How law firms turn events into lasting client relationships

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Legal events are back in person, and almost every firm is running them. When everyone is competing for the same calendars, what sets a firm apart is who is in the room and what happens once everyone goes home.

We brought together two people who run events at very different firms to discuss this: Abby Wright, Marketing and Events Manager at Liskow, a 150-lawyer firm based in New Orleans, and Lisa Cheresnowsky, Senior Manager of Firm Events at Ballard Spahr, which has around 750 lawyers across 18 offices. Andrew Hutchinson, Chief Revenue Officer at Nexl, hosted the conversation. Here is what they shared about running events that build relationships.

The pandemic reset

The panel started with the pandemic, which changed events for good. Lisa's takeaway is that flexibility is now the expectation, even from people who are back in the office. "Even when people came back to the office and started coming to happy hours, they still expected that same flexibility of being able to attend most things via Webex or any kind of different webinar platform."

The lesson was to be deliberate about what belongs online and what does not. "We need to be strategic about it so that we're making the best possible experience moving forward."

"People are a lot more intentional now with what they attend in person," says Abby. That means the bar for in-person events is higher, and webinars have continued to retain value.

Getting the right people in the room

Andrew has a name for the guests every event planner recognizes. "I lovingly talk about sandwich hunters, so the people that come to your event, eat your sandwiches, drink your drinks, but never actually buy anything from you." Weeding them out starts with the data. Lisa works with her business development colleagues to target invitations rather than blast a list. Starting with a list of "people that came to a webinar and expressed interest, but it looks like their address is also local."

Abby matches the effort to the size of the event, and the smaller the room, the more the targeting matters. "Quality is better than quantity, it's easier when you have a 10-person event to better tailor who you're reaching out to." She also makes the guest list work harder for the lawyers, giving them a concrete reason to show up. "We'll reach out to attorneys and let them know that, hey, so and so's on the list, and this is probably the reason why you should attend this event." Both track what happens afterward, using their CRM to map clients and log the new matters following an event.

Face time is the real value

"The real value of an event, in person event, is the face time," says Andrew. Abby agreed, sharing a story of about one of her firm's partners attending a seminar where a major client was in the room. She pushed him to follow up, and "he emailed a few weeks later says, I just got a huge matter in the door and I'd like to think it was because of my sheer experience and talent, but I also think it was from following up with them and meeting them in person." He has copied her on his client communications ever since. Lisa focuses on engineering those moments so they do not depend on luck, building in shared experiences like exclusive museum access or a gifting station. "We're making these opportunities that are handed to you on a plate."

Succession planning

Andrew shared a cautionary tale. A Chicago firm lost two thirds of a rainmaker's $40m book of business within three months of his sudden death, because no one else held the relationships. Events are one way to guard against that. Abby has found that clients notice who a firm brings along. "The client loves to see younger people in the room because that makes them feel like our relationship is important and that we're looking to the future."

Lisa uses retirement celebrations to hand relationships over in person, inviting the clients who mattered most to that partner and introducing the person taking over the work. "When a partner's retiring, we'll try to make the point to see, from a client end of things, who should be in this room."

Where AI is starting to help

AI came up mostly as a practical assistant. Lisa's team uses it to mine years of event feedback, with tools like PCMA's Spark and the firm's own Ask Ellis. "We ask what's the one thing that attendees are constantly leaving, still complaining about that we have not fixed yet, and within seconds it can spit that information back to you." She is, however, careful about what goes into any tool. "You wanna be careful on what data you're actually putting in there, and knowing exactly where that's gonna go and be used."

Proving ROI

Return on investment is the hardest part, and both have practical answers. Lisa won a small battle with finance to give big internal events their own matter numbers. "By assigning a matter number to that, we were able to look at the data on the amount of time that the lawyers were spending traveling to the event." It also reassures associates that the time spent networking internally is valued and worth tracking.

Abby takes a broader view of what counts as a return. "I don't think ROI is just financial. I think it's also about influence. Are we seeing people who maybe stopped engaging, start re-engaging?" Her closing advice is to think past the obvious target and play the long game. "You don't have to go after the decision maker, be buddies with the referral source."