Meet Mary Connolly, Business Manager at Hunton & Williams
If you’ve ever wondered where legal marketing might take you, consider the many related professional positions at law firms. In September 2008, Mary Connolly’s path led her to business management at Hunton & Williams.
Instead of writing marketing plans, developing marketing materials and planning events, her duties now include financial reporting to manage attorney workload and leveraging, billing rate analysis, resource allocation, expense management, and overall strategic planning for her practices areas. “As a business manager, my job is to integrate firm-wide strategic goals into the business plans for each practice area,” she explained.
“I think to be a business manager, you need a strong financial background, but you also need a tremendous amount of intellectual curiosity. It’s about understanding how financial information, legal services and human capital work together,” she said.
Mary got her start in legal marketing 10 years ago when she took a job with Jones Day as an administrative assistant. “I worked there for three years and used that experience as my platform for learning about the legal market,” she said.
She has consistently taken on positions with progressively more responsibility including two years as a marketing manager for an 80-attorney firm in Georgetown. Even in a traditional marketing and business development role, she continuously asked questions and sought to understand how a law firm operates. “I still learn something new every day,” she said.
Early on, she recognized that there was a whole other level to marketing and business development when she attended a two-day mini-MBA seminar given by LMA. The facilitator was Ann Lee Gibson and she was paired with Chris Quarles, who was CMO of WilmerHale at the time. “When we were given our assignment, his approach to the project was something like a Harvard Business Review case study. Up to that point, I had never participated in that type of strategic thinking,” she said.
Mary took from that experience the desire to learn what this CMO knew. She set out to consult with senior LMA members and enrolled in an MBA program at the University of Maryland. “Business school helped shape my thoughts about leadership, corporate responsibility, financial analysis, marketing and business development, and various other aspects of managing a business,” she said.
“The combination of my past experiences, coupled with my desire to learn, led me to my current position as a Business Manager at Hunton & Williams,” she concluded.
Although new to the position and to this emerging role in firms, Mary is appreciative of the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues. “Having two other business managers at the firm to learn from and bounce ideas off of has made all the difference,” she said.
Profile written by Elaine Noble, principal of Noble Pursuits, a graphic design and branding firm in Alexandria, V.A.