Last month we went on the road with Chambers and Partners as part of our ongoing specialist support for law firms during legal directories season. We first launched our events in partnership with Chambers and Partners back in 2019 with our live In Conversation with Chambers panel event in Manchester. Since then we’ve delivered online panels and webinars with the Chambers experts throughout the past 4 years. So it was great to bring our legal directories expert panels to you live again as we went on tour this autumn. The LexRex Ask Chambers and Partners live events took place across the Midlands and the North, bringing our attendees together with the Chambers and Partners editorial team. Our goal? To provide the answers to the questions troubling those responsible for legal directories submissions and strategy in their law firms. “It’s been great to pass on my advice and get some questions, including the sorts of things we hear a lot from firms after the process is over, but we don’t always get to address before submissions have been created. It’s great to be able to give that advice first.” Lydia Burt, Principal Research Specialist, Chambers and Partners. We started in our hometown Manchester, joined by Lydia Burt, Principal Research Specialist, Chambers and Partners and hosted by the wonderful Eversheds Sutherland. Then we hit the road, meeting up with Al Marsh, Chambers and Partners’ UK Research Director, at the gorgeous Shoosmiths offices in Birmingham and then finally to Leeds to enjoy the hospitality of Wrigleys Solicitors where we were joined by Chambers and Partners’ Head of UK Solicitors Research, Steven Preston. Huge thanks to the Chambers and Partners team for joining us and sharing such valuable insights and we’d like to thank all of our hosts for helping to make this series of events so enjoyable and run so smoothly on the day as well. With each panel hosted by LexRex managing director and resident legal directories expert, the Ask Chambers and Partners events were unique in that the content was entirely driven by our audience. We gave law firm partners and marketing teams from firms all over the Midlands and the North the opportunity to send questions forward for Victoria and our Chambers and Partners panels to tackle on the day. These fully interactive, face to face sessions also gave the audience the opportunity to ask questions to the experts live and in person on the day. It was fascinating and enlightening to be able to collectively explore our audience’s pain points and get answers to their legal directory queries together. “My team has a really profound role in the Chambers submissions. We really do get involved with promoting the excellent work that we do. it was important for me especially to come today to get some hints and tips and feedback on how we can improve our submissions going forward.” Liz Mulley, Trowers & Hamlins Each of our events was packed with information and advice on how to strengthen your firm’s legal directory submissions. It was great to see so many attendees at each one, not only getting important answers to their questions but also sharing their directories challenges and learning from each other as well. If you didn’t have chance to attend any of our events, you can still get access to the goldmine of information and advice that they produced. Each event was recorded in full, and we also produced a series of highlight reels to showcase each session. On top of that, we’ve collated a handy ‘Top Tips’ download – allowing you to see the best advice from these sessions at a glance. All of this and more is available to you today, for free! All you need to do is sign up to the LexRex Legal Directories Resource Hub and it’s ready for you, along with wide range of resources that support your legal directories strategy, approach and drafting for both Chambers and Partners and The Legal 500 directory submissions. We thoroughly enjoyed our Ask Chambers and Partners roadshow. Once again we’d like to thank all of our audiences, hosts and the editorial teams at Chambers and Partners for making these events possible. We’re looking forward to bringing you more panels, advice, resources and downloads in 2024! In the meantime make sure you click here to subscribe to our Directories Bulletin – our free specialist legal directories newsletter – or for more hands on support book a free Legal Directories 121 with Victoria, our Chambers & Partners and Legal 500 expert here.
This December, Victoria dusted off her mic, donned her Santa hat, warmed up her vocal chords and joined 19 other suppliers to the legal sector to contribute to the Legal Suppliers’ Chorus first charity Christmas single. The song, a spoof of Foo Fighters’ Times Like These has been created and released in support of the Conveyancing Foundation and the Brain Tumour Charity. Raising money and awareness The brainchild of Tom Bailey, managing director of Post Partner, the video sees a range of businesses get together to write, play and sing spoof songs. The Conveyancing Foundation is a zero-profit registered charity whose purpose is to enhance the lives of those in the conveyancing industry and support fundraising initiatives. The Brain Tumour Charity is the world’s leading brain tumour charity and largest global funder of brain tumour research. Alongside Victoria and Tom, the track features suppliers including Armalytix, Best Practice, Bold Legal Group, Cashroom, Ezescan, inCase, IQ Legal Training, Jim Wilson Voice, Legal RSS, Legl, LexRex Communications, Martello App, Minerva, NuForms, Orion Legal Marketing, PEXA, Post Partner, Ricoh and TM Group, bringing you tongue-in-cheek lyrics which explore the trials and tribulations of life in the legal industry. Victoria commented “Although I don’t generally sing in front of strangers and almost never into a microphone, I think this is a really cool way to raise money and awareness of the great work being done by the chosen charities. “Tom has done a great job bringing together so many of the suppliers to the legal market and has somehow managed to make us all sound ok and reasonably in tune. I hope people will dig deep and make donations to one or both of the charities.” Tom added: “The legal industry is renowned for its ability to both work hard and, when appropriate, let its collective hair down. Its suppliers are no different, and after what has been a tough year in the sector, particularly for those in property and conveyancing, we’re pleased to be raising some money and hopefully a few smiles to round off 2023.” Lloyd Davies, Managing Director at Convey Law and Chairman of the Conveyancing Foundation, also said: “We endeavour to enhance the lives of those in the property industry and to promote and assist with charity fundraising to help those that need our support. “Protecting mental health and promoting well-being is a major focus for us; everyone knows that music is a healer. The Legal Suppliers Chorus is a fantastic idea, and having seen the video, I know it’ll provide some welcome entertainment as firms gear up for the Christmas break. We’re very thankful to have been chosen as the charity partner and look forward to the Chorus’ next songs.” You can watch the video, donate and subscribe to keep up to date with future releases here or click the button below. WATCH THE VIDEO AND DONATE HERE
Back in those halcyon days of lockdown 1.0 *sarcastic cough*, as the schools were closing, families were separated (for the first time) and there was a collective moment of “oh crap”; I can remember having real clarity of thought around what LexRex’s role should be for our lawyer clients and the broader profession. I could see exactly what was coming, and how the corresponding lack of confidence that lockdown would cause was going to significantly hurt lawyers and law firms the width and breadth of the country. I was very clear that we needed to down the sales tools, and instead look to how we could help law firms to deal with the questions they were struggling to answer at every point during the unravelling of the crisis. We did this through our series of webinars, LexRex: Trusted Partner. Every fortnight I met with our law firm client leaders to ask them what their immediate top 3 challenges were. This insight, along with Simon McCrum’s excellent covid survey series provided me with the answers I needed to create really powerful and engaging content that was seen by lawyers across the UK. During the series, which ran from 23rd April through to Thursday 16th July we covered CBILS and how law firms could access that particular type of finance, critical cashflow management and what law firms would need to do to manage the predicted cash crunch, converting WIP into cash, creating a COVID-safe workplace, HR considerations for bringing staff back into the office, internal comms and keeping teams engaged and informed, and finally, getting business development back on track. Looking back I feel really proud that we were able to deliver such useful content in a timely manner. Our partners were exceptional and gave their time readily, and I owe them my sincere thanks! The content remains exceptionally relevant and I would certainly recommend watchin the videos – all available via the links above. The only ones to come with a slight word of warning are the HR one (in particular) and CBILS one, as the advice contained may have been superseded. We ended Trusted Partner on what felt like a justifiable high, a session all about business development. At that time, in July, lockdown was ending to some extent. Shops, libraries, swimming pools, gyms, hairdressers were all open again; and we were allowed to see our friends and families finally. Everything was so optimistic! Trusted Partner had, at that point, come to the end of its crisis-led life. Of course, now we’re back in lockdown (although to a significantly lesser effect than the first time) and it feels right that we bring Trusted Partner back to life. This time around I think we all know what we’re doing a little bit more, and we understand the rhythm of lockdown business and the pain points. We are also approaching Christmas (hurray!) and although we don’t know what that will look like in terms of who we can / can’t see, it is still a time for positivity and celebration. So sticking to the positivity theme, this time our Trusted Partner series is going to be presented by the most excellent LexRex team. The sessions will follow their usual format, which is me interviewing our experts for 45 minutes, with live Q&A at the end. We are going to kick off on Tuesday 2nd December at 1.00 pm with our media relations maestro, Sophie. During our session, we’ll be talking about how to identify target publications and making journalists your friends, what makes a great story, getting media-ready, measuring success and maximising your use of strong coverage within your broader marketing strategy. We will follow with a session on 8th December by our digital expert Dan, and close with a session by our marketing guru Sarah on 15th December just in time for the Christmas break. I really hope that Trusted Partner is as well received as last time around. Certainly we will be working hard to deliver insightful, helpful and expert advice – free of charge and at a time that works for as many people as possible. I’m looking forward to seeing our Trusted Partner friends and clients, and to making new connections. I’m really tempted to say Happy Christmas right now, but I’ll stick to ‘see you in December’ for now. You can book your place at the next Trusted Partner webinar and view all of our upcoming events on our Eventbrite page. Victoria.
We recently launched our latest initiative; LexRex: Trusted Partner with a view to providing law firm leaders with genuinely useful and informative content to support them through lockdown and during the ongoing Coronavirus outbreak. Our initial research showed that the biggest issue for law firms in mid-April 2020, was access to cash. Accordingly, it was a no-brainer for us to create a webinar that would help lawyers to access cash via the government’s Coronavirus business interruption loan scheme, also known as CBILS or the government backed loan scheme. We asked law firm finance specialist and former-banker Sara Hutton to talk to us about the scheme. Sara delivered an extremely informative, insightful and practical review of not only the scheme, but also the steps law firms would need to take and the information they would need to give in order to successfully access a loan. We are delighted to now share the webinar here: LexRex: Trusted Partner content is representative of the role we strive to play for clients and contacts. We want to be the trusted partner they turn to for advice and support and this new series is an extension of that mission. We’ll be adding more content over the coming weeks and months – webinars are likely to feature heavily, but you should also look out for surveys, reports, white papers, toolkits, checklists and more of the content that is useful to you. To be kept up-to-date when new content goes live and to be the first to hear about upcoming webinars and other online events, just pop your email address in the box below and we will add your name to the list. [contact-form-7 id=”1066″ title=”Trusted Partner”]
