LegalJob has posted before on four keys to effective networking. The idea is to first seek to provide value to the person with whom you are networking. Then help people help you by being specific about what you want, what you offer, and how they might help.

A refinement to this advice is to be able to say all those things in under 10 seconds. Here is a link to an article from a movie producer who provides some ideas on how one can accomplish this level of brevity for their company. This advice can easily be applied to marketing your legal expertise/practice.

According to the author, you start by identifying these four things.

1. Your Ideal Customer
2. The Problem Your Company Solves
3. How Your Company Solves It
4. The Customer's Ideal Outcome

Then plug them into this model.

When [YOUR IDEAL CUSTOMER] face [THE PROBLEM YOU SOLVE], they turn to [YOUR COMPANY] so they can [CUSTOMER'S IDEAL OUTCOME].

The author offers some helpful examples from movies.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net