Marc W. Halpert - LinkedIn® Marketing Techniques for Law and Professional Practices

Cover design by Kelly Book/ABA Design

The materials contained herein represent the opinions of the authors and/or the editors, and should not be construed to be the views or opinions of the law firms or companies with whom such persons are in partnership with, associated with, or employed by, nor of the American Bar Association or the Solo, Small Firm and General Practice Division unless adopted pursuant to the bylaws of the Association.

Nothing contained in this book is to be considered as the rendering of legal advice for specific cases, and readers are responsible for obtaining such advice from their own legal counsel. This book is intended for educational and informational purposes only.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Halpert, Marc W., author. | American Bar Association. Solo, Small Firm and General Practice Division, sponsoring body.

Title: Linkedin marketing techniques for law and professional practices / Marc W. Halpert.

Description: Second edition. | Chicago, Illinois : ABA Publishing, American Bar Association, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: 2nd Edition expands on how to manage and finesse your personal brand on LinkedIn properly, and provide broad guidance to attorneys and certain financial and nonfinancial professionals reading this book, to be aware you should further explore the details of ever-changing ethical and compliance guidelines in your respective industries. This book is intended as a road map. In the case of legal ethics and financial industry compliance matters, it raises issues to be considered, with further investigation being your professional responsibility Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021003297 (print) | LCCN 2021003298 (ebook) | ISBN 9781641058636 (board) | ISBN 9781641058643 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: LinkedIn (Electronic resource) | LawyersUnited StatesMarketing. | Internet marketingUnited States.

Classification: LCC KF316.5 .H35 2021 (print) | LCC KF316.5 (ebook) | DDC 340.068/8dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021003297

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021003298

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Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if you ever dig.

Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations

Did you ever think there was a book in you just waiting to be coaxed out? I did for years, and when I agreed with the American Bar Association (ABA) to write the original edition of this book, I felt vindicated, peer recognized, and highly enabled. And I was rewarded with holding a copy of the first edition of this book, published in 2017.

Now, in 2021, I have so much more to add, update, and improve in this second edition. What an honor to see this come to fruition not once, but twice! It validates my inner desire to teach others to do better, as I was taught by my mentors. My philosophy remains the same, with a revised COVID-19 pandemic twist (or, with sincere hopes of never experiencing a pandemic again, you may substitute economic downturn for pandemic and read the same as what to do when business gets very slow on a macro level, affecting you directly).

This book has become my biggest and most active business card. It cast me in stone as a quotable, relevant, hirable, and reliable authority in my little corner of the LinkedIn world: branding yourself as a professional practitioner in your field with why you do what you do and how you can relay that message to others to achieve your professional goals.

For the past ten-plus years, in all my writing, speaking, training, and coaching others in LinkedIn, I have paved my own way. I have shared a lot of quality time with other professionals. I have learned from them, and they have learned from me.

And I am not an attorney, though my parents wanted me to be. I am not a financial manager, anymore, or an architect, though I wish I had pursued that art. I am a consultant, a professional practitioner like the ones I have had the pleasure and challenge to coach.

Nor am I a certified/trained coach, for that matter. But my recommendations from law firm marketing directors, corporate training managers, coaching clients, et al. attest to the fact that I train and coach others out of a deep commitment and professional pleasure to help others get unstuck, something I practiced in my earlier corporate life without even realizing it, and later became well aware that this passion had to become a new career. Its been one heck of a ride.

Whats remarkable and what made me an authentic writer is that in meeting, pitching, and signing new clients to coach and train, the professional makeup of the audiences kept coalescing around knowledge practitioners: consultants, attorneys, certified public accountants (CPAs) and accountants, insurance producers, financial planners, architects, artists, entrepreneurs, nonprofit officers, baby boomers and recent college grads seeking that next career position, and so as not to leave anyone out, professionals offering their expertise and intangible intellectual services to those who need them.

All of them were like me, just in different fields. My career journey has brought me through diverse industries in more than forty years, in touch with those who have left some effect on me, a few indelibly, since I was once told that I collect people like baseball cards. Each becomes part of the collectionrefined, maintained, and treasured.

My passion in helping another professional answer why I do what I do for the first time, succinctly and definitively, is a joy I am fortunate to witness daily. Their ah-ha moments can be teary as they beam with being freed to finally talk about themselves in a new and cathartic way.

My Ikigai (described in embrace it, and in telling it well, we will have freed something very special, and oh how it will bubble. I let it effervesce. You have to want to.

My work centers on helping others better know themselves and thus their value to the professional marketplace, while vying with a large number of competitors, made more heated by the new compaction of the electronic global markets, but who still strive to answer central, self-defining questions to woo potential clients:

Why choose me?

What unique values and skills can I demonstrate based on my past, present, and perceived future?