Lydia Bednerik Neal

As the head of the agency’s Marketing Services division, Lydia helps clients “level-up” their marketing efforts to create greater visibility. Working with clients at the firmwide, practice group and individual levels, she helps guide strategic planning and the creation of marketing and business development initiatives, as well as overseeing and, often, assisting with plan implementation. She works closely with Blattel’s media relations team to identify compelling content themes and secure opportunities – from byline article placements and media sourcing to conferences and speaking engagements. Then, she helps clients get the most bang for their public relations efforts, by helping them amplify the results.

A Well-Rounded Marketer

A well-rounded marketer with nearly three decades of combined experience as a consultant and the lead in-house marketer at a mid-sized law firm, Lydia has successfully guided a wide range of communications and business development initiatives. At Blattel, she has worked with lawyers, accountants, consultants, architects and other professionals to showcase their expertise and is a quick study of the subject-matter and business issues impacting professional service firms and their clients.

Able to creatively identify opportunities and leverage existing resources, Lydia has supported firms to launch innovative practices and industry groups, including for early adopters in the sustainable business and cannabis fields. For one such practice, she helped produce and promote 100-episodes of a weekly radio program and blog (think early podcasting), successfully leveraging it to gain the firm new clients and deepen its industry reputation.

For Lydia, any given day might include some combination of managing the design and development of a new website, creating a capabilities brochure or digital newsletter that tells a compelling company story, setting up an advertising campaign to strategically present a unified brand across multiple channels, planning a client event to deepen a prospect or referral source network, designing a trade show experience to increase leads, identifying a thought leadership theme for a media relations blitz, coaching professionals on successful engagement on social media to increase their referral network, or working with an individual to create and then meet their personal business development goals. She thrives at helping clients figure out how to leverage the right combination of these activities to advance their strategic goals.

Professional Activities

Lydia has spoken on marketing topics to organizations including the Legal Marketing Association (LMA), the Contra Costa County Bar Association, Lincoln Law School of San Jose, and multiple customized training presentations for clients. An active member of LMA since 1995, she has served in numerous leadership roles, including as the Bay Area Chapter President and on the International Board of Directors as both Secretary and a Member at Large. She is the 2011 recipient of the LMA Bay Area Chapter Rella Lossy Marketing Professional of the Year Award. In 2022 and 2023, she was tapped as a judge for the Association for Accounting Marketing Achievement Awards.