By Ian Turvill and Keith Ecker
The career path of a legal marketer is hardly universal. Talk to any law firm CMO and you are bound to hear some variation in the routes they took to ascend to their leadership roles. But despite the lack of a definitive recipe for success, there are still a number of skills and experiences that legal marketers would be wise to cultivate should they have their eyes set on one day realizing their CMO dreams.
These requisite attributes were the focus of the LMA Midwest luncheon panel discussion, “The Roadmap for Your Future: Navigating and Accelerating Your Career in Legal Marketing,” which was held on May 21, 2014 in Chicago and moderated by Ian Turvill, chief marketing officer at Freeborn & Peters LLP. Panelists included Kate Harry, recruiting manager at J. Johnson Executive Search; Nancy Roberts Linder, director of marketing at Chapman & Cutler LLP and an executive at Linder Legal Staffing; Rachel Repke Thompson, client development manager at Baker & McKenzie; and Charlotte L. Wager, chief talent officer at Jenner & Block.
One of the first qualities the panelists identified as essential to success in the legal marketing field is to see your occupation not merely as a job but as a career. As Kate emphasized, “Firms right now want people to get a big-picture understanding of what their business means and how their business works.”
Nancy echoed Kate’s advice and added, “Part of success in legal marketing is to love lawyers and love the business they are in. You also have to be intellectually curious and want to learn.”
Next, Rachel, who was named the 2010 LMA Midwest "Rising Star,” was asked for her input on how to be a great legal marketer. She emphasized that doing good work is only one part of the equation. Marketers also need to find opportunities to showcase this work to their cohorts.
“Putting yourself in a position to be recognized is important,” she said. “You can do good work, but you need to make connections to help you get recognized. Get involved with industry associations, contribute back to the profession and make an effort to get to know your colleagues and peers.”
As the legal industry evolves with the times, so do the skillsets required of effective legal marketers. The panel touched on this issue in their discussion about the prospect of law firms hiring individuals from outside the legal industry.
"Law firms want people who don’t just come from law firms,” Kate said. “But they do want to hear that you understand the profession, its challenges and how the partnership environment works.”
Nancy added that an outsider entering the field could possess a variety of skills that would benefit a firm, though the extent of the benefits is in part contingent on the firm’s size and marketing department structure.
“It can be an asset to have tech-oriented, project management-oriented and knowledge management-oriented skills,” Nancy said. “However, understand that at big firms, the marketing department tends to be compartmentalized. It is in the mid- to smaller-sized firms that you will be more able to apply these skills to your marketing work.”
Charlotte agreed that having a department composed of professionals with different experiences and perspectives enriches the firm.
“There are opportunities to differentiate ourselves and learn from those who have different backgrounds,” she said. “But you still do need to be able to establish the relationship through some similarity.”
Building relationships was a recurrent theme throughout the session. When the panel tackled “career killers,” those missteps that can undo a lifetime of hard work, panelists overwhelmingly emphasized the need to retain good relationships throughout your career and to avoid burning bridges at all costs.
“Don’t align yourself with the wrong people, and be friends with everybody,” Nancy said. “Be cordial, respectful and kind to everyone, including non-lawyers.”
The panel also delved into whether technical skills or people skills are they key ingredient to legal marketing success.
“When you are junior, you have to get the technical stuff right and do what you are being told to do well,” Kate said. “As you grow more senior, you have to make the change from just being a producer to someone who has higher leadership capabilities.”
Nancy recognizes that project management opportunities tend to be rife within marketing departments, but identifying people management opportunities is a skill unto itself.
“You have to have people management experience to get up the food chain, but getting that experience can be hard at many firms,” Nancy said. “I recommend looking for such opportunities at your firm and outside your job.”
That’s exactly the tactic Rachel took acquire some of her people-management experience.
“When I first got a job at a law firm, I became the chair of the team charged with developing and implementing the firm’s green-oriented initiatives, which gave me exposure to the firm’s management and the challenge of gaining buy-in from internal clients,” Rachel said. “So as you can see, if you think outside of the box, there are a lot of opportunities out there.”
Ian Turvill is chief marketing officer of Freeborn & Peters LLP and co-chair of LMA Think Tank. Keith Ecker is a content strategist at Jaffe PR.