How to Earn Your Spot as a Speaker

You’ve probably heard me talk about building your personal brand as a way to build your firm’s brand in your market.

A great way to build your personal brand is with public speaking and presentation opportunities.

But how do thought leaders land gigs like that?

Here’s the reality:

Option 1: Pay to Play

The majority of the speakers that you see at legal conferences paid to get on that stage. Often these people pay to be an exhibitor or a sponsor of an event in exchange for speaking time.

Of course, this is not true for every single speaker you see at your average legal conference, but for many of them this is the case.

So if you’re trying to break into the space and land these types of speaking opportunities, you may need to start by investing in conference booths or event sponsorships that include a 10- or 15-minute speaking slot.

But if you go that route, be warned that those speaking slots are often not featured on the main stage. They might be smaller sessions happening while larger sessions are going on in the main event space.

I know this from experience; I got started this way and got speaking opportunities this way for years.

Naturally, it can also be incredibly expensive to pay your way into speaking slots.

Fortunately, there are other ways to secure speaking opportunities.

Option 2: Build Relationships

If they’re not paying for a speaking slot at the conference, often speakers at legal conferences have some sort of relationship with a conference organizer or there’s some internal business interest in giving that speaker the platform.

At many smaller conferences, the organizers just book their friends to speak. It’s often the same speakers at every conference, but if you become friends with the people who are booking their friends, you’re in.

You can start to build relationships with those event organizers, and then they’ll give you an opportunity if they’re the ones that are booking speakers.

But this strategy will only get you so far.

Option 3: Become a Thought Leader

The most powerful way to land speaking opportunities is to differentiate yourself significantly as a subject matter expert. 

For example, if you are an expert on how law firms can leverage artificial intelligence, that’s a great topic that conference organizers would seek out for presentations at their events. For certain events, experts on a particular type of mass torts would be valuable. For others, it might be digital marketing in the legal space.

When booking speakers, organizers of larger events seek out thought leaders in specific spaces that are valuable to their attendees.

Whatever your specialization is, you have to match it up with the conference and what it is that they’re looking for. If you stand out in the areas they’re interested in, you’re a natural speaker for them to choose.

Becoming that sort of thought leader starts long before you hit a stage, however. It involves creating a lot of content and putting out a lot of resources on your area of expertise as a way to gain attention and demonstrate the value you provide. Do webinars. Contribute articles to industry publications. Write a book. Host a podcast. Do it for years. 

That’s how you become the type of thought leader that lands speaking opportunities for their expertise.

Many of the speaking engagements that you’re going to get initially are probably not going to be in front of a large audience unless you have some sort of specialization, niche focus, or you’ve differentiated yourself in some way where you can add a significant value.

Final Thoughts

So to land speaking engagements in the legal industry, you have a few options: 

1. Pay to play, in which case you spend money in exchange for an opportunity to speak.
2. Build relationships with people booking the speaking engagements.
3. Provide expertise in a certain specialized, hot button topic that would be valuable to the people who are attending the conference, and build a recognizable personal brand around that specialty.

Which would you rather do?