objectives:

• Recognize recent regulatory reforms in other states.
• Assess how recent ethics opinions may apply to your firm.
• Differentiate which rule changes will require changes in your firm.
• Evaluate the pros and cons of the reforms and how your firm may benefit.

Lynda C. Shely
Owner/Attorney
The Shely Firm PC

Learn how to build a remote legal support team for a cloud-based law firm. You’ll leave this session with takeaways, learning outcomes and strategies to help you train, hire and manage remotely and ensure your staff is motivated and connected when working remotely. In addition, you’ll delve into the change in the types of legal support professionals available, how the field is changing and how to modify and create roles within legal support to attract and retain personnel while keeping firm costs low.

Objectives:

• Identify legal support needs in a virtual environment.
• Recognize how to hire, train, manage and retain legal support personnel.
• Create and design your legal support team to reduce associate needs and with modernization in mind.

Ashley Frisch
Director of Legal Support
NovaLaw