Bars + Benefit Partners

Karen Korr
Full Korr Press (formerly San Diego County Bar Association)

Bar association member benefit partners are the bomb (do people still say that, or did we leave that back in 2010?). Not only do they make it possible for bars big and small to offer discounts and such to their memberships, but they support bar publications and bar events, and overall the bar world is better off with member benefit partners around. I know that often times bars offer our partners a menu of options for how they can offer support through sponsorship. But what do the benefit partners want in return? I asked long-time NABE supporters Tracey Gavin (TG) of LawPay and Fastcase’s Joe Patz Vineyard (JP) to share their thoughts.

What are the “must haves” for any sponsorship opportunity you consider?

TG: The ideal sponsorship opportunity would allow us to have the registration list approximately two weeks before the event and a post event list for follow up. We’d love speaking opportunities around our expertise.  Even better, a CLE opportunity. “Vendor” presentations are typically not well attended as it has the appearance of just a sales pitch.

We would rather have the opportunity to educate and inform. We would also want to make sure there was plenty of foot traffic to the booth. Any way to make sure the attendees visit the booth – all beverage breaks near vendors, block time for attendees to visit exhibits, depending on the size of the meeting. If possible, we would love to have a spot where we could demo our platform.

How do you like to engage with event attendees?  i.e. at the booth or do you want a seat at each meal?

JP: We consider ourselves partners not a vendor. When we attend a bar association conference we act as an extension of the bar association to train members on the Fastcase member benefit and get to know your members. This means, we will go into continuing education seminars, sit down with your members or leadership at meals to engage and hear from your members and leadership.  

TG: A booth is always a nice home base as long as there is a lot of good, quality foot traffic. I think it is tougher for a sponsor to network with attorneys at meals because many times they are trying to network with other attorneys or judges. I think the option to allow sponsors to attend happy hours and meals is a nice to have but guaranteeing foot traffic at the booth is best.

What can you offer Bars that they often don’t think of asking for?

JP: Fastcase provides our partners customized ads catered their membership to keep the bar’s voice and message consistent about the Fastcase benefit. Our content marketing for your bar’s websites, social media, etc., help engage the membership with attention grabbing “how to” posts.

What do your most successful bar relationships look like?

JP: The most successful bar relationships are truly partnerships. Fastcase is a very different member benefit offering from other services because of how our partnership is structured. We collaborate with bar associations around the country to provide a benefit that is free for over 900,000 attorneys across the United States.

TG: Bars that truly see us as partners and not just vendors, understanding that we both benefit by working together. We understand you can’t just slap a logo on a bar website and call it a day and hope it brings in a lot of business.  We need to collaboratively – benefit partners need to commit to a marketing spend and bars need to promote their partners within the bar channels.

Why do you think bars should partner with LawPay in particular?

TG: LawPay built a program to be partner with the Bar Associations in mind. LawPay isn’t just a product, it is a relationship. Every aspect of our product, company culture and marketing is relationship based.  We want to build the best product for attorneys while giving bars quality educational assets that can hopefully help attorneys and the bar. We are also very open to working with the bars in exploring new ideas and are generally very flexible – we want to work with you to figure out what will work best for your bar and your members.

Why do you think bars should partner with Fastcase in particular?

JP: There are many reasons bar associations across the country trust Fastcase with their members. One of the most crucial reasons we have the most experienced and stable leadership in legal publishing. Our president and CEO, Phil Rosenthal and Ed Walters, respectively, founded the company in 1999 and continue to lead Fastcase today, nearly 20 years later. They also are leaders in technology. For example, Ed is an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown and Cornell Law Schools, teaching the Law of Robots. Phil has a Ph.D. in physics from Caltech for his work in string theory. Our COO, Steve Errick, is the former head of product and M&A for Lexis. He was the driving force behind Lexis’ acquisitions of Lex Machina, Law 360, Intelligize, and Ravel.