ALA 2023 Annual Conference & Expo

Imagine if your law firm was designed by Antoni Gaudi and your leadership modeled after Ted Lasso. Sounds fantastical, but it’s realistic. In this session, you’ll consider how the world has changed and relevant businesses are putting humanity first by “investing” in people. Find out how to do the same in your firm to achieve greater loyalty, retention, growth and revenue. Gain a new perspective on the values that matter and are reshaping law firm cultures. 

Objectives:

• Define how to lead and increase profits the Ted Lasso way. 
• Examine DEIA and how bringing one’s whole self to work directly connects to increased profits. 
• Breakdown the client journey and get tips from inside counsel on what they look for in a pitch. 
• Model new tools that are more efficient and effective in the pursuit of new clients and attorneys. 

Terry M. Isner
Owner/Chief Executive Officer, Branding and Business Development
Jaffe

Join this session to explore the pivotal role of competency frameworks in reshaping the legal industry's employee experience and retention strategies. You’ll delve into how competency frameworks serve as catalysts for positive change, enabling legal organizations to attract, nurture and retain all top talent. Be part of the journey to unlock their potential and transform your firm's approach to enhancing employee experiences and bolstering retention. This session delivers the tools you need to effectively implement competency frameworks within your firm.

Objectives:

• Analyze and evaluate the significance of competency frameworks in legal organizations.
• Set up and apply competency frameworks to attract, develop and retain top talent.
• Develop a tailored competency framework strategy for your organization.
• Discuss in meaningful conversations the implementation of a real-world competency framework.

Jennifer L. Johnson
Chief Executive Officer
Calibrate

Haley J. Revel
Managing Director, HR and Talent Management
Calibrate

Here’s an opportunity to delve into the unique personality traits of attorneys. You’ll explore each trait along with written and face-to-face communication techniques tailored specifically to engage attorneys and navigate challenging conversations. You’ll also consider the power of social influence when driving behavioral change within the legal profession. Come discover how to overcome hurdles such as skepticism and autonomy to foster a positive and productive working environment and create an empowered legal team.

Objectives:

• Analyze the psychology of attorneys by identifying key personality traits.
• Evaluate the impact of these traits on leadership and management within the firm.
• Apply effective communication strategies for engaging with challenging personalities in both written and face-to-face interactions.
• Assess social influence as a tool for behavioral change in attorneys and performance improvement.  

Abigail L. Davis-Hess, CLM
Consultant
ADH-Consulting, LLC

Providing spreadsheets or reports full of data to stakeholders is not enough. They must be accompanied by a story about the state of the firm, helpful predictions about what’s coming and action items. This requires you to wear or supervise three hats — one as the bank teller, one as the storyteller and one as the fortune teller. Discover why each hat is important, when to wear each and how the hats lead to success.

Objectives:

• Recognize and clarify the hats you, or your employee, can and should wear.
• Demonstrate why each hat is critical to your professional growth and your firm’s success.
• Apply the three-hat approach to your work and coach others to do the same to deliver more value.

Kimberly A. Ess
Chief Executive Officer
Nilan Johnson Lewis PA

Authenticity is not just a buzzword. It is the cornerstone of modern leadership and vital for building trust and maximizing team potential. This session provides a tool kit for excelling in an environment that encompasses remote work, office settings and a multigenerational workforce. You’ll gain actionable strategies for understanding the motivations of both remote teams and those down the hall. You’ll focus on the essential skill of giving effective feedback — a game-changer for boosting performance and job satisfaction. You’ll also clarify how to craft an inclusive culture that honors generational differences and emphasizes the importance of being an authentic leader.

Objectives:

• Describe the evolving nature of leadership and key changes in leadership expectations and practices over time.
• Demonstrate your ability to adapt leadership styles to effectively lead multigenerational teams.
• Evaluate the impact of effective communication skills on team productivity and morale.
• Analyze the role of authenticity in effective leadership and construct a personalized approach that works for you.

Debbie Foster
Managing Partner
Affinity Consulting Group

Discover the transformative power of empathy and sympathy and unlock the secrets of human connection. You’ll learn to elevate your leadership skills by cultivating empathy and sympathy to connect more deeply with your team and to support your executive team in doing the same. In addition, you’ll explore how to harness your capacity for active listening, a vital tool for building meaningful relationships and gaining insights into your team's needs and perspectives. You’ll leave with scientifically proven HeartMath tools to enhance your resilience and your team’s.

Objectives:

• Formulate ways to resolve workplace conflict.
• Define how to increase employee and client retention.
• Evaluate your next steps in enhancing resilience and performance.
• Develop greater EQ through cultivating empathy and sympathy.
• Demonstrate how to reframe challenging people and situations.

Jennifer K. Hill
Chief Executive Officer
OptiMatch

As a busy law firm administrator or executive, you’re overwhelmed with countless tasks, priorities and responsibilities and a to-do list that is constantly growing. In this engaging session, you’ll discover how to determine which activities are necessary and which are distractions. You’ll feel empowered to identify and eliminate distractions and interruptions and create a more productive day. You’ll leave with effective strategies to help you delegate wisely, regain control and maximize your most valuable resource — time.

Objectives:

• Recognize the significance and impact of distractions on personal productivity.
• Apply practical techniques to identify and manage distractions in your workplace.
• Analyze and evaluate time-consuming distractions and how to make informed decisions about prioritization.
• Design a personalized strategy for proactively minimizing unproductive interruptions and regaining control of daily workflow.

Sarah M. Tetlow
Chief Executive Officer and Founder
Firm Focus

There is a clear link between the quality of mental health and one’s level of professional competence. Attend this session to cultivate the skills necessary to effectively manage stress, anxiety and relationships and enhance contentment, productivity and the quality of your work. You’ll explore ways stress can manifest individually and collectively from a neurobiological perspective. You’ll redefine resilience — it’s about how you recharge rather than about how you endure. In addition, you’ll identify customizable, science-backed strategies for cultivating resilience as you continue to navigate constant change.

Objectives:

• Illustrate how changing thoughts and behavior can rewire the brain.
• Develop customized strategies for using your body to calm your mind.
• Differentiate resilience from endurance.
• Name and prioritize science-backed strategies to cultivate resilience.

Stacey Dougan, JD, LLM, MS, LPC, NCC
Owner/Psychotherapist
Stacey Dougan Counseling & Consulting LLC

Imagine what would happen to your firm if everyone thought their procrastination was a mark of intelligence rather than a sign of incompetence. This session will challenge what you think you know about procrastination by taking an innovative, up-to-date and scientific (yet simple) approach to the fundamentals of productivity and performance. Consider how “doing nothing” gets in the way of adapting to the changes forced upon your firm and people by COVID-19 and recognize how avoidance is a killer of change. Plus, you’ll understand the psychological reasons behind procrastination and how to use them to achieve goals that will help your entire firm relax into the way business is done now.

Objectives:

• Recognize blocks to productivity and performance that are psychologically based.
• Apply a simple strategy that creates reliable productivity.
• Design a change management protocol leveraging the psychological disruption of change as evidenced by procrastination.
• Translate business psychology into a solution to most current concerns and use it to bring innovative thought leadership to your firm.

Nancy Morris, MSc Applied Psych
Certified Business Psychologist

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

Engagement rates of professionals are at their lowest in a decade. Why? It boils down to the way people are being managed. Many managers are unintentionally making one or more leadership missteps that lead to exhaustion, feed mistrust, inhibit growth and increase loneliness and detachment. This session will provide concrete ways to manage always-on pressure, empower appreciation, enable autonomy, bolster psychological safety, conduct one-on-one check-ins and make purpose visible. Leave knowing how to  greatly improve engagement with just a few shifts in management behavior.

Objectives:

• Recognize how to mitigate always-on pressure and burnout.
• Employ strategies for building trust and enabling autonomy.
• Define how to create meaningful connections.
• Model behaviors that reinforce purpose.

Tracy LaLonde
Chief Joychiever
Joychiever, LLC

Rethink organizational priorities with an eye toward the future of work. Employers who prioritize caregivers and families will have a clear talent advantage in the decade to come. Join this discussion of why the parent-lawyer and business professional populations are critical to your organizational success and identify the specific obstacles they face. Then, dive into actionable ways you can develop innovative support structures to attract, retain and promote caregivers. You’ll leave with best practices for parental leave policies, structural support focused on parents, coaching opportunities and resources and community-building.  

Objectives:

• Review the benefits of supporting and retaining parents.
• Define the obstacles parents face in the workplace.
• Point out opportunities to support parents and hear about what’s working in practice.
• Formulate potential solutions for your organization through collaboration with your peers.

Lori Mihalich-Levin, JD
Chief Executive Officer and Founder
Mindful Return

Julie Thuy-Anh Tran
Senior Director of Talent
Vinson & Elkins

Alexandra M. Williamson, JD
Manager of Parent Lawyer Programs and Resources
Latham & Watkins LLP

Retaining employees has never been tougher. In this session, you’ll investigate how to engage new hires from day one to day 365. You’ll learn strategies for engaging with employees during their first year through surveys and stay interviews. And you’ll gain insight into the characteristics and motivations of job-hoppers in the legal industry. Take what you learn and build a long-lasting and effective structure for reducing turnover in your own firm.

Objectives:

• Analyze the current trend of frequent job changes among new hires and their impact on the workforce.
• Evaluate and compare the effectiveness of different policies and benefits in increasing employee retention, with a focus on compensation, work/life balance and competitive benefits.
• Synthesize strategies to identify signs of employee dissatisfaction in the first year and respond effectively, including the use of anonymous surveys.

Juanita Kendall, HRIC, SHRM
Chief Human Resources Officer
Hall Booth Smith P.C.

Chances are, your professional development opportunities are segregated based on title, department, level of experience and revenue vs. nonrevenue generating positions. Join this session to explore blended learning opportunities that improve team performance, increase engagement, elevate client service and inspire team loyalty and more creative outcomes. You’ll learn how to design and implement a successful cross-discipline training initiative for improving the team-based performance of human resources, information technology, office administrators and other administrators who supervise cross-vertical teams. 

Objectives: 

• Identify projects that require multidisciplinary teams and the benefits of implementing such a team.   
• Examine the organizational benefits of a multidisciplinary team aligned with your firm’s strategy and the characteristics of a highly collaborative multidisciplinary team.
• Summarize and communicate the benefits of adopting a multidisciplinary training approach to key internal stakeholders and those participating in the integrated training.

Carrie Anne English
Chief Executive Officer and Founder
New Eras Coaching & Consulting LLC

Kelly Druten Green
Director of Attorney Development
Ogletree Deakins

Regardless of your position in your firm, you deal with multiple personalities, wear numerous hats, work under difficult individuals and go through management changes regularly. To be successful, you must be able to adapt to an ever-changing firm culture. Join this session to learn how to identify and deal with different employee personalities while changing the many hats you wear throughout the day.  

Objectives:

• Recognize how to manage personalities — the good, the bad and, yes, even the ugly — and evaluate and deal with various employees.
• Discover how to prioritize, put some tasks on the back burner and not miss deadlines.
• Identify techniques to overcome and flourish when working under or with a narcissist — without losing sight of who you are.
• Examine how to handle management changes and adapt.

Laura L. York
Firm Administrator
Gladstone, Weissman, Hirschberg & Schneider, P.A.

Take a deep dive into the fundamental aspects of cash flow management. From planning to presentation, you’ll gain a comprehensive understanding of what cash flow entails and how to plan, manage, report and deliver it. You’ll examine the critical components of planning and how to think through it. You’ll discuss the management and reporting elements of your cash flow plan and the importance of performance indicators, regular checks, updates and analysis. You’ll also focus on presenting your plan and reporting. Leave with new skills that can be the key to change management, attracting investors, securing loans, planning for future growth and making informed, data-driven decisions that contribute to your firm's development.

Objectives:

• Define how to think about and through cash flow.
• Prepare to strategically organize cash flow for its optimal use.
• Plan how to manage, forecast and effectively report your cash position.
• Recognize your cash runway and how to spot a cash crunch well before it happens.

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

Hear how leading law firms engage their attorneys in their mentorship program by adding structure and providing clear direction for maximizing their relationships. You’ll discuss what makes a strong mentor relationship and how to encourage proactive relationship-building across the firm. You’ll gather proven strategies for strengthening relationships in a hybrid work environment. In addition, you’ll address the elements of building trust across generations and common intergenerational tensions, along with ideas for integrating mentorship programs into your diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives.

Objectives:

• Generate proven strategies to excite attorneys about participating in your firm’s mentorship program.
• Prepare experienced attorneys to coach and inspire the next generation of attorneys.
• Analyze how to empower early career attorneys to take initiative in developing their “personal board of directors.”
• Breakdown the intergenerational dynamics that often create tension in mentor relationships.

Elise Powers
Founder
Eleview Consulting

Making informed decisions to control the costs of your legal research contracts and proactively manage your content subscriptions is challenging. The lack of transparency in legal research pricing practices could be costing you six or seven figures. This session will walk you through the pricing practices of the industry's two leading vendors, LexisNexis and Westlaw. You’ll analyze case studies of the wild variability in costs and leave with concrete steps you can take to get a fair price from your legal research vendor.

Objectives:

• Breakdown the pricing practices of the industry's two leading vendors, LexisNexis and Westlaw.
• Predict the potential financial impact of these pricing practices.
• Review case study examples of the wild variability in legal research pricing practices.
• Define concrete tips any law firm can take to improve legal research negotiations and save money.

Ken Purse
Principal and Founder
Research Contract Consultants

As the person managing lease expirations, your role is dynamic and multifaceted. This session focuses on the value you bring to the decision-making process. You’ll get an education on current office trends, topics and strategies. Through case studies, you’ll deepen your understanding of how to translate strategy results into successful workplace design solutions. You’ll also explore how to build consensus among partners, strategic activities to understand your firms' challenges and opportunities, alternative workplace solutions, metrics and benchmarking, and how to make the decision-making process seamless.

Objectives:

• Identify strategic real estate considerations, including stay versus go analysis.
• Assess the current benchmark metrics and new space types being considered for the law firm workplace of the future.
• Discuss how to navigate designing for hybrid work.
• Evaluate recently completed law firm designs and solutions.

John F. Hopkins
Design Director
IA Interior Architects

Caryn Fairlie
Director of Client Services
IA Interior Architects

What is the future impact of generative AI? And what is its role for not just the delivery of legal services, but for the operations and finances of law firms? In this thought-provoking session, you’ll discuss the current and future state of generative AI products and dive into workflow innovations driven by the introduction of generative AI. Be ready to examine how generative AI will impact operations, what talent and staffing models may accompany it and the potential hard and soft savings firms are looking at as we hurtle toward the future.

Objectives:

• Identify workflow bottlenecks and inefficient processes common to most law firms.
• Discover methodologies to implement innovation as a tool.
• Differentiate the business value of generative AI products.
• Calculate and balance the risk and rewards of implementing generative AI products.

Joel A. Wirchin
Client Strategist
RRD/GO Creative