Association of Corporate Counsel
Law Department Management Committee (“LDMC”)
Membership Plan 2015

[Adopted February 2015]

Broadly, LDMC should seek to be the “door in” to ACC for its members, a way to make a 30,000+ member organization feel like an actual community that’s available at each member’s convenience.

Value Proposition – for us to pitch increased engagement in the LDMC, we have to first have a clear-cut vision of what we’re providing. Last year we discussed the following:

“The Law Department Management Committee provides resources, information and connections for ACC members who have an interest in the challenges of managing a modern law department. Ranging through talent management and development, firm and vendor coordination, knowledge management and other challenges facing in-house law departments today, the LDMC seeks to provide timely, current and targeted resources for your department’s needs, and to connect you with others who are tackling the same challenges. We welcome participation from all who are interested, from CLOs and GCs through to “New to In-House” members – the more dynamic our community is, the more value it will deliver for each of us.”

Membership Goals 2015:

  • LDMC “Committee Members”
  • 2014 goal: 9.5% growth. 2014 actual: 5.4% growth.
  • 2015Calendar Year End goal: 6,583 members (6.0% growth)
  • [Explanation – we grew 5.4% YOY in 2014; this year we should aim to grow a bit faster.]
  • LDMC Monthly Call Attendance
  • 2014 goal: 25% growth. 2014 actual: 43% growth.
  • 2015 Calendar Year Average goal: 75 attendees (25% growth)
  • [Explanation – we overshot our goal in 2014, which will make 2015 growth more challenging. Keeping our 2014 goal will still be aggressive, but attainable.]

While we seek to improve in other ways, measuring ourselves primarily via these two metrics will provide an ongoing quick “snapshot” of how we’re doing.

Proposed Strategies / Tactics

  1. Statistics. Receive/review stats each month regarding membership progress [ACC providing call data, and I am pulling membership data, every month – this will be available to LDMC Exec Committee monthly to review]. Continuation from 2014.
  2. Email optimization.
  3. Committee call outlook notices. Send all committee members a monthly email that attaches an outlook notice (with dial-in information) and agenda for that month’s committee call. Members could then just open the notice and save it to their calendar (the current process to find the meeting notice and get put into your calendar through the ACC website is too cumbersome and likely impedes participation). Once our ability to send monthly emails to committee members begins in May 2015, we will begin sending the iCalendar link for our meetings in those emails.
  4. New ACC members. Start emailing new ACC members (quarterly) with an email “signed” by committee chair and membership chair, including an invitation to join and our Value Proposition above, to encourage membership. Tori Payne tells us this is possible, and we are following up to begin this process.
  5. New committee members. Membership chair to send personal email to each new committee member each month welcoming them, introducing the next month’s call, etc. To begin once (b) is underway. Also to work with Tori to set up.
  6. Renewals. Before ACC “expires” accounts of members who haven’t renewed their dues, send a communication to such members from the committee reminding them to renew and urging them to retain their participation in the LDMC. Given the other communications that ACC is undertaking to members right now for renewals this may not be advisable, but we will follow up with ACC to determine whether targeting these individuals after they are rolled off is possible.
  7. Chapter Engagement. Engage chapters – are there activities or projects underway within LDMC that might have good synergy with either particular or all chapter memberships that we could invite participation on?
  8. Docket. Utilize the docket to engage potential committee members who are less active on the web.
  9. Committee Calls.
  10. Prizes. Continue awarding small prizes during our calls for people who answer questions.
  11. Bring a friend. Take 30 seconds of each committee meeting (at the end) to encourage attendees to return to the next call, and to encourage at least one colleague to join ACC, join our committee and/or join the next call in the next month. Old fashioned “networking”.

Lower Priority Ideas

  1. Increase ease of receiving feedback from the committee via ACC-wide tools [Victor was implementing post-Quick Hit feedback and link on our ACC page for feedback last year; useful?]
  2. Increase use of the Docket and member emails to advertise committee ongoings [discuss details of content]
  3. Set up a thread in the eGroup the date of each Committee Meeting and direct members there to (a) get copies of the presentation materials, and (b) continue the conversation amongst themselves (and maybe the presenters commit to checking in for XX days) – workable?
  4. Continue member survey and optimize committee operations in response to results.