The American Lawyer - February 2008

management

you want out there marketing are the people who are completely inaccessible.”

The situation would be improved, according to respondents, if law firms were run more like corporations, with a vertical, top-down management structure. “You have many masters in a law firm,” says one marketing officer. “And they’re all very demanding. You have to be able to juggle the egos and personalities and produce ideas that are pretty darn near perfect.” Another marketing director tells of having to have every partner in the firm approve one press release—all making their own changes independent of everyone else’s, an inefficient way to get out the news.

A more successful approach, say marketing officers, is to develop a strong one-on-one relationship between the marketing chief and the firm’s managing partner or chair. But only 46 percent of respondents do so. Sometimes the managing partner is too busy lawyering. “There are managing partners within major U.S. firms that still bill in excess of 1,500 hours a year,” says Jolene Overbeck, global chief marketing officer at DLA Piper. “How can you effectively manage your law firm when you’re doing that?” (Overbeck has to deal with three CEOs, but none of them practice.)

There is a silver lining. Marketing officers are assigning staff to work directly with specific practice groups, which develops relation-

ships and expertise—both are vital to creating and pushing through marketing initiatives. They’re learning to focus their efforts, doing fewer things, but doing them better. This frees up resources, and also helps marketing chiefs to push their most vital programs. Similarly, they’re learning to vet opportunities more carefully. “It’s a major difference from six years ago, when we’d chase everything,” says Duane Morris’s Schechter. “It’s important to put your resources behind the best prospects.”

While some marketing officers say they’ll keep after the partners who are resisting CRM, coaching, and other time-consuming activities (“I’m going to go at them again in 2008,” vowed one survey respondent), others argue that you have to know when to cut bait. “The challenge is to find those partners who want to be engaged and coached and not waste time on the others,” says a marketing chief.

Within marketing departments, hiring strategies have become increasingly important, too. If lawyers are a unique, often challenging group to work with, better to hire a staff that has worked with them before. “Where we’ve had personnel fits that haven’t been good, it’s been folks coming in from other fields,” says one marketing director. “Those [who] understand lawyers, and how they work, are the ones who are successful.” Nonetheless, many of the marketing officers we surveyed came

from other fields; on average, respondents had 12 years of experience in nonlegal marketing.

But perhaps the most successful strategy has simply been to talk to clients. Marketing officers may have limited say within law firms, but clients can always get a word in. And the marketing departments are leveraging this. “People are spending much more time finding out what clients think,” says Olland.

Indeed, client-driven changes may be the best hope for law firm marketing departments, pushing partners to raise the standing of their chiefs and the priority of their initiatives. Yes, clients are becoming more sophisticated in the way they choose and use lawyers. And they’re becoming savvier on pricing and watching the bills more closely. But they’re also requiring a different kind of lawyer—an adviser who better understands their business, their industry, and the challenges they face; lawyers who are always on top of industry trends and what the competition is up to; partners who serve, literally, as client partners. “This is a revolutionary change that is now hitting the industry,” says Schechter. “Law firms need to react by providing a more sophisticated marketing and sales culture.” And, say CMOs, by relying more on them.