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APPLICATION OF THE LAW DEPARTMENT MANAGEMENT NETWORK FOR LARGE

NETWORK OF THE YEAR

JULY 1, 2017- JUNE 30, 2018

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INTRODUCTION: THE ATTRIBUTES OF A LEADING ACC NETWORK

We believe that ACC Networks should be judged in two primary ways. The starting point is whether they block and tackle. For example, this includes whether they regularly produce Legal Quick Hits, Webcasts and other content, and whether their activities support the ACC’s Strategic Plan. In our view, these activities put a network in the running for this award. But while blocking and tackling are necessary conditions, they aren’t sufficient. To win, a network should do something more. It should demonstrate the ability to pioneer the new and untried, to formulate cutting-edge ideas and to consistently and successfully execute them.

We proudly state that we pass this very high bar.

Before we outline LDM’s many accomplishments, we’ll discuss two key foundations of LDM: our unique role in the ACC and the mindset of our Leadership Team.

OUR MISSION

LDM has unique mission, and we are passionate about it. In a speech to the ACC’s New York Chapter a couple of years ago, former ACC President Fred Krebs discussed the ACC’s report on the 21st Century General Counsel. What he said there expresses one of the key aspects of LDM’s role.

Fred stated that substantive legal knowledge and skills are important, but he called them “table stakes.” They get in-house counsel to the table and keep them there. But they don’t propel their careers forward. That comes from other qualities, such as leadership, emotional intelligence, and resilience, to name a few.

To be sure, we support our members in staying on the cutting edge of issues central to managing law departments. But the other key aspect of our core mission is to equip members to reach their potential as 21st century in-house counsel. As Fred’s comments demonstrate, if we do our job well, we can have a transformative effect on our membership, as no other ACC committee can.

We are also unique in another respect. We are perhaps the only network that provides ideas and information from which every ACC member can benefit, regardless of the size of their legal departments or their legal specialties.

We have been fortunate to have a sponsor, Seyfarth Shaw, that not only shares our sense of mission but fully embraces it.

THE LDM MINDSET: INNOVATE, INSPIRE, ENERGIZE

To sum up our attitude, we seek to innovate, inspire and energize. The LDM Leadership Team and Seyfarth are committed to pioneering new kinds of content and new ways of delivering it. We believe it’s almost impossible to energize and inspire by doing things the way they’ve always been done. This philosophy colors almost everything we do.

Two examples will help illustrate this spirit: our approaches to our content (Legal Quick Hits and Webinars, for example) and to the 2017 annual meeting. Like other networks, we provide LQHs monthly. But the way we publicize them and the content we provide are uncommon. We promote them with our new YouTube channel. One LQH was almost completely crowd-sourced, with the content coming from the wisdom and experience of our members. Many of our LQHs and Webcasts present cutting-edge ideas

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presented by bestselling and award-winning authors, several essentially tantamount to a keynote at a major conference.

Like other networks, we also want to have a successful annual business meeting. But our promotion and focus of our meeting at AM17 was new and innovative. We orchestrated a national tour of the King of Rock and Roll that ended at the annual meeting. (More on this below, complete with Elvis sightings.) We invited attendees to make a selfie with the King and then to create videos for our new YouTube channel about their plans for professional growth.

In short, at LDM, we do things a little differently, and we believe the results speak for themselves. It’s all in keeping with our mantra: “Best content, most fun.”

LDM’s ACHIEVEMENTS ARE BEST IN CLASS

In pursuing our mission, we have amassed a long and varied set of accomplishments. The list below will highlight some of the most significant. These achievements reflect that we have a solid grasp of the fundamentals of the operation of an ACC network. But they show something more. They demonstrate the qualities that set LDM apart from other networks—a special spirit of innovation and creativity that is simply part of our DNA.

• Planning and Development of the Strategic Plan. For the 2017-18 ACC year, we revamped our planning process, beginning with the drafting of our strategic plan in the summer of 2017, four months before the ACC Annual Meeting. Incoming Chair, Steve Roth, created an initial draft, which he then circulated to LDM’s current chair, Matt Nolan; incoming Vice-Chair, Tim Phillips; 4 of LDM’s past chairs, and Lisa Damon and Jenny Lee at Seyfarth. The plan was revised repeatedly to incorporate input. In addition, in the 3 months before Steve took over as Chair, the bulk of the monthly leadership calls were focused on our plans for the upcoming year. The result was a strategic plan squarely focused on the unique mission of LDM and the ACC Strategic Plan. We hit the ground running for 2017-18 even before the annual meeting. A copy of our plan is attached as Exhibit A.

• Elvis’ National Tour. The first effort of 2017-18 involved an out-of-the-box effort to promote attendance at our annual business meeting. Working with Seyfarth, we sent a life-sized cutout of the King of Rock and Roll to members of the LDM Leadership

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Team in Atlanta, San Francisco and Chicago. In addition, cutouts were sent to the New England and Southern California Chapters. Photos were taken near well-known landmarks, such as the Golden Gate Bridge and Wrigley Field. In the week leading up to AM17, we created daily posts for eGroups and LinkedIn, inviting members to attend our business meeting and to make a selfie with the King. Attendance at our business meeting doubled over

previous years. But there was more going on at our annual business meeting than the culmination of Elvis’ national tour. As you’ll see below, our theme was the need for continuous professional growth, or the need to “level up.”

• Video: Seyfarth’s Amazing Efforts at AM17, Part I. In the planning process, we decided to launch a YouTube Channel in the 2017-18 ACC year. (More on that below.) Lisa Damon and Jenny Lee of Seyfarth suggested that we begin creating YouTube content during the LDM business meeting at AM17. We asked attendees at each table to make a video about how they would level up in the coming year. Tripods for iPhones were provided, along with props. The videos were both informative and hilarious. For example, former ACC

General Counsel Susan Hackett got into character as a foreign film star, giving an amazing minute long tutorial on leadership and communication. You can view the video on our YouTube Channel by clicking here: https://bit.ly/2Mql5B7. Seyfarth created a compendium video showing many of the comments from the attendees. Enjoy some of the fun by clicking here. https://bit.ly/2JVC93x.

• The Retro Video Game: Seyfarth’s Amazing Efforts at AM17, Part II. The videos that

attendees created about their professional growth synced perfectly with a video game Seyfarth created for AM17, called (appropriately) “Level Up.” The game resembled the

80s era classic, Space Invaders. Contestants battled against information overload, burnout, and technology “monsters.” The game was both fun and thought-provoking. You can view a summary of the game in another YouTube video by clicking here: https://bit.ly/2MsvnAM.

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• Launch of the LDM YouTube Channel. In January 2018, we launched our YouTube

channel, “In the Lead.” The initial launch involved posting (on LinkedIn and eGroups) the top 10 videos created during the LDM business meeting at AM17. After that, LDM Chair Steve Roth and Lisa Damon of Seyfarth created monthly sneak peek videos about LDM activities. Membership Co-Chair Matt Nolan and Social Media Chair Justin Martin created other posts. As of this writing, these video posts have

exceeded 15,00 LinkedIn views. A listing of YouTube posts and their total LinkedIn views is attached as Exhibit B. To view a video that garnered over 3,500 LinkedIn views, click here: https://bit.ly/2lb62ie. You’ll see what LDM Chair Steve Roth is cooking up! An additional benefit of these posts is that (through LinkedIn connections) they publicize the ACC to in-house lawyers who aren’t ACC members. As a result, our YouTube channel serves as an additional promotional tool for the ACC.

• And now a word from Elvis. To give you a demonstration of how our YouTube channel can

personalize the ACC experience, we’d like to bring you a message from the King of Rock and Roll. When, you’re ready, click here. https://bit.ly/2laZkcb

• Best and most innovative content in the ACC. In 2017, then LDM Chair, Matt Nolan, came

up with an inspired idea: to have published authors present the ideas in their books and articles to our members. In the fall of 2017, our “Author Series” kicked off with a presentation by Michael Useem, author of Leading Up, which was followed by Arin Reeves, author of The Next IQ: The Next Level of

Intelligence for 21st Century Leaders. LDM hasn’t looked back. We have expanded this effort to include other national thought-leaders, including authors of award-winning books and New

York Times bestsellers. We call these presentations our “Keynote Series.” Two recent examples are LQHs and Webcasts from Bob Rosen, author of

Grounded and Conscious, and Andy Molinsky, who penned Global Dexterity. To our knowledge, no other network has produced content of this caliber, essentially bringing keynote-level speakers right to the desks of our members. In addition, LDM produced what we believe to have been the first crowd-sourced LQH, entitled “Managing Your Life Both in the Office and Out: A Crowd-Sourced LQH

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Featuring your Collective Wisdom and Ideas from the Experts.” The ideas presented came almost completely from our members. Because of these efforts, attendance at our LQHs has increased over 60% year over year. Through Seyfarth, LDM content has been presented to EMEA and APAC. A list of resources provided (including attendance figures on our Legal Quick Hits and Webcasts) is attached as Exhibit C.

• Membership Development Plan and New Member Sweepstakes. LDM worked

aggressively on membership. Key steps are listed below: • Membership Co-Chairs Matt Nolan and Gemma Heckendorf (both former LDM

Chairs) authored a comprehensive plan for enhancing membership. Membership numbers are consistently tracked and analyzed.

• LDM launched a new member sweepstakes, with a new member each quarter being provided with jewelry from JTV.

• We restructured our monthly membership call to include a “Membership Minute,” a short discussion of why people on the call should join LDM. To give this segment prominence, we added it to the agenda before the Legal Quick Hit.

• A copy of our membership development plan is attached as Exhibit D. • To keep our membership growing and to better serve the ACC community, we

surveyed our members. The survey results are attached as Exhibit E. • As of the submission of this application, our membership has grown by 3% to

almost 6,200 members.

• Global Focus. We recognize today’s in-house counsel operates in an increasingly international environment, so we provided high-level content to meet this need:

• A global webcast was presented by Andy Molinsky, award winning author of Global Dexterity.

• As part of our Global Leader Series, we presented an LQH, entitled “Keys to Success: Leading a Multi-Cultural Organization.”

• Our sponsor, Seyfarth, presented EMEA and APAC content.

• Creating content for General Counsel and Chief Legal Officers. • We have added regular presentations to our monthly membership calls, called

“The GC/CLO Tip.” It consists of a short discussion of a topic of interest to law department leaders. A representative list of these presentations is attached in Exhibit F.

• One of our proposals for AM18 was on the importance of the General Counsel and the need for the GC to report to the CEO, a cause championed by ACC President Veta Richardson. The ACC has decided to develop this idea into a session at AM18, which the LDM will co-sponsor.

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• Participation in our eGroup has risen significantly. Given all this energy and work, it isn’t surprising that participation in our LDM eGroup has risen across the board. Several key metrics tell the story:

• New threads shot up by 27%. • Total public messages are up by 14%. • Public replies have increased by 4%. • Private replies are up by 19%.

• Restructuring of the LDM Leadership Team and Attracting Top Talent. To assist with the

roll-out and development of LDM social media content, the LDM Leadership Team created a new subcommittee on social media. To our knowledge, this was the first time any ACC network has appointed a Social Media Chair and shown such a long-term commitment to this important communication tool, which in our view, is imperative for all networks. We filled our leadership team to capacity and struggled to find slots for all interested people. We were successful in recruiting 3 former LDM chairs to return and assume active roles in leading the network. In our experience, this level of continuing commitment to an ACC network by past leaders is unprecedented. A list of the LDM Leadership Team is attached as Exhibit G.

• Best Sponsor Relationship in the ACC. Seyfarth has been an exceptional sponsor,

continually going above and beyond. Team Seyfarth has been fully involved in LDM planning, and Lisa Damon and Jenny Lee (our partners at Seyfarth) have offered creative,

out-of-the-box ideas that energize and inform. But perhaps even more fundamental to this relationship is that we all share the passion for LDM’s mission and a spirit of innovation. And just as importantly, we simply enjoy working together. The level of communication and our ability to coordinate with Seyfarth has been consistently high. We have a monthly call with Lisa and Jenny to insure coordination, but the

communication goes far beyond that, with frequent phone calls and emails occurring between the LDM Leadership Team and our partners at Seyfarth.

• Consistent support for every element of the ACC Strategic plan. The ACC Strategic Plan contains four themes: (1) transform ACC products and services to offer members a more targeted and personalized experience based on their unique context, (2) bolster ACC’s efforts to enable productive connections, collaboration, and engagement between members with similar interests, (3) be the network of choice for in-house counsel worldwide by providing all members a first-rate customer experience, no matter their

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location, and (4) shape the environment in which members operate, so that their contributions and counsel are highly valued and sought by their key stakeholders.

• Through use of our YouTube channel, fostering the use of our eGroup, and providing high-level content, we are transforming ACC products and services based on the unique context of our members and also bolstering connection and collaboration.

• These efforts, along with our global focus and the vigilance of our Advocacy Subcommittee, also help to shape the environment in which our members operate. Details about our advocacy efforts are addressed in Exhibit H, which include discussions initiated by LDM about a possible new law in California on data privacy.

• We work every day to make the ACC the network of choice for in-house counsel through our membership efforts; outreach on LinkedIn, YouTube and eGroups; and our spirit of fun, creativity and innovation.

And yes, by the way, we can also really block and tackle. Let’s begin by running some numbers. We have:

• 6,195 members worldwide, up 3% over last year. • 6,203 eGroup members. • Presented 13 Legal Quick Hits. • Presented 4 Webcasts. • Submitted 2 QuickCounsel and 2 Top 10 publications. • Submitted 21 additions to the Virtual Library. • 10 active subcommittees, including an advocacy liaison. • 17 ACC members who have acted as subcommittee chairs and co-chairs. • Published 4 quarterly newsletters, highlighting our initiatives and upcoming

events. • Suggested two advocacy topics for consideration by the ACC. A discussion of

them is attached as Exhibit H. • Presented 5 programs at the 2017 annual meeting, and we will present 4 at

AM18. Our ground-breaking program on grit and resilience being one of the best attended and one of the best reviewed at AM17. A listing of these programs is attached as Exhibit I.

• Produced, proposed or participated in producing 4 Docket and Docket.com

articles, which are listed in Exhibit J. • Given away (compliments of Seyfarth) 12 $50 gift card to an attendee on our

monthly all-member calls. • Co-sponsored a program with the NCR chapter, entitled “Non-Profits and

Associations Forum: It Takes a Village—Leveraging Alternative Staffing While Minimizing Associated Risks.”

• Co-sponsored a Legal Quick Hit with the Small Law Departments Network, entitled “Not Enough Resources? How to Expand Your Reach.”

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But blocking and tackling goes beyond the numbers. We have functioned smoothly and improved our processes. Here are some examples. We have:

• Emailed the materials from our LQHs to attendees after our monthly call. • Conducted a monthly call with our Leadership Team (in addition to the monthly call

for our members) • Conducted a monthly call with our sponsor, Seyfarth Shaw (a stand-alone call). • Timely circulated monthly agendas in advance of all-member and LDM Leadership

Team calls. Copies of sample agendas are attached as Exhibit K. • Timely drafted and approved all minutes. A copy of sample minutes from a monthly

call is attached as Exhibit L. • Reviewed and reworked our charter (and not just to change “committee” to

“network”), and we will shortly complete a significant rewrite. • Begun work on a strategic plan template that all future LDM Chairs can use in planning

their years.

SUMMARY

We’d like to end this application as we began it, by discussing what we believe to be the attributes of an outstanding ACC network. To be worthy of this award, each network should fulfill two requirements. It must block and tackle, showing an ability to excel at the foundational obligations of an ACC network. But to be worthy of this award, a network should do more: It should pioneer, innovate, energize and inspire. LDM is that network.