We are halfway through 2020, and what a year it has been. Now is a great time to reflect and reset, and establish some goals for the second half of the year. To help you think creatively and strategically about your objectives, we have compiled five of our most popular posts from this year for your reading pleasure during a week that tends to be a bit more laid back for many lawyers and legal marketing professionals.

Before an associate can become a partner, other partners must think of the associate as a partner. An associate must begin to exhibit the characteristics and behaviors of someone with an ownership stake in the firm. Accordingly, even as a young associate, the best way to impress a partner is to start acting like one. Here are four ways associates can perform above their pay grade, and impress partners in the process.

There are many tactics and tools that firms and lawyers can use to generate attention, but if the right message is not reaching the right audience, it’s wasted effort. Once you identify your ideal client, you can optimize your message to appeal to your audience and make sure it’s hitting its mark.

The key to a more autonomous future is to have your own book of business. With clients, a lawyer will make more money, have more options, and be in a position to exercise more control — in other words, have more autonomy. So why do some lawyers succeed at building practices while others struggle? Here are five common business development mistakes that lawyers make, and what to do instead.

Writing and publishing content often feels like tossing a needle into the Internet haystack. The way to stand out is to create content that is more client focused—that is, content created for a very specific, often small, audience. You don't need to reach everyone, just the cohort of individuals and businesses that requires the type contextualized insight only you can offer.

There is no doubt that LinkedIn is the best place online for lawyers looking to grow their networks and their practices. The problem is that many lawyers use LinkedIn as a place to scroll through other people’s posts, rather than as a tool to aid in business development, which is a big mistake since LinkedIn has everything a lawyer might need to establish relationships that lead to new business. Here are six steps lawyers should take to leverage LinkedIn for marketing and business development success.

In face of the current challenges, law firms have a choice. One option is to wait it out—taking small, middling measures—until things go back to the old way. Another, which recognizes we are at the threshold to a future that will look nothing like the past, is to lean into the current crisis and invent a new way of doing business that adapts to and addresses the evolving needs of the marketplace.

For associates whose billable hours are down because their practices are not built for a crisis, now is not the time to rely on a wait-it-out strategy until things return to “normal.” Most associates, especially those who began their careers in the last five years, have more or less experienced nothing but growth and good times in the legal industry. As is clear by now, things are not going back to the way they were anytime soon. Here are a few ideas for adapting to the new reality.