The primary goal for joining associations and boards, at least from a business development perspective, is to generate future business. But the essence of this activity is developing relationships. Because you are a member of a popular association in your industry does not necessarily guarantee a full docket of new business. Sometimes smaller, more intimate organizations may reap the largest rewards.
 
A client prospect of mine, already involved in several associations and non-profit boards, was asked another busy lawyer to join a neighborhood association. I suggested she give it a try and if it seemed valuable, consider dropping one of the others. She joined, and immediately received new engagements from him. She wisely dropped two other “underperforming” boards.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

Oh contraire. Law firm marketing to generate business requires a confluence of public relations activities (like conducting speeches and writing articles), advertising, and good old fashioned schmoozing. There’s no way of getting around it. At every interaction, effective business development requires law sellers to implement some call to action.
 
A new client of mine admitted in our first meeting that he gave tons of speeches and wrote lots of articles and had absolutely no business from any of them. We worked on tactics to use during speeches to stimulate the audience’s immediate response. At the next event with 175 in attendance, he and a colleague were stunned to receive 40 business cards, leading to four leads and two engagements.
 
If you want the contact, ask for it. If you want the meeting, you’ll have to make the call. If you want the business…well, you get the point.