The 2009 Rainmaker of the Year Award winners, by category, are: 

Woman Lawyer:  
Mary Ann Dunham, with Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC, in Pittsburgh. See http://alturl.com/oy9c
NOTE: Mary Ann Dunham will be featured on a web seminar broadcast by PBDI on Tuesday March 23 at 1PM Eastern time.  Visit www.pbdi.org for more information.

Small Firm Lawyer: 
Christopher Marston, with Exemplar, a law firm based in Boston.  See http://alturl.com/knjq

Associate: 
Elizabeth L. Gunn, with Durrette Bradshaw PLC in Richmond, VA.  See http://alturl.com/6hfc

The remaining two winners, in the categories “Partner – Transactions” and “Partner – Litigator” will be announced and profiled in the April Issue

“In selecting these winners,” according to Originate! Editor-in-Chief Barry Schneider, “we aim to find the strongest models of effective business development and marketing. In our interviews we extract the tactics and techniques that make them successful.”

The Rainmaker of the Year Awards are a joint project of Originate!, the premier online newsletter dedicated to helping attorneys build their personal practices, and Legal Sales and Services Organization (LSSO), the only organization exclusively focused on sales, service and quality issues in law firms and legal departments. 

Originate! has published more than 200 articles in the last three years, but these case stories are among the most important for the examples they present. The previous year’s winners are profiled in the September 2008 Issue.

For further information contact:

Editor in Chief Barry Schneider, (214) 315-3212 and bschneider@sageprofessional.com

Tactics Editor Larry Bodine, 630.942.0977 and Lbodine@LawMarketing.com

What else they could be doing is the subject of this month’s lead article in Originate!, the premiere online newsletter on business development for attorneys. This article is available to the public at www.pbdi.org/originate and reflects activities that consultant Michael Cummings affirms have much greater value. 

According to Cummings, the same old activities “make you seem like one of the crowd, provide no business value and often lack a true personal touch.” These proven ideas, on the other hand, “will separate you from the attorneys that go through the routine end of year motions. It also provides that contact and personal touch that lead to results.”

Mr. Cummings has worked with hundreds of attorneys as managing director of SAGE PDI, a firm that trains and coaches attorneys in results-driven business development, and has co-authored a highly praised book on personal marketing for attorneys.

The other articles in Originate! this month (available to subscribers only) also enumerate practical advice for lawyers to improve their business development for next year.

There are ten social networking actions recommended by Darryl Cross for making new work come from online sources. Seven good ways to zip up the relationships with your clients and gain new business from Larry Bodine. Six goal-setting steps to make you much more productive in the new year from Thom Singer. And three holiday card alternatives to a chilling tale from Andy Havens.

Lastly, Kristin Stark somberly assesses today’s profit picture and the evolving buyer’s market for services, then proposes how lawyers and firms can build a brighter future through advancing their marketing capabilities.

As Editor-in-Chief Barry Schneider noted, “Now’s the time to change old practices and do things a bit differently, not just because it’s the new year, but because lawyers must respond to this tougher environment.”

About ORIGINATE! – Now in its third year of publication, the online monthly ORIGINATE! offers a consistent, reliable resource for ambitious and serious-minded lawyers who seek advice on building their personal practice. The newsletter delivers practical real-world strategies and proven tactics, the best methods used by top attorneys now to land clients, sell work and strengthen relationships. With a set of contributors of unique depth and breadth, ORIGINATE! offers an unparalleled practice-building asset. www.pbdi.org/originate

What will give them a payback and what won’t is the subject of this month’s lead article in Originate!, the premiere online newsletter on business development for attorneys. This article is available to the public at www.pbdi.org/originate and reflects the experience of Steve Barrett about the kind of ROI you can expect from the most common law marketing initiatives.

As Barrett puts it, “To find a worthwhile return on investment in marketing initiatives, we need to start focusing on doing things [to the good side of the] breakeven curve.  This has been true since the 1990s, and particularly, since September 2008 when the economy went off the cliff.”

Steve Barrett knows what he’s talking about. He was CMO at Drinker Biddle in Philadelphia, and held similar positions at Perkins Coie LLP; Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP; and Choate, Hall & Stewart.

The other articles in Originate! this month (available to subscribers only) follow his theme and give practical do-it-yourself advice on how to pursue the kinds of money making initiatives Barrett highlights.

Gail Huneryager details what to do when you get and decide to responding to a request for proposal.  Michael Cummings looks at the small group gathering, specifically the business roundtable, as a way to expand your network and get business.

When it comes to contact making, our best practice tip writers steer you away from the worst options and toward the best. Thom Singer shows how you can manage the online social network of Twitter as a local resource, a shift that can prove invaluable to your personal network. And Darryl Cross examines one of the best ways to use an association for the same purpose, the membership committee, though his rationale can guide you to an optimal choice in other types of organization as well. Meanwhile, Andy Havens uses the aim of raising the profile of a practice group within a firm to show why five loser initiatives are on Barrett’s list as well. What the do-it-yourselfer should not do.

As Editor-in-Chief Barry Schneider noted, “The aim is to learn to avoid hitting your thumb with a hammer, and to grow your practice with the right tools applied well.”

About ORIGINATE! – Now in it’s third year of publication, the online monthly ORIGINATE! offers a consistent, reliable resource for ambitious and serious-minded lawyers who seek advice on building their personal practice. The newsletter delivers practical real-world strategies and proven tactics, the best methods used by top attorneys now to land clients, sell work and strengthen relationships. With a set of contributors of unique depth and breadth, ORIGINATE! offers an unparalleled practice-building asset. Try us at www.pbdi.org/originate.

Registration information is available at http://bit.ly/17t3Iz  The trio will appear on a Webinar on October 29, 2009; 1PM - 2:15 PM Eastern Time.

“Law firms can win new business and keep current clients if they master the ability to give a price quote for a legal assignment,” said Larry Bodine, Esq., faculty head at Apollo Business Development Webinars. “Attendees of this live webcast will learn how to wean themselves from the billable hour and explore blended rates, capped fees, fixed fees, retainers and success fees.”

This web seminar is proudly co-sponsored by Legal OnRamp, the online social network for 14,000 in-house lawyers and 5,200 lawyers in private practice.

Money spent on alternative billing arrangements has totaled $13.1 billion this year, versus $8.6 billion in the like period of 2008, according to a survey of in-house lawyers who work at Fortune 1000 companies. It said 63% of the surveyed lawyers planned to increase their use of alternative billing arrangements.

Many firms are prospering with alternative fees. Just read “Drinker Biddle Prospers after Adopting the ACC Value Challenge” at http://bit.ly/CduaS for examples.

Who Should Attend

• Marketing and managing partners.
• Lawyers who want to grow their book of business.
• Associates who want to be ahead of the game when they become partner. 
• Chief Marketing Officers and Marketing Directors.

Attendees can gather with others in their office and any number can attend in the room where you connect to the site and the call — at the same low price. Simply call (773) 966-9273 or visit http://bit.ly/17t3Iz to register.

About Apollo Business Development.  Based in suburban Chicago, Apollo company has presented business development programs for 6 years, and also conducts in-person business development training for lawyers.

Lawyers and marketers can learn how to capitalize on this trend by registering for the Webinar, “Alternate Fees — Current Best Practices and Likely Trends” on October 29, 2009, at http://bit.ly/nqyKK The all-star panel of speakers includes Paul Lippe, Esq., Founder of Legal OnRamp, Jeffrey Carr, General Counsel of FMC Technologies, and Dan Currell, Managing Director, General Counsel Roundtable.

Early adopters are reaping the benefits of alternative fees, including firms large and small. “Particularly during challenging times, clients want to pay for results, not time,” said faculty leader Larry Bodine, Esq. “ They want predictable fees, not surprises. This has never been more important than today, when every dollar counts, and requires justification. Stakes are higher now.” 

Law firms can win new business and keep current clients if they master the ability to give a price quote for a legal assignment. Attendees of this LIVE webcast will learn how to wean themselves from the billable hour and explore blended rates, capped fees, fixed fees, retainers and success fees. 

The primary benefit that you can offer that clients want is predictability. Clients see the billable hour method as a bottomless pit of costs that encourages inefficiency by lawyers.  An over-budget legal fee wreaks havoc with corporate executives, whose compensation  is tied to meeting their budgets. 

A distinct advantage to lawyers offering alternative fees is the elimination of increasing overhead devoted to the billing process, clients flyspecking bills and demanding after-the-fact discounts, and delays in payments and falling realization rates.

The program is sponsored by Apollo Business Development web seminars and Legal OnRamp, the leading online social network for in-house lawyers. Speaker bios and details are online at http://bit.ly/nqyKK  The registration fee of $300 covers as many people who can attend in a single room.  For more information, contact:

Larry Bodine, Esq.

630.942.0977

Lbodine@LawMarketing.com

Permission

Confirming that the people who ask for your information have actually requested to be on your list is the number one step in the battle for deliverability. You should be using a process called confirmed opt-in or verified opt-in to send a unique link to the attempted subscriber when they request information. Before adding the person to your list they must click that unique link verifying that they are indeed the same person that owns the email address and requested to subscribe.

Subscriber Addresses

When requesting website visitors to opt-in ask for their “real” or “primary” email address instead of a free email address like Yahoo or Hotmail. Free emails tend to be throw away accounts and typically have a shorter lifetime than a primary ISP address.

List Maintenance

Always promptly remove undeliverable addresses that bounce when sending email to them. An address that bounces with a permanent error 2-3 times in a 30 day period should be removed from the list. ISP’s track what percentage of your newsletters bounce and will block them if you attempt to continually deliver messages to closed subscriber mailboxes.

Message Format

Usage of HTML messages to allow for text formatting, multiple columns, images, and brand recognition is growing in popularity and is widely supported by most email client software. Most spam is also HTML formatted and thus differentiating between requested email and spam HTML messages can be difficult. A 2004 study by AWeber .com shows that plain text messages are undeliverable 1.15% of the time and HTML only messages were undeliverable 2.3%. If sending HTML it is important to always send a plain text alternative message, also called text/HTML multi-part mime format.

Content

Many ISP’s filter based on the content that appears within the message text.

Website URL:Research potential newsletter advertisers before allowing them to place ads in your newsletter issues. If they have used their website URL to send spam, just having their URL appear in your newsletter could cause the entire message to be filtered.

Words/phrases:

Choose your language carefully when crafting messages. Avoid hot button topics often found in spam such as medication, mortgages, making money, and pornography. If you do need to use words that might be filtered, don’t attempt to obfuscate words with extra characters or odd spelling, you’ll just make your messages appear more spam like.

Images:

Avoid creating messages that are entirely images. Use images sparingly, if at all. Commonly used open rate tracking technology uses images to calculate opens. You may choose to disable open rate tracking to avoid being filtered based on image content.

Attachments:

With viruses running rampant and spreading thru the usage of malicious email attachments many users are wary of attached documents. It’s often better to link to files via a website URL to reduce recipient fear of attachments and reduce the overall message size.

CAN-SPAM Compliance

The January 2004 Federal CAN-SPAM law introduced a number of rules regarding the delivery of email. It’s important you have your legal counsel review your practices and ensure you are in compliance. The two most important rules include having a valid postal mail address listed in all commercial messages and a working unsubscribe link that is promptly honored to remove the subscriber from future messages.

Reputation

Reputation services are often used by large ISP’s as a way to vet email senders regarding their email practices and policies. Businesses listed with these services are then given less stringent filtering or no filtering at all. Several reputation services are:

• http://www.isipp.com/iadb.php
• http://www.bondedsender.com
• http://www.habeas.com

Relationships & Whitelisting

Contact with major ISP’s and email providers is essential in letting them know about your requested subscriber email. Many large providers such as AOL and Yahoo have specific whitelisting programs and postmaster website areas to ensure your email is delivered as long as you meet their policies and procedures in handling your opt-in list.

Email deliverability is about ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to the intended recipient. While no single tip will enable you to get 100% of your email delivered each one utilized as a group can go a long way to reaching that goal.

Anyone thinking about Affiliate Marketing has to keep aspect in mind to avoid waste of anergy and money for ads.

A. Bank Guarantee Scheme

This is a very simple fraud.  A businessman or investor requires access to capital for his own purposes.  Let us say that the individual wants a line of credit of $50 million or more.  That individual or business discovers that to obtain such a line of credit means paying significant fees, commissions and possibly providing huge quantities of security.  That the other party will say that all you have got to do is pay a one off sum and you will have a guaranteed bank facility can make the offer seem hard to resist.

The individual will commonly be told that an AAA bank will provide a guarantee for, say, $50 million subject to a payment of $1 million as a fee.  Obviously the businessman says he is not going to pay until he has seen the facility from the bank.  Arrangements are therefore made for the $1 million dollar fee to be lodged in an escrow account, usually either with a solicitor in London or with a fiduciary in Switzerland .  The solicitor or fiduciary has clear instructions that he is not to release the monies until such time as the facility letter is to hand.

In due course a facility letter from a major bank does arrive appropriately signed at the bottom guaranteeing the $50 million facility.  The fiduciary releases the money.  The investor then calls upon the bank to honour their facility.  It is at that stage that the investor discovers that the two people who signed the facility either never existed or if they did exist had no authority to grant the facility and have left the bank, or there is some other fraud involved.

The investor quickly attempts to hold the fiduciary or solicitor to account, whose excuse for his role in the transaction is that he simply followed his client’s instruction in releasing the monies on delivery of the facility letter.  The investor then attempts to trace the monies and discovers they have moved through various different bank accounts and have ended up either in Lithuania , The Virgin Islands, or another location where it becomes increasingly difficult to either trace the monies further or to recoup them.

B. Discounted Bank Instruments

Many senior lawyers, accountants and businessmen continue to believe that there exists a secret market in bank instruments.  Fraudsters play upon this continuing belief by persuading individuals and companies that they should make investments in “prime bank guarantees”.  The documentation relating to the investment talks about “prime banks”, “discount houses” and “cutting houses”.  The documentation is produced so that at first sight it appears hugely complex and obviously beyond the understanding of anybody who is not actually involved in this very specialised market.

Typically individuals are asked to participate in a block of something like a $100 million investment.  It is usually explained that individuals are excluded from this market and the only way they can possibly join is by contributing $100,000 or so to a pot that is being built up by the generous individual who is giving them the opportunity to participate in this secret market.

The lure into this investment is the phenomenal profits that will be generated, sometimes described as being in excess of 100% in one year.

It is worth repeating that there is no such market.

It is never explained to anybody how the profit is generated or why the banks feel that it is necessary to trade in this market.

Usually what happens is that the hugely complex documentation is delivered to the person who is going to make the investment, for typically between $1 million and $10 million.  He is required to sign a certificate to say that his money is clean and then sends the money to nominated bank account.  From there the monies pass into the hands of the investment manager or his nominee.  Shortly after that, the excuses start.

Usually some other contributor has not paid on time his due contribution to the $100,000 block and therefore it has not been possible to “roll” the money at the first stage.  After that, there is an incessant string of excuses ranging from “my wife is having a baby” to “the banks are on holiday” or “difference in time zones make it difficult to communicate with banks” to just straightforward silence.  Sometimes the fraudsters are able to keep the investors at bay for years with excuses.

One has to ask why this fraud persists.  The answer quite often is that individuals who make such investments have quite often parted with all of their spare cash and are no longer in a position to finance assistance from lawyers and accountants to recover the monies.  Quite often the monies are so well hidden that it is difficult to recover them, even when still available.  There is also the embarrassment factor of an otherwise sensible businessman or investor not wanting to admit that he has been the victim of financial fraud.

Ioannis John Neocleous
NCI Law Group
info@ncilawgroup.com
T: +357-22-680670

Author: Ioannis John Neocleous

John A. Neocleous is the founder and Managing Partner of NCI Law Group , Neocleous & Neocleous law firm and NCI Finance Group. John has over 14 years of professional experience in the areas of international tax, corporate and criminal law, both as an academic and also as a practitioner in over 50 countries worldwide.

In general, if you are approached to make a high yield income investment or to become involved in the prime bank investment fraud, then you should carefully look at the documentation that you are asked to sign and always use the advise of an experienced professional such as an accountant or a lawyer.  Such documents are normally filled with meaningless legal gibberish that are relatively easy to spot if you are dealing with fraudsters.

Some of the typical phrases you should look for are set out below. Some of them are meaningless and have no legal definition, but they were inserted into the documents or proposal in order to impress unsuspecting investors:

· Ready Willing and Able
· Prime Bank Guarantees (PBGs)
· Prime Bank Notes (PBNs)
· Guaranteed by Top 100 World Prime Bank
· Unconditional S.W.I.F.T. Wire Transfer
· Freely negotiable, irrevocable, clear SWIFT wire transfers
· Callable Conditional Sight Drafts
· Closing Bank
· Issuing Bank
· Fiduciary Bank
· Bank Menu
· International Banking Days
· ICC (International Chamber of Commerce) 400
· UCC (Uniform Commercial Code) Form references
· Banking co-ordinates
· Fresh cut paper
· Seasoned paper
· Collateral Houses, Collateral Source, Collateral Supplier
· Collateral First Transaction
· Grand Master Collateral Commitment
· Validation of the MCC (Master Collateral Commitment)
· Collateral Purchase Orders
· Collateral Provider
· Instruments delivered free of all liens and/or encumbrances
· Non-circumvention and Non-disclosure agreements
· Irrevocable Pay Order
· Irrevocable, irretraceable commitment of funds to purchase instruments
· Lending Bank, Funding Bank, Closing Bank
· Good clean cleared funds of non-criminal origin
· With full corporate and legal responsibility
· Interest at seven and one half percent, payable annually in arrears
· 5, 10, 20 years etc. plus one week or one day
· Fully binding commercial letter contract
· Client Company Principals
· Transaction Trenches
· Millions or Billions of US dollars with rolls and extensions
· Emissions, remission, commissions and fallout
· Transaction parameters
· There is to be no communication with our bank other than through the normal bank channels, no phone call allowed

If you see two or three of the above all in one document, then you ought to seriously consider whether or not fraud is involved and take reputable independent legal advice.

In the next part we will describe more about the most common fraudulent transactions: “Bank Guarantees” and “Discounted Bank Instruments”.

Ioannis John Neocleous, NCI Law Group
info@ncilawgroup.com
T: +357-22-680670

Author: Ioannis John Neocleous

John A. Neocleous is the founder and Managing Partner of NCI Law Group , Neocleous & Neocleous law firm and NCI Finance Group. John has over 14 years of professional experience in the areas of international tax, corporate and criminal law, both as an academic and also as a practitioner in over 50 countries worldwide.

1. 10% corporate tax rate for business profits;
2. No withholding taxes imposed on dividends, interest and royalties for non-residents (whether a company or an individual);
3. Income from dividends is exempt from income or corporation tax;
4. The attractive platform and tax regime that Cyprus provides for a holding company (i.e. subject to certain conditions full exemption from local taxation in respect of dividends received by a holding company from its local and foreign subsidiaries);
5. The attractive platform and tax regime that Cyprus provides for international trusts;
6. The network of favorable double taxation treaties that Cyprus maintains with more than 40 countries including Russia and most of the ex Soviet Union Republics;
7. Tax advantages available to non-residents including non – E.U. residents;
8. Cypriot tax regime permits losses to be carried forward indefinitely;
9. The geographic location of Cyprus, located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa;

One of the mentioned above factors is a double taxation treaty between Russia and Cyprus, which provides to Russians many tax advantages. Agreement was signed between Russia and Cyprus for the avoidance of double taxation with respect to taxes on income and capital, back on 17 August 1999. The treaty provides for either the exemption of income in the source country or the provision of tax credit in respect of the foreign tax paid by the country of tax residence.

Usually, Russian companies would pay 35 percent tax on profits, plus a 20 percent VAT tax, and a 40 percent tax for social security and employee benefits, in Russia. However, when Russian business is structured in a way that a Cyprus company owns it (which does not require any physical presence in Russia), all its profits will be legally transferred to Cyprus and is liable for only a 4.5 percent tax on profits and a 15 percent VAT tax. Russian business escapes the 40 percent tax for social services, accordingly. This tax advantage makes it possible to channel profits in the form of dividends at a reduced rate.

As for example, a Cyprus Holding company can be used for international investment purposes. Basically, it is use of the tax incentives and the treaties for the avoidance of double taxation. The most important advantage of a Cyprus Holding Company is that the dividends received by the foreign company can flow totally tax free in Cyprus through the Holding Company, avoiding in this way the payment of any tax on dividends. Furthermore, payments made to non-Cyprus Resident Shareholders there is zero (0) withholding tax, so the Shareholder receives the dividends absolutely tax free.

Payment of interest on loans is another advantageous method for Russian businesses. Under the Cyprus Law, Russian Company partly owned by Cypriot Company and paying its interest on loans to the Cypriot company, effectively minimizing its taxation. However, the interest payments are not necessarily will be paid to the Cyprus Company. It is the most effective method which allows Russian company to avoid almost all its tax payments.

Russian businesses which structured into a Cypriot companies for maintaining its business activities within territory of Russia, are able to transfer there revenue earned in Russia abroad in the form of dividends and interest, at considerable tax savings. Companies registered in Cyprus jurisdiction pay lower taxes than those paid in Russian jurisdictions.

All the above mentioned structures are based on “Cyprus economic zone ” of reduced taxation and perfectly legal, furthermore its tax advantage may be enhanced even more when, under certain circumstances, is combined with other jurisdictions in appropriate legal structures.

In the last 30 years Cyprus Law Firm has developed into a reputable international business and financial centre due to the very favorable tax regime that the island offers. The admission of Cyprus to the European Union as full member in May 2004, established Cyprus as a prestigious, stable and attractive jurisdiction.

Though the offshore company status was abolished as from January 1, 2003 the favorable tax regime for the international investor has been maintained. In addition, the liberalization of investments coming from non-EU countries and the abolition of maximum and minimum participation percentages in investments in all the sectors of the economy in October 2004 (unless it is otherwise provided by the Law), has transformed Cyprus into a major destination for the location of international, holding companies and worldwide investments.

Contact:
Ioannis John Neocleous, NCI Law Group
info@ncilawgroup.com
T: +357-22-680670

Author: Ioannis John Neocleous

NCI Law Group is an international law firm founded by Ioannis John Neocleous that serves the needs of businesses, governments, non-profit organizations and individual clients around the world. Ioannis John Neocleous leaders in Cyprus Law, Cyprus Company Registration, Cyprus Lawyers etc. Contact Ioannis John Neocleous for any query regarding Legal Services.

Marketers and consultants across the nation are invited to nominate lawyers for the Rainmaker of the Year Awards, sponsored by the editors of Originate! – the monthly business development newsletter, and judged by LSSO – the Legal Sales and Service Organization.

 “We want to recognize the lawyers who have geared up to bring in business and applied themselves to make it happen. And we want our readers to learn from those who have been particularly successful this past year,” said Editor-In-Chief Barry Schneider,

Winners will receive a handsome award, be publicized in a nationally-distributed press release and be interviewed for articles to be published in Originate! and on the LSSO website.

The newsletter is now soliciting entries for the Rainmaker Awards from lawyers, firms, marketing specialists, recruiters and consultants, in six categories:

1.     Associate

2.     Small firm lawyer (30 or fewer lawyers)

3.     Partner – transactions

4.     Partner – litigator

5.     Woman Lawyer

6.     Diverse Lawyer

Law firm marketers and marketing consultants are encouraged to submit an entry on behalf of a top rainmaker they know in one of these categories, and self-nominations are also welcome.  There is no entry fee this year. The deadline for submissions is Monday, July 21, 2008.  Entry forms are available online at www.pbdi.org/originate. 

A panel of independent judges with expertise in legal business development has been assembled by the Legal Sales and Service Organization (LSSO):

• Martha Fay “Marty” Africa, Managing Director of Major Lindsay & Africa consultants
• Gabe Miller Esq., General Counsel of The Law Offices of James Sokolove
• Catherine MacDonagh, Esq., President of LSSO.

The judges will determine the best of the best among the submitted entries.

“With sales and marketing now so critical to the careers of individual lawyers and the vitality of law firms, we know how important it is for the best to be recognized and share what they do,” said Beth Cuzzone, a co-founder of LSSO, who is the Director of Business Development for Goulston & Storrs in Boston.

More information on the contest, as well as the entry form, can be found at www.pbdi.org/originate

ABOUT ORIGINATE! — Originate! is an independent online business development newsletter for lawyers is found at www.pbdi.org/originate. The paid subscription newsletter offers practical advice to lawyers: how to get new clients and generate more revenue. Originate! has assembled firm leaders, rainmakers and consultants to publish case studies of successful lawyers, specific techniques to boost marketing results, how-to’s, and market insights.  First published in 2007, the co-editors of Originate! include Barry Schneider of Dallas, TX, Larry Bodine, Esq., of Glen Ellyn, IL, and Michael G. Cummings of St. Charles, IL.

ABOUT LSSO – The Legal Sales and Service Organization, based in Boston and found at www.legalsales.org, is the legal profession’s only organization exclusively focused on sales, service excellence and process issues in law firms and legal departments.  Founded in 2003, LSSO delivers the education and resources that lawyers need to improve their sales and client service skills with a searchable library, exclusive research, tools and information for members only, LSSO’s RainDance Conference, LSSO’s Process Improvement Certification Programs and the Thomas H. Lee Award for Service Excellence. Catherine Alman MacDonagh, Esq. is the association’s Co-Founder & President.

For further information please contact Originate! co-editor Larry Bodine at 630.942.0977.