Tuesday Tweet is a weekly look at interesting fodder from our Twitter stream. Follow us at @HellermanBaretz. Interested in generating more followers for your LinkedIn Company Page? Just yesterday, LinkedIn announced yet another way to optimize your company’s profile through the launch of its ‘Follow Company’ button—a new tool designed to make it easier for any consumer on the Web to follow companies of interest.  With over two million companies in its network, LinkedIn’s Follow Company...

A new ALM report indicates that law firms are seeing returns on their investment in blogging and other social media activities. The multi-billion-dollar civil suit over the Deepwater Horizon spill has been delayed amid talk of a possible settlement. Fewer and fewer lawyers are being elected to Congress. Sheppard Fairey, creator of the famous Obama “Hope” poster, admits to destroying documents and other misconduct during his litigation against the Associated Press over the now-iconic image. The...

As anyone who has applied for a job knows, cover letters are among the hardest documents to write. The dilemma that cover letters present is this: while they require you to brag about yourself, doing so ineffectively is a sure-fire way to turn the recipient off. Professor Volokh of The Volokh Conspiracy blog has offered some great thoughts on how to promote yourself effectively in cover letters, and as he notes, his tips apply to all kinds of pitches, including the pitches that lawyers make to...

Tech Talk is a regular column that examines developments, trends, and new platforms in digital and social media. HBC’s own techie Anna Tenuta offers helpful how-to’s, reviews of platforms and products, and tips for using technology to drive business development. If you’d like to ask Anna any questions or have suggestions for a blog topic, please email or tweet at her anytime. With our finger on the pulse of the industry, we’re constantly talking about the power of various social media channels...

Tuesday Tweet is a weekly look at interesting fodder from our Twitter stream. Follow us at @HellermanBaretz. Today’s Tuesday Tweet comes from The Legal Intelligencer and focuses on the new social media site Pinterest. By way of background, Pinterest is a virtual pinboard that lets users digitally organize and share images and links onto organized pinboards. Pinterest allows users to grab a passing picture and pin it to a virtual board to share with others. Users can build up as many pin boards...

For decades, law firm marketing departments have been split into two functions: business development and communications. However, as companies become more marketing savvy, they have come to realize that these two areas of expertise are not mutually exclusive. As HBC found in its study with BTI, winning business oftentimes means getting your name in front of General Counsel through a variety of communications vehicles. In an upcoming article by John Hellerman and Mike Gray about the relationship...

Tuesday Tweet is a weekly look at interesting fodder from our Twitter stream. Follow us at @HellermanBaretz. On this Valentine’s Day, our Tuesday Tweet is about a sweet spot for communications professionals: content marketing. We at HBC are fond of a quote from News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, who has said that content is not just king, it’s emperor of all things digital. We agree.  Particularly for B2B and professional services marketers, content is an essential part of any...

As Valentine’s Day approaches, Pillsbury and Fulbright & Jaworski get cozy with each other. The National Law Journal unveils the nation’s ten hottest litigation boutiques. At a Columbia Law School event, Justice Ginsburg says that Roe v. Wade “moved too far too fast.” Meanwhile, Rick Santorum says he would seek to “overturn it.” Either way, the Supreme Court is getting a lot of play on late-night television these days. Law firm profits grew 3.3% in 2011, according to the latest Citi Private...

Former HBC intern Allison Levinson—and current 2L at the University of Pittsburgh Law School—has a great new gig with the MIT Enterprise Forum. She wrote a recap of a recent event held by the Pittsburgh chapter. January’s MIT Enterprise Forum revolved around a case study of RE2, a business recently named to Inc., magazine’s list of Fastest Growing Companies. RE2’s President and CEO spoke about the challenges facing a company on the fast track: How to handle growth. For the business to remain...

At the end of January, McDonald’s issued a local radio ad that stated, among other things, that trying the chain’s new Chicken McBites was “less risky than petting a stray pit bull, shaving your head, naming your son Sue, or giving friends your Facebook password.” Not surprisingly, the opening line of the ad did not sit well with pit bull owners and their supporters. The ad only ran for a few days in the Kansas City area before the complaints began, and a campaign against the advertisement...

Tuesday Tweet is a weekly look at interesting fodder from our Twitter stream. Follow us at @HellermanBaretz. Yesterday, we mentioned Acritas’ recent law firm brand survey on Monday Media. It’s been getting quite a bit of buzz, including a rather critical ATL post. The survey polled 902 “big clients” (58% had revenues in excess of $1 billion), asking the following questions: What are the first five law firms that come to mind? Which three firms do you feel the most favorable toward? Which...

It’s not a blog post, it’s a mission statement: Brian Tannenbaum on the Jerry McGuire model of developing a practice. Constitutional Daily interviews the executive producer and writer of NBC’s The Firm. International merger mania continues with flirtation between Freehills and Herbert Smith. President Obama taps Arnold & Porter partner William Baer to head antitrust division. Good jobs news: legal sector gains 1,000 jobs in January. Fascinating study identifies Skadden, Sidley, and Jones...

Maybe it was inevitable that Anthony Franze would write a novel about the Supreme Court. As a member of Arnold & Porter’s appellate team, he’s certainly got the writing chops. And that last name—give or take a well-placed consonant—could easily get him mistaken for literary royalty. He’s making a bid for status (or at least John Grisham-like sales) with The Last Justice, a thriller out on Wednesday and available now on Amazon.  We tracked Anthony down to see what it was like to pen a...

Hellerman Baretz Communications (HBC) today announced that Jason Milch has joined the firm as a Senior Vice President, marking the latest in a series of senior-level additions to HBC in recent months. For the past six years, Jason has provided strategic communications advice to clients in the legal and financial industries as a Vice President at Jaffe PR.  Based in Chicago, Milch brings years of expertise crafting communications campaigns tailored to his clients’ business development...