Your Step-by-Step Guide to Get Conference Approval

Feb 6

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 13th edition of Short & Sweet, a weekly newsletter where I provide brief tips for attorneys to build their brand and book of business, on and off of LinkedIn. Read until the end to see my LinkedIn tip of the week.

You’ve been thinking about attending a conference, but how do you get your law firm to support you? The first thing to do is ask. You can create a short written proposal outlining the following points:

Outline the estimated budget for registration, travel, lodging, food, and transportation while there.
Emphasize the deadline to register, including the discounted early bird rate deadline.
Talk about the organization and why this conference is critical to attend. For example:
- The International Trademark Association is the premier association for trademark lawyers globally. Law firms and in-house counsel from around the world attend the Annual Meeting each year to meet with clients and referral partners and make new business connections. There’s generally around 10,000 attendees. Our firm’s attendance at INTA will help increase the firm’s visibility as a “go to” option in the United States.
If you’re already a member of the organization or on a committee, emphasize that in the proposal:
- I’m on X Committee. The committee will be holding an in-person meeting during the conference, which members are strongly encouraged to attend.
Support your attendance with business reasons and numbers, for example:
- Our firm currently brings in X amount of business from foreign attorneys around the world. By attending this conference, I will not only be able to meet in-person with the foreign associates we work with so we can provide even better service abroad to our domestic clients, I will be able to discuss serving the foreign associates’ clients in the U.S. so we can earn a reciprocal amount of work.

I work with clients to create winning proposals that get them to conferences.

If you’re registered for the International Trademark Association (INTA) Annual Meeting this coming May, you can join my Own the Conference group prep program starting on February 26.

Even if this isn’t your first Annual Meeting, preparing with a different perspective could be the catalyst you need.

There will be 4 group mastermind sessions and 1 individual session, with access to me during the conference, and group networking ahead of the conference and during it.

We'll narrow in on your target audience, brand, and goals so you can efficiently determine who to meet with, which events to attend, and how to create memorable pre-conference and post-conference messaging.

The limited spots are getting reserved so secure yours today and don’t miss out on the party.

Warmest Regards and see you next week,

Jamie

LinkedIn Tip of The Week:

LinkedIn has been pushing video content. If you post one make it vertical, keep it short, use captions, include a short summary of the video in the post, and don’t worry about it being perfect. It’s in the imperfections where you build the know, like, and trust factor.

P.S. You can work with me in the following ways: