Thriving in the New Normal
This session will feature a discussion on how the 2008 global financial crisis has permanently changed the legal industry including the pitfalls and opportunities inherent in different law firm models. Trends in the legal market and examples from other industries will be examined to help reveal different ways law firms can effectively respond to the pressures they face including the increasingly fierce battle between firms for a bigger piece of a shrinking legal market.
Introduction: Alan Rifkin, Rifkin, Weiner, Livingston, Levitan & Silver (Annapolis, Maryland), SCG Legal Chairman
Presenters: Bruce MacEwen, President, Adam Smith, Esq.
Janet Stanton, Partner, Adam Smith, Esq.
The New Realities in Law Land and How to Thrive

What Can Strategic Planning Do to Help Your Firm Right Now?
One of the questions law firm leaders most often ask themselves is, “What changes could I make in my firm today that would have an immediate impact?” Not years, months or even weeks from now, but today. This session will focus on how strategic planning can be used effectively to address many of your firm’s everyday challenges including overcoming security risks, properly measuring business metrics, determining whether your pricing properly reflects your time and costs, getting to know and understand your clients better and leveraging outside knowledge and expertise to make the best possible decisions. 
Moderator: Edward Mullins, Astigarraga Davis (Miami, Florida)
Presenter: Michael Barry, ExecutiveVice President of Strategy and Product, Aderant 
Five Things to Do Today to Improve Your Law Firm’s Tomorrow

Accelerate Profits and Reduce Risk: New Tools for Law Firm Success
Continued ripple effects from the 2007-09 Great Recession has required law firms to stay innovative and flexible related to ongoing changes in alternate fee agreements, firm organization, case staffing, and technology. Recent research conducted by Altman Weil, for example, has indicated 40% of in-house chief legal officers are keeping more legal matters in-house, 25% intend to decrease their use of outside counsel in 2015, 30% of law firms are making strategic changes to pricing, and 46% are making changes to their lawyer-staffing strategies. This session will provide participants a myriad of solid and dynamic strategies for how to improve their firm’s bottom lines while reducing risk, increasing profits, and ensuring client satisfaction. Tools to be discussed include targeting clients more precisely, managing opportunities better, selling consultatively, customizing pitches, and assessing client satisfaction more rigorously, as well as integrating non-recourse commercial litigation funding into case and firm budgeting processes.                         
Moderator: Rob Clarke, Ausley McMullen (Tallahassee, Florida) 
Presenters: James Batson, Senior Investment Manager and Legal Counsel, Bentham IMF
Timothy Corcoran, Principal, Corcoran Consulting Group
Accelerate Profits and Reduce Risk: New Tools for Law Firm Success

What Is a Law Office For?
Law firms today face a “new reality” that requires them to change the way they think about their workplaces. Given that, after personnel, office space typically represents the second-largest law firm expense, law-firm leaders need to be asking, “What kind of return are we getting for that investment?” After all, what is a law office for? Is it simply a place where lawyers go to work – a place where lawyers essentially are “housed?” Or, is it something more? How can it be made more of a center of activity and interaction between lawyers and their clients? How should it be designed to create more opportunities for collaboration among professionals in the office? What are the upsides – and downsides – of having everyone (IT, HR, accounting, etc.) all in one place? How are experiments with moving support staff to remote locations working? This session will examine the differences between offices that “look” more powerful or professional and those that actually “are” – and the ingredients that go into making them that way. 
Moderator: Michael Zatezalo, Kegler Brown (Columbus, Ohio)
Presenter:   Lynn Osborne, Managing Director, Legal Workplace Practice, NELSON
A New Look at Law Firms