Speaking Engagements
Tobacco and Nicotine Law and Regulation
October 8, 2025 | 11:00 AM – 5:05 PM ET
Virtual
Leading the energy evolution.
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From compliance to the courtroom, we have you covered.
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Helping you focus on what matters – improving human health.
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Trusted advisors to leading insurers for 100+ years.
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Unlocking value in the middle market and beyond.
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Full-service legal advice from coast to coast.
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Applying radical applications of common sense
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Our standard-setting client experience program.
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Delivering life-changing help to those most in need.
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Our firm’s greatest asset is our people.
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Market-leading eDiscovery and data management services.
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The Pepper Center for Public Services
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Strategies helps businesses and individuals solve the complexities of dealing with the government at every level. Our team of specialists concentrate exclusively on government affairs, representing clients nationwide who need assistance with public policy, advocacy, and government relations strategies.
This unique program provides innovative and affordable opportunities to startups and early-stage emerging companies with a solid technology or scientific foundation. We help companies that have a quality management team in place and do not have other significant legal representation.
eMerge’s lawyers and technologists work together to deliver strategic end-to-end eDiscovery and data management solutions for litigation, investigations, due diligence, and compliance matters. We help clients discover the information necessary to resolve disputes, respond to investigations, conduct due diligence, and comply with legal requirements.
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Change happens fast in today’s turbulent world. Stay on top of the latest with our industry-specific channels.
Take a closer look at how we partner with clients to help them realize their goals.
Articles + Publications April 29, 2022
Client Care Corner
Troutman Pepper’s Client Care team regularly coaches our attorneys on strengthening client relationships as a strategy to grow their business. Our coaching emphasizes that successful business development prioritizes building relationships, making connections, and adding value through several meaningful touchpoints. This personalized approach is more impactful than throwing a fishing pole into the vast sea of RFP solicitations and blind pitches and hoping that something bites. Sustained, meaningful touches with clients are key to building the rapport, trust, and stickiness that make clients want to give attorneys their business.
Attorneys commonly confuse ordinary touchpoints, such as sending emails and returning client phone calls, with meaningful touches. Touches are meaningful when they are responsive to client needs, priorities, and pain points. When touchpoints focus on making a client’s life easier by adding value, making connections, and offering solutions, the business development impact is extraordinary.
A common marketing principle is that it takes seven to nine meaningful touchpoints with a prospect or client before they decide to give you work. This article demonstrates how a Troutman Pepper attorney, with coaching from the Client Care team, applied the meaningful touches principle to a key client relationship over nine months in 2021 — and the impressive results of her efforts. It also highlights best practices for other attorneys who want to better serve clients and increase their work through sustained, meaningful contact with clients.
Nine Meaningful Touches
Touchpoint 1 – February 2021: Following some significant corporate changes, the client invited its outside law firms to discuss the client relationship and the client’s priorities. Troutman Pepper used the meeting as an opportunity to plant seeds for follow-up discussions with the client about our Client Care and Innovation departments’ feedback and value programs.
Touchpoint 2 – May 2021: Troutman Pepper participated in a virtual summit for the client’s outside law firms. Each firm was asked to choose two to three questions to address during the summit. Troutman Pepper presented on COVID-driven practice trends and legal tech tools and explained the practical application of the topics.
Touchpoints 3 & 4 – June-July 2021: The Client Care and Innovation teams presented a menu of value offerings to the client, including a web-based portal, mobile app, financial dashboard, and attorney assignment software that enables clients to track the diversity of attorneys staffing their matters. The client remarked that Troutman Pepper’s technology offerings are a standout among other law firms they have worked with.
Following that initial presentation, the Client Care and Innovation teams met with the client for more in-depth conversations about innovation and technology solutions – a billing narrative analytics program, financial dashboard, and web-based and mobile apps – and to determine which of these solutions would be most valuable. Then, the firm designed a prototype outside counsel scorecard the client could use to evaluate all outside counsel and best practices for deploying the scorecard.
Touchpoint 5 – August 2021: Troutman Pepper hosted two business development meetings between the client and partners from a cross-section of the firm to begin discussing how the firm could meet the client’s legal and business needs and add value to the relationship. The meetings were conversational in tone, guided by a series of prepared questions focused on the client – not on Troutman Pepper. Before the meeting, the attorney gained buy-in from the client’s general counsel on the meeting format. The client appreciated the opportunity to have a two-sided discussion rather than passively listen to a prepared presentation about the firm’s capabilities.
Touchpoint 6 – September 2021: At the client’s request, the relationship attorney assisted one of its employees with landing a role at Troutman Pepper after she was unable to relocate to continue her position with the client.
Touchpoint 7 – September 2021: Troutman Pepper met with the client to discuss contract lifecycle management (CLM) in the context of the client’s processes and culture. The relationship attorney introduced a colleague at the firm who specializes in CLM who suggested specific steps the client could take to gain more value from its CLM vendor. Following the meeting, he then provided a brief assessment of the client’s CLM system at no cost.
Touchpoint 8 – September 2021: The firm presented a conflicts of interest CLE program to the client’s law department to help the client fulfill its commitment to provide free CLE credit for its attorneys.
Touchpoint 9 – October 2021: The Troutman Pepper relationship attorney met with the client’s regulatory and environmental teams to discuss specific pain points and priorities for those teams. During these conversations, the client suggested several ways Troutman Pepper could add value and advance the relationship, including inviting the client to meaningful events and assisting the new legal operations director with advancing her goals.
Immediately after the completion of these nine meaningful touchpoints, the client awarded Troutman Pepper two new matters in November 2021. The firm already has earned significant revenue from the new engagements and has since been referred additional matters. Throughout the various touchpoints described above, and through more minor interactions occurring between these events, such as sending gifts to acknowledge milestones, the attorney prioritized building relationships, making connections, and adding value.
Meet Linda Sanders
Linda brings more than 25 years of legal industry experience to her role as Director of Client Care, including leadership roles in business development, continuing legal education, and family and juvenile court administration. She combines her formal legal training, program development, project management, and relationship management skills to deliver high-quality, high-impact results for clients and attorneys. Linda focuses on providing value to clients, developing creative and innovative solutions to client needs, and ensuring clients receive consistently excellent service.
Linda received her bachelor’s degree in English from Spelman College and her Juris Doctor from the University of North Carolina School of Law. She is an active member of the Legal Marketing Association.
Speaking Engagements
Tobacco and Nicotine Law and Regulation
October 8, 2025 | 11:00 AM – 5:05 PM ET
Virtual
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2025 Nucleus Awards
September 30, 2025 | 5:30 PM – 8:30 PM ET
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Going Through Withdrawal: Dealing with Multiemployer Pension Plan Withdrawal Liability
September 30, 2025 | 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM CT
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Bond Buyer Infrastructure
September 29 – 30, 2025
Boston Marriott Long Wharf
Leading the energy evolution.
Learn more
From compliance to the courtroom, we have you covered.
Learn more
Helping you focus on what matters – improving human health.
Learn more
Trusted advisors to leading insurers for 100+ years.
Learn more
Unlocking value in the middle market and beyond.
Learn more
Full-service legal advice from coast to coast.
Learn more
Applying radical applications of common sense
Explore More
Our standard-setting client experience program.
Explore more
Delivering life-changing help to those most in need.
Explore More
Our firm’s greatest asset is our people.
Explore More
Market-leading eDiscovery and data management services.
Explore more
The Pepper Center for Public Services
Explore more
Strategies helps businesses and individuals solve the complexities of dealing with the government at every level. Our team of specialists concentrate exclusively on government affairs, representing clients nationwide who need assistance with public policy, advocacy, and government relations strategies.
This unique program provides innovative and affordable opportunities to startups and early-stage emerging companies with a solid technology or scientific foundation. We help companies that have a quality management team in place and do not have other significant legal representation.
eMerge’s lawyers and technologists work together to deliver strategic end-to-end eDiscovery and data management solutions for litigation, investigations, due diligence, and compliance matters. We help clients discover the information necessary to resolve disputes, respond to investigations, conduct due diligence, and comply with legal requirements.
Stay ahead of the curve and in touch with our latest thinking on the issues that are top of mind across our practices and industry sectors.
Change happens fast in today’s turbulent world. Stay on top of the latest with our industry-specific channels.
Take a closer look at how we partner with clients to help them realize their goals.