On this episode of the CMO Series, we're lucky to be joined by not one but two of Canada's top legal marketers as we take a look behind the scenes at how they create and implement successful legal marketing initiatives.

We're so happy to welcome Lenczner Slaght's marketing dream team: Lindsey Bombardier, Director, Marketing & Business Development, and Adhi Reza, Manager, Marketing.

Charles Cousins has the pleasure of delving into two of the team’s most successful programs to date, ReferToHer, and commerciallist.com.

Charles, Lindsey, and Adhi discuss: 

• How Lindsey and Adhi came to their roles at Lenczner Slaght
• What ReferToHer and commerciallist.com are and how they came about
• How to identify the projects worth investing time and effort in and the process for getting that investment approved
• How to execute projects of this size and scale and how they were resourced
• The challenges of running complicated projects
• How to measure and report on the success of these initiatives 
• Advice for others embarking on complex projects 

Transcription:

Intro: Welcome to the Passle Podcast CMO series.

Charles: Today on the CMO Series podcast, we're doing something a little bit different and we're very lucky to be joined by not one, but two of Canada's top legal marketers to have a look at how they put together a couple of marketing initiatives that have been very successful for them. We have Lindsey Bombardier, who is marketing and BD Director at Canadian law firm Lenczner Slaght. And we are also joined by Adhi Reza, Marketing Manager. Adhi, Lindsey, how are you doing?

Lindsey: Great. Thank you so much for having us.

Charles: And it's great to have you both on. And Lindsey, when we first spoke, we came up with a few ideas and you said, actually, me and Adhi, we're a fantastic team, so it'd be good to bring her in and get her talking about some of the things we've worked on together. So it's going to be great to speak to you both.

Lindsey: Yeah, I always say that I am nothing without Adhi Reza by my side, so it's great to do it together.

Adhi: Yeah, I like to say we just like doing everything together. It's more fun that way.

Charles: Brilliant. And obviously a lot of our friends in the LMA will know you guys, you're heavily involved with LMA, Canada and North America, so hopefully people are very familiar with the teamwork and some of the stuff you've been doing. But really, today we're going to focus on two initiatives that you've worked on together. But before we get there, how did you both come to your roles at Lenczner Slaght?

Lindsey: So I can go first. Right out of college, I spent some time at a not for profit in the legal industry and that was exactly what a person out of school wants, right? It was the ability to manage my own projects, to develop processes for this sort of very small business, to work on events, to travel a little bit. And ultimately, it really got me thinking and learning about the legal industry. And so through there, I think I built up some of what I think my superpower is now, which is networking and relationship building, and I networked myself right out of that job. So I ended up at a national full service law firm and I stayed there for almost a decade. I was lucky enough to advance through several marketing and BD roles and I think I really grew up with that firm and took every opportunity I could to learn to add value and really build, through the LMA, a strong network of legal marketers. And so what else would happen? But I met someone at Lenczner Slaght through the LMA and the rest is history, really. So I arrived in 2018 and then I was lucky enough that Adhi was already here and her and I, with several other colleagues, we've built up a really incredible team. Have had the opportunity to work on not only the two projects that we're going to talk about today. The firm has been around for 30 years and I think in our four years, we have spent time working on some of the firm's biggest, brightest, most unique and now award winning projects. So that's my sort of short journey. Adhi, do you want to go ahead?

Adhi: Yeah. So I went to business school and actually specialised in marketing, but at the same time, I was also kind of toying with the idea of going to law school. And in my job search after graduation, I was actually lucky enough to find an internship role that combined both of these interests. It was in the marketing and business development department at a national full service law firm, and it was pretty much the perfect opportunity to learn more of  two potential career paths for me. But I quickly learned I much preferred the business side of law and didn't want to become a lawyer. And when I started looking for a more permanent role in legal marketing, I landed at Lenczner Slaght. I actually joined the firm in 2017, when it was the 25th anniversary year, and it was the middle of the firm's major website and brand refresh. And despite being pretty junior at the time, I was immediately given a lot of responsibility. I gained a ton of experience in advancing major projects and I had every opportunity to build close relationships with the lawyers, all of which I think you can't really find at a bigger firm as a junior. And all of it really set me up for success. And now, five years later, it's now the firm's 30th anniversary year. And in that time, I've been really lucky to work with Lindsey to build and grow some of our firm's coolest programs that you wouldn't find anywhere else.

Charles: So it sounds like you've both been doing some amazing things at the firm, but a big part of that is actually the firm giving you the opportunity to do that. It sounds like you've got a really sort of a firm that really values the marketing team and backs your sort of plans and what you want to do and get behind your sort of ideas.

Lindsey: Yes. No, it's exactly right. We're 85 lawyers now and we have a very innovative culture at the firm, and I think I'll talk about this a little bit later, but our management committee is - they know what we need to do to stay at the top and they know that that means we need to be open to big ideas. They want to take recommendations from the business team and frankly, we've got great ideas. So it's a win-win in so many ways. But yeah, the support of the firm and their interest in building this brand out is really critical to the work that we do.

Charles: Our focus today is on two initiatives you've launched with the firm ReferToHer and the Commercial List website. Can you give our audience an idea of what each of these includes?

Lindsey: Yeah. So refer to her as a series of lists, organised by practice area, of experienced female lawyers to whom you can confidently refer your work. The lists are kept on a website. Refertoher.com. We know that business referrals, particularly in a litigation practice, are critical to achieving success in your practice. And so the hope here is that this program helps to ensure that female lawyers are positioned as equal, available, skilled resources for whoever may be looking for legal help. And so, regardless of gender, clients are getting the best lawyer for their work. Totally different. The Commercial List. It's a court in Toronto and it's where some of the country's most complex commercial cases are heard. So it's referred to a lot as sort of the real time litigation. So think insolvency, think sort of any case that would be under a business corporation act. So we developed Commerciallist.com. Again, it's a website, and the website has all of the Commercial Lists, existing practice resources, precedents, various FAQs, best practices. It's got blogs. I think most critically, it has the decisions of the Commercial List all in one place and then any news and events that are happening in or around the court. And so this information isn't centrally available anywhere else other than now on commerciallist.com. It's really valuable. It is what we call a one stop shop and it is exactly that. And so the goal of this website is really to be, you know, it's open to the public. And so we want it to be a valuable resource, not only for our own litigators, but for the court, for other Canadian counsel, and for clients, of course. Both websites are of course they're driven through Lenczner Slaght but they're really trying to provide value to broad audiences and make an impact on not only the work that we're doing here, but sort of more importantly, the work that's being done in the industry. And so I think that's maybe a unique piece of this is that it's not just a sort of revenue generator for the firm, it's sort of for the greater good. And I think we'll get into why that's important to us.

Charles: Yeah, and it must be rewarding working on a project for that. So you talked about both initiatives. They obviously help the firm out, but actually they bring a lot of value to everyone else and it must bring a lot of pride to those projects. So when we're looking at these, we're going to have a look today, really right from the start to finish. So starting at the beginning, how do these ideas come about?

Adhi: So I'll start with that. So I'll start with ReferToHer and then go on to the Commercial List because they are similar, but very different stories and how they started. So ReferToHer started as an idea called Think Pink. And it was brought to us by our partner, Sana Halwani and our former partner, who is now the current Chief Legal Officer at EY Canada, Shara Roy. And the idea really stems from their anecdotal experiences of getting fewer referrals than their equally experienced male colleagues. Due to various systemic issues in the legal industry, studies have shown that female lawyers are just not as top of mind as their male colleagues for referrals. And even women disproportionately referred work to men. As I mentioned, referrals are key to a thriving litigation practice and actually have a major impact on the lawyer's compensation, promotion and recognition. So Sana and Shara had the idea of creating lists of trusted female lawyers that you could keep top of mind for referring work. So they asked us to consider if and how this idea could actually be turned into a formal, self sustaining program. I think Lindsay and I huddled immediately after that a meeting and agreed on two things. One, there were a lot of questions we would have to work through to make this project a success because it's never been done before. And two, we absolutely could not call it Think Pink. I think our first order of business was brainstorming a new name, and within a minute we came up with ReferToHer and we even have it trademarked, which I think is super cool, and then pivoting to commercialist.com. Similarly, the idea came from one of our partners, Monique Jilesen. So, for context, Monique is actually the co-leader of our firm's Commercial Litigation Practice Group. She has a ton of experience on Commercial List matters and is on the Commercial List Users Committee. And she explained to us in a meeting that commercial is a specialised court, but there has never been a central place in the courts or otherwise, that held all of the important content and resources required for lawyers to effectively practice in the court. So, for example, some of the things that Lindsey had mentioned, the practice direction, recent decisions, court forms, the daily court list, they were found everywhere. They were either on different websites, they were either sent manually to groups by email, or they were buried in the Superior Court of justice website. So unless you actually appeared before the commercialist court, these resources were just not readily available. And what's also interesting is that Monique let us know that there are so many unwritten rules and procedures about practising on the Commercial List that are just not known by lawyers, students and counsel who are new to the court. So not only did the court not have a centralised website for all of this, it is very unlikely that law firms were going to allocate resources to a secondary website that ultimately provided a service to their competitors. So why did we do it? Well, given that Commercial litigation is literally the heart of our practice at Lenczner Slaght, and the fact that we have such a wealth of experience on high profile cases in the Commercial List. We just decided to tackle this problem for the legal industry ourselves. And what's really interesting about these two projects is that both the ideas for refer to her and commercialist.com were introduced to Lindsay and me around the same time and then they launched very close together. So we were simultaneously developing two very different programs that had never been done before in the industry, all within the first year of working together. So it really set the tone for our working relationship and what we could achieve together in the years to come.

Lindsey: Probably good and bad. Probably good and bad.

Adhi: Yeah.

Charles: You've been through the wars together with these ideas I have in my notes. How did you know these ideas were worth investing time? But actually, just speaking to you and hearing you speak about it immediately clocks in my head that they're going to be worth the time. But how did you get the firm to invest in this? How did you get buy-in from the powers that be?

Lindsey: I love this question so much because looking back, like Adhi just said, we were really new to the firm and sort of building this marketing team up. So it all seems very risky now, right? But at the end of the day, a good idea is a good idea. So I think first and foremost, we really bought into the ideas ourselves. And then, of course, when you're engaged, the ideas and the effort kind of, like, flows through you. So I think one thing I say to my team all the time is I want our work at this firm to have longevity and I want to always be thinking about the future. So how does what we're doing today impact tomorrow? How do the decisions that we make in marketing, BD pricing, whatever it may be, complement what the firm is doing today and what the firm wants to be doing in the future? And so I think, first and foremost, when Sana, Shara, Monique gave us these ideas and we started thinking on them, we knew right away they had a long shelf life. So even when we launched, yes, there were going to be a lot of moving parts. But it was so clear to us that there would be immediate opportunity to, you know, if we don't get it right at launch, to enhance it, and then to develop dozens of new ideas to continually keep it fresh. I think the firm also is all about continuous improvement. We're 30 years old, but we're doing a lot of things for the first time, and we love that. But we're comfortable launching something, not getting it perfect, and then listening to the feedback. And we knew the feedback would come, and it certainly did. And we knew that would end up providing us with new ideas and different opportunities. The approval process. So what was that like? First, we had the foundation of a great idea that helps a lot. And then it was our job, simply put, to develop a business case and to do that in front of various audiences. So, sort of, first and foremost, simple story wins, what's the idea? You have to be able to explain your idea simply, and I think we were able to do that. Why we answered this question? Why is it different or why is it better than what we're already seeing in the market? How does it add value to our firm, to our clients, and to our peers? I think that order was very important, particularly for the partnership that sort of we started first and then the longevity piece. What does it look like in a year? What does it look like in five years? Does this sort of scale? And in ten years, is this still a thing? And then ultimately, how does it align to our brand and how does it align to our firm priorities? To keep it simple, we answered those questions, and I think Adhi and I did it in a compelling way. We tried to build some excitement around it. I think what was great and what Adhi’s touched on is that these are new things. These are things we actually didn't see in the market. And so we knew we had a real opportunity with both of them. And then, of course, we had partner champions partners came up with these ideas, and so that helps a lot. And then what I alluded to earlier is we really benefit at this firm from having a savvy management committee. We talk with our management committee all of the time about how important it is. It's almost easier to climb to the top. It's harder to stay there. And so what do you have to do to stay there? You have to have big ideas, and you have to be willing to put some resources behind them and to, in these cases, not afraid to be first. Like, let's go, let's try it, and let's see what happens. I think we had enough confidence that they would land, so we were lucky in that way. But our MC really understands what it is that we wanted to accomplish with these. And I think the partnership was the same, and so ultimately, it's been really rewarding. But the business case was key.

Charles: Yeah. I love what you said there about not being afraid to be first. And I guess traditionally that isn't something law firms will adopt. They always like to see what their competitors are doing before they dive in. Once you knew these initiatives were worth doing and the firms bought in, how did you define the scope and determine what they should become?

Adhi: So, like Lindsay mentioned, these two programs have so much opportunity to grow and become something big. So we have to really define what it is you're trying to achieve with both of them at launch. I think once we began fleshing out the idea, it became really clear that we do have three main goals that would always guide us. So one, we want to increase awareness of our lawyers and clients of the disparity between men and women when it came to referrals, because not many people would have known that. Two, we wanted to offer an actual practical solution that would help balance the scales for referrals for female lawyers by keeping them top of mind. And we wanted to ultimately advance equity, diversity, inclusion in the legal industry to better serve our clients and all clients of firms because they're the ones who benefit from having diverse teams. So the scope of refer to her was rooted in these three objectives which we will expand upon further as we discuss the execution. For commerciallist.com on the other hand, our goal was ultimately to provide unprecedented value by just creating a one stop shop for all things Commercial List. So, first things first, we have to decide, well, what kind of resources did we want on the website? As mentioned earlier, we had to make sure that existing practice resources were there. There were precedents, there were important decisions, there were answers to frequently asked questions and there were interviews, blogs and pretty much anything that would be relevant and that is housed and all in one place. And then we have to decide, well, what would make this website stand out beyond that? So that's where that original content piece comes in. We wanted to share the unique aspects and unwritten rules of practising on the Commercial List that exist in the minds of our lawyers who are regulars at this specialised court. So overall, we just want a Commercial List to not only increase access to the court for our clients and colleagues and law students, we want to demonstrate our firm's commitment to innovation and the administration of justice. So those are the things that guided us to develop the scope for both of those programs.

Charles: So you've got the scope and where you want to head moving along that timeline. Can you take us through how you put in the execution plans together? What were your roles and how hands on were you?

Lindsey: Very hands on, very hands on. So, I think first and foremost, we had to develop two sub brands, right? So if you've ever been to Litigate.com, which is our Lenczner Slaght website, you'll know that we have a very specific brand and although it's incredibly unique, it's simple right at its core. So we needed to decide how to stay true to that simplicity, but also let it evolve with these two programs and let these brands be their own thing. What's interesting, I think about these programs as well as if you go to refertoher.com or commerciallist.com, they're designed really to only be subtly associated with Lenczner Slaght. We're not like throwing Lenczner Slaght down your throat with these. So the branding then became challenging, but what's been fun is we've let these grow a little bit. We've managed to be a bit more creative, where we've given ourselves licence to be a bit more creative with whether it's our content or our imagery or wherever it may be. But otherwise, I think how hands on we are, it is exactly what you imagine it to be. It was a ton of moving parts. So we physically had to design two websites. We had to develop really serious rules for Refer To Her. We had to pull together existing resources. Obviously, we had to write a lot of content and then liaison with our creative agency. I think what was really a great opportunity for us was to Refer To Her specifically, we worked with dozens of external lawyers to develop those sort of core first lists that we went to market with. So incredibly complex. Adhi is the brains behind all of it, so I'll let her talk through some of the more specific elements.

Adhi: Yeah, what a lot of people don't know about these two programs as well is that from idea generation to launch, we had less than four months to execute both these unique and complicated programs. And like Lindsey mentioned, externally these sound like very simple ideas, but actually there are so many details we have to figure out in order to make the launch such a smooth, successful launch. For Refer To Her with Sana and Shara, Lindsey and I developed and fine tuned pretty much every aspect of the program. So think the criteria of who can get on the list, what the initial list would be, how the list would even be developed and who would appear on them, how people would refer others to lists, how the website would be organised and maintained, the FAQs, the long term strategy, and so on. And throughout the process, we had to keep one goal in mind: creating a fair and impartial program that would grow organically over time. The last thing we wanted, I think, for people is to think that this was another exclusive membership or legal ranking, because that's out there. But I think we did a pretty good job of making sure that that wasn't the case. And again, every female partner at Lenczner Slaght was involved in developing the initial list. We wanted to tap into their network of each practice area to ensure the right lawyers were included at launch. And then, yes, we also took responsibility for liaising with a ton of external lawyers to get their addition so that the lists were not biassed to the network of just our lawyers. And then finally, we had to develop and launch a plan that would promote the program across Canada and ensure people understood how to use refer to Her.com to keep women top of mind and advance them in the legal industry. Commerciallist.com was a completely different process. It was all about the content. So for commerciallist.com, we weren't just collecting all the existing content out there, we were developing so much new content that didn't exist, but that would provide so much value to the users of the website. So we created biographies on the judges. Surprisingly, that's not out there in the world. We created explanations and links to resources. We helped create sample precedents for court orders. We developed a detailed FAQ section. And most importantly, we got unique insights from our lawyers, our knowledge management team, our research teams on important topics such as what is the Commercial List, what do the judges want? What are the tips and best practices for practising on the Commercial List, and so on. So we were heavily involved in not only developing and organising the website to make it user friendly with our design agency, but we were keeping our lords on track with content not just for launch, but for the future. So bottom line, we were very hands on.

Charles: Yeah, these projects, they're not little projects by any stretch. So I guess my other question would be, was it smooth sailing? And if it wasn't, was there anything you learned which you would do differently if you did it again?

Adhi: Yeah, I think it's interesting because of course, as you say, there's such big projects, we did everything we could to make it a success. But of course, there will be feedback that we get inevitably on what we can do to improve. At launch the feedback we received for Refer To Her was overwhelmingly positive. I think over 200 clients, listees, colleagues and professionals across the industry described our program as break the box thinking, as powerful, as creative, as concrete action, that we were advancing equity, diversity, inclusion in the legal industry. And that's amazing to hear. But despite this positive reaction, we knew Refer To Her was not a perfect end all solution. And one thing we've always been really proud of is that we're open to listening to and taking action on feedback that would help us improve the program. So, for an example, the initial criteria for getting on the list involves being a partner, counsel or sole practitioner. However, we received feedback after, I think, six months that helped us recognise that it is just as important for senior associates at a law firm to be top of mind for referrals as well, not just partners. So after launch, we actually expanded the criteria for listings. So it included lawyers with at least eight years of experience, and we let the market know that we did that. And this just made the list more inclusive, particularly for those associates who are facing barriers to becoming a partner or counsel and whose practice would benefit from being top of mind for referrals. Commerciallist.com, on the other hand, just required us to get a crash course on the Commercial List itself. I think that was the main obstacle. In order to develop such a content heavy website that would be valuable, we had to become just as knowledgeable about the inner workings of this unique court as the lawyers. Honestly, by the end of the project, having done a ton of research, having talked to all of our lawyers, and having read and reread every single thing on the website, I could almost delude myself into thinking that I could practise on the Commercial List. Lindsay, do you have anything else to add?

Lindsey: You cannot practice on the Commercial List Adhi.

Adhi: I’d love to practice on the Commercial List.

Lindsey: Yes, we feel like we are lowercase e experts on Commercial List the practice, for sure. I think what has to be said here is that we launched these in 2019. We did not predict shortly after that we would be living through a global pandemic. So I think for Refer To Her specifically, we really wanted to put the resources behind networking and behind relationship building among our listings. So great. Put all of these female lawyers on the list then what? Right. One of the initial pieces of feedback that we received was that, yes, the recognition was there that business referrals are critical, but in some practice areas, the relationships among the female lawyers in that particular bar were not as strong. So if you look at the Class actions bar or the IP litigation bar, those are really small, tight knit bars. Well, commercial litigation, we've got dozens and dozens of people on that list. So what we were hearing was that the relationships among those listees were not as strong. Okay, great. How can we be a connector to make sure that we're hosting networking events? We're doing whatever that we can to get those folks connected and so, of course, they start sending work to one another. Cool. Great ideas. Covid hits, right? We did amazing virtual events. We did one fantastic one at launch in fall 2020, hundreds of listees attended, but then Zoom Fatigue came in and all of these other priorities came up. And so that specific idea, like so many other ideas that we had, precovid, we had to pivot and it had to shift. So I think that was disappointing and obviously not something that we saw coming. We're hopeful that of course, as we start easing back into in person things, we can pick that up again. But that was really like, we've had to pivot and sort out how we are going to continue to keep these programs top of mind while people aren't physically in the office doing the things that they used to do. So that was a challenge, I think for sure.

Charles: From the beginning, it's really apparent that you were quite open minded, you were doing a new thing, and you were aware that it wasn't going to be the perfect polished article right from the start. I think that idea of being open and call it whatever you want, that growth mindset approach of actually, it's not going to be great, but let's welcome feedback and let's build it into what we want it to be. I think that's a really neat way to approach these things. So we're now three years on, the projects have been up and running. You've managed to survive the Pandemic with these projects and they're still going. But what's the priorities for the initiatives now?

Adhi: Yeah, like we've mentioned through this podcast is that we've always wanted these programs to have longevity. So for Refer To Her, what does that mean? We're still focused on launching more lists that keep women top of mind for referrals across different practice areas. To this day, we still get requests to add new lists, and we're very focused on that. Like Lindsey just mentioned, we want to continue to facilitate relationship building among the listees through networking events so that we can start increasing referrals between women more, and hopefully we can pick that up with the Pandemic slowing down. We're really focused on increasing the diversity of the list to help her represent more of the actual legal market. And we want to actually promote other uses for refer to her, not just keeping women top of mind for referrals, but letting the market know that Refer To Her can be used to keep women top of mind, for speaking engagements, for writing opportunities, for media interviews, for ranking award nominations, and other things as well. For Commercial List, our priorities are a little bit different. It's just continuing to be the first to market with news from the Commercial Lists to maintain its core value, to make sure all the news are in one place. We want to continue to create original content about practising on this court and building out our comprehensive resources. What was amazing about Commercial List during the Pandemic is that it really became the hub for all the resources that kept changing for the court when they had to pivot to virtual court. So we want to continue being agile enough to do that. And then, of course, we want to partner with external people, clients, colleagues and other organisations to create new content that would be valuable to the market. So there are really many opportunities for growth for both programs. And honestly, both could be full time jobs in another.

Charles: So we haven't seen the finished article yet. You're continuing to build and grow these things?

Adhi: Absolutely.

Charles: So importantly, I guess the projects have been up and running and we've established that they're both fantastic ideas. But how have you measured and reported on that success internally at the firm and two other stakeholders?

Lindsey: Yeah, so I think what's nice is that they're both websites, and so from that, of course, we can track a whole bunch of things. So we track page views, we track users, we track sessions per month, we also track the average time of a session, we track the most visited pages, just anything that will help us understand what people are looking at when they're looking at it and for how long. I think for commerciallist.com, as Adhi mentioned, it's so content based that it's super critical for us. For Refer To Her specifically, we track obviously how many new lists we develop, the media mentions, the number of touch points we've had with listings. And then for Commercial List, it's a little more basic. It's the social media post, the blogs, the reports, the guides and that kind of thing. Like Adhi mentioned, we had a lot of overwhelming feedback on these projects. And so we keep pretty long repositories at this point of all of the qualitative feedback that we've received either directly to our lawyers or like Adhi mentioned, online. And then that's helped us develop content for pitches, for proposals. We've submitted awards for some of these programs. We keep all of the information on our intranet. So at any given time, any member of the firm can see where we are and what the success looks like. And then what's been really cool is they have turned into pieces for recruitment. They are, law students are really interested in what it is that we're doing. Obviously, the reputation speaks for itself, but these are sort of tangible examples of EDI initiatives, innovative initiatives that now get weaved in through our recruitment presentations and then our onboarding programs as well. So, I mean, the list goes on and on, but we're just constantly feeding the different audiences with all of that we've done. We track quarterly and then we report to our management committee annually. And then of course, we do business planning. And so any new ideas that we have, they land in the annual business plan. So I think we stay really close to the results. And like we've talked about now, I think this continuous improvement vibe that we have at the firm. We know these are a work in progress and like I said before, we want them to be active for years and years to come. And so I think they'll just keep getting better. But the results and staying close to those results is really critical for us.

Charles: Yeah. Does that help keep that momentum going, is being able to show that feedback and showing the successes. And it sounds like you've got a really robust way of doing that.

Lindsey: Yeah, I mean, it's what you said before too. It's so rewarding, right? And so we're open to all of the critical and sort of constructive feedback, but it's also just been so rewarding to work on these projects and enhance a little bit here and enhance a little bit there and we own them. Right? So Adhi has got a great idea. Okay, we're going to execute on that idea. It's so much fun. It's so much fun.

Charles: Fantastic. Well, we're coming up to time now, so I wanted to finish off with the question that we ask all of our guests and it's essentially what would be your one piece of advice for other marketers embarking on we'll call it a complex initiative just like the ones you both have launched at Lenczner Slaght.

Adhi: I'll go first. I think I would say that you have to have really strong project management skills to plan and organise and execute on projects like this, especially when it has so many moving parts and stakeholders. Have a document or spreadsheet that you're constantly updating or referring back to that outlines the overview, the objectives, the stakeholders, deliverables, the timelines, the processes, everything that is key to that project. I know it sounds like a fundamental skill set that every legal marketer should have, but it really had to become second nature for me on these two projects, especially working on both of them at the same time. So I would really stress strong project management skills.

Lindsey: Yes, Adhi is a project management wizard. I would say you really need to think hard about your resources. And so we're managing, but we are, I guess I'll call us keen legal marketers. We have a lot in the pipeline at the office and we would like to see these advance quicker and expand faster. And for Refer To Her specifically, I think there's a lot of really interesting ideas and opportunities in queue, but they require it's a serious program and it addresses a serious issue. And so you really have to be focused, you have to be strategic and you have to be ready with resources to execute. And so, between friends, at the end of the day, when a pitch comes in or a new high profile case blows up in the media, we need to pivot and we need to give our undivided attention to those things. And so we have to focus on the core business of Lenczner Slaght. And I think we've discounted in some ways just like how busy this firm is and how much attention is required on these projects. So I think you need to think really hard about your launch plans and then your sort of longevity plans. As we talked about, it's really critical. And so, like Adhi said, these could be full time, these could be full time jobs for people and they are in some cases, some days. And so I think in addition to the PM, which is so critical, which Adhi just explained, I think having a real plan around how these are going to be resourced is critically important. And then I don't love that we're not leaving this on a very positive note, I would say also dig in and come up with all of the ideas you can. It has been a highlight, I think, for Adhi and I in our career working on these two projects. And it can be so much learning and also so much fun.

Charles:  Just hearing how passionately you both talk about these and it sounds like it's been worth the time and effort. Like you said, you do have a day job, that you got to do it so you can't put all your resources into it. So managing how much you put in and getting it right. But it is a part of the reason for the success of these projects is being realistic with the resource you can put in. Is that something that you have to consider?

Lindsey: Yeah, for sure. And I mean, some of it is really tactical work, right. So you also need to have the right people doing the right work. And so Adhi and I could be doing the sort of day to day less maintenance and all of those things. We need to be working at higher levels. So, yeah, I think the resource piece is really critical and luckily we've got the resources here, but we also have a lot of other ideas, Charles. So talk to us in a few years and we'll explain our other big projects. But yeah, the resourcing is really critical.

Charles: Well, we'll check in for part two maybe in a couple of years time and see what else the Dream Team at Lenczner Slaght has come up with. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure to speak with both Lindsay and Rd. Thanks for joining us. Hopefully our listeners have learned a lot from that. I certainly have. And just going back to reiterate those programs and how you've managed to take them from an idea and execute it into what they are today, it's super impressive. So congratulations and I'm sure you're an immense asset to the firm.

Lindsey: Thank you so much, Charles. Thanks for having us.

Adhi: Yes, thank you so much.