I've shared previously about the causes as to why BD and marketing titles create confusion. 

One way out of this title confusion is to standardize titles and reset on the purpose and experience requirements for each level. This will look different for large and smaller firms, although, it doesn't necessarily have to be.

Now let's take this one step further. 

​Consider for a moment if there was active management of this career path. This means clear decision points along the way to help the marketer play to their strengths. This benefits the marketer and the firm; more professional satisfaction makes for less turnover in firms. It is this turnover that has rocked the legal marketing industry since 2020. 

The first decision point could be relatively easy. It would also allow the firm and individual marketer to consciously discuss and decide on the type of Manager both think is appropriate.

The second shift is more significant and will likely mean a cultural shift for many. Having said this, it doesn't have to mean "the addition of sales". A far more subtle and finessed shift would be the better option for many. 

It does give both the firm and the marketer a more active and controlled role:

For the firm

• Clear and defined titles avoids any confusion.
• Different career paths are offered to help retain their team and align individual skills and strengths with the appropriate course.
• The firm is innovative with respect to how it goes to market and how it engages and actively helps to manage it's marketers.

For the marketer

• Active management of one's career creates ownership and a greater purpose.
• Defined stages with each level resetting their specific purpose (and, arguably, some Specialist and Manager levels regaining credibility because of this newly defined purpose). 
• Opting in or out of a fresh structure acknowledges how the career path of a marketer has changed. 

What is the current path of a marketer? Are firms mostly in line with this?

​Watch this space...

This confusion results from:
​

• The global pandemic. Covid-19 and the subsequent reactive market to hire more marketing and business development professionals. Right, but shouldn't we have settled in to this by now? Yes, and...
• The busyness. Because of the unparalleled boom market for this roles, it is creating more movement than we've ever seen. Additionally, new growth roles have been introduced making the "gaps" in teams feel more prominent and visible than we're used to.
• The gaps have far-reaching consequences. It means more work for less people. It means less trust and certainty by those still within their firms; they see others moving quickly and getting significant salary raises in doing so, and wonder if they should follow suit. It means a lack of time to manage people properly. This final point plays into the lack of standardization we see across titles.
• No standardization or clear guidelines on what each title means. Without this, the title issue will remain somewhat rudderless for years to come. This also results in one-time business decisions being made for a particular hire that has been a challenge, and then peer firms feel they have to follow suit. This word on the street quickly makes its way to marketers who are looking or listening.

Interesting problems. So, how has this played out?

• The entry titles (Assistant and Coordinator) often have similar minimum years of experience as a requirement. This muddies the waters on what experience, if any, juniors on the team should come with.
• The Specialist title has seemed to lack effect for some time. It is a "workhorse" role that firms don't always collaborate on the expectations and requirements. This in turn creates busy and overworked Specialists feeling as though they're doing the role of a Manager; no one is correcting this. The Specialist used to be an important interim step where technical, cultural and management training expectations were emphasized.
• The pre-Manager roles (Assistant, Coordinator and Specialist, including variations on these titles) generally are filled by a person who has little experience in the workplace, and with little guidance on the requirements at each level. Fast forward in time, and this creates the perception of entitlement. Firms, on the other hand, can do better at educating these relatively junior people on the significance of these roles. Stepping into Manager should be a senior step where the adequate training - technical and management - has already occurred.   
• Manager roles used to require around seven years of experience. Now, that seems to have lowered to around five years. (For those of us old enough to remember, that used to be a Specialist.) At the other end of the spectrum Managers can be a professional with 15-20 years of experience. Some even more so. The point being we now have professionals at this level who span 5 to 20+ years of experience. This level, in my view, is the biggest concern and would benefit from some layering.
• Ultimately, the current trend will result in marketing and business development professionals having between two to five less years of experience than what we were used to. Maybe that's ok, maybe it isn't. Importantly, if the industry is on the same page it will create less confusion.

​

Consider this table...

This is a comparison of the level of experience titles traditionally had; compare this to current day. 

Next up?

How do we alleviate this confusion? Can we standardize?

​Watch this space... and here it is.

With C-Suite contributions by:

• Christie Cáceres, Chief Business Development & Marketing Officer, Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton
• Murray Coffey, Chief Marketing Officer, Haynes Boone
• Julie Cole, Chief Marketing Officer, Frost Brown Todd
• *Lee Garfinkle, Chief Client Development & Relationship Officer, Goodwin
• Lisa Olney, Chief Marketing Officer, Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann
• Bob Robertson, Chief Marketing Officer, Jackson Lewis

*At the time of contributing, Lee Garfinkle was the Chief Client Development & Relationship Officer at Goodwin. Lee has recently taken the role of Client Executive at EY Law.

​
Overview:

The year 2022 for the legal marketing industry is, once again, very different. It has unparalleled challenges which are exacerbated by the unrelenting workload.

There are big challenges facing our industry. I talk about two of these challenges below: fatigue and the management of people. I talk about the issue at hand and what solutions we can deploy against the backdrop of yet another unique and unprecedented year for legal marketers.
 
Importantly, I ask for input from C-suite legal marketing leaders to share their comments. I thank Christie Cáceres, Murray Coffey, Julie Cole, Lee Garfinkle, Lisa Olney and Bob Robertson for their time and insights in contributing to this article. Your practical and innovative takeaways are invaluable to us all - my sincere thanks.

Issue 1: Industry Fatigue

I see three main reasons for our current industry fatigue:

1) Unrelenting workload.

The workload and expectations of marketers has increased exponentially. This is a positive move for the legal marketing industry overall. What must now follow this move is the appropriate amount of time and bandwidth to complete it.

Without any outlet, or a properly staffed and structured team, it is only a matter of short time until fatigue sets in. Without a proactive and visible plan to deal with that fatigue, it turns to burnout, lower morale, and ultimately, disengagement from the industry.

Cáceres shares: “CMOs can create awareness early and often before burnout happens. Creating cross-functional teams to work on projects that keep it interesting and fresh; many of us have experienced “SWAT” teams during COVID that required quick assembly and execution. Amidst the chaos, some of those projects really intrigued people and kept the creative juices flowing.”

Another CMO, who asked to remain anonymous, shared that their team is entirely overwhelmed because of the workload. Without the end in sight, this quickly impacts their ability to do the work and use their relied upon judgment and subject matter expertise. Even after several hires to try to combat these issues, this team’s capacity reached 100% again very quickly. The same problem then starts over.

2) Clear priorities and expectations.

Legal marketing roles are at greater risk of a lack of clear prioritization of tasks and responsibilities due to their constant evolving nature and far-reaching scope. Most Job Descriptions I see include an extensive list, including nearly every task or duty thinkable, ranging from tactical to strategic. Setting clear priorities helps to manage everyone’s expectation.

This doubles as an effective upward management tool. Marketers and partners need to clearly communicate their priorities and expectations on timing in year one, year two, and so on. Without this ranking of tasks by nature of importance, marketers end up being busy on everything with little big impact. Marketers can show partners their project map so it can be easily seen what is being done and by when.

Robertson shares: “What has (and continues) to plague marketing and business development roles in a number of law firms is a lack of clear focus and prioritization. The absence of both prevents having meaningful benchmarks to aspire to and be measured against. This results in roles that are mostly responsive and generally rudderless, exacerbating burn-out, dissatisfaction and fatigue.”

3) Boundaries matter.

Our current working life is our actual life. There is no work / life balance; we work from home and we live at our work. Small daily breaks we never thought about – commutes, lunch breaks, coffee breaks – gave us perspective and a fresh mind. Now, for many of us, that small break is used to answer emails or pick up a child from school.

It is critical for our team leaders to lead by example and put in place protocols for busy periods and encourage check out times where needed. When legal marketing professionals don’t have this type of support from the top, they leave the firm. Worst case scenario, they leave the industry altogether.

Cole says that her corporate experience enables her to approach some of these issues from a different angle. For example, she used contractors to augment staff in a prior role and is introducing that approach to be more nimble. She believes being clinical and quantifying workload increases for leaders helps them understand because you are speaking their language when you show hours.

Possible solutions:
​

• Properly staffed and structured teams in each of the pre-manager, manager and senior positions. Cáceres says adding KPIs at each level help to articulate clear expectations across core competencies.
• Have an outlet for the weeks or months when the workload is going to push your current team to the brink. The budget should include a buffer for additional headcount to accommodate the busy times, and indeed, the busy year.  
• Our team leaders can continue to manage up to partners to communicate expectations and likely successes (and failures). Cole has found that doing an analysis of the marketing and business development team’s capacity before embarking on a new initiative is a tool she uses to arm herself with to manage up: “We need to do an evaluation of the project and ask do we have enough people to do this? If we don’t, we hire them. Many firms make management decisions without thoroughly considering if they have the available resources.” She further adds that she believes most Marketing Department and BD Departments should adhere to the ‘80% capacity rule’: “In order to do our jobs effectively and proactively and not be overwhelmed, we have to be at 80%. We then would have 20% for last minute projects or new projects. But when you’re already at 110%, and new projects and requests come in, you don’t have any flexibility. 80% would also allow us to do the other things, research industry trends and conduct competitor analysis, but for most Departments there just isn’t the time.”

Issue 2: People management

Why is this important?

Developing the non-technical skills of marketers, including people management, is not something law firms are set up to do (and in my view, rightly so, given their focus). So, given this, it is on our leaders to actively manage this issue. What makes this task even trickier? Even people managers need people management training.

Olney says it best: “Promoting someone who has excellent technical skills but no experience managing others and expecting them to “figure it out” may work occasionally, but it’s rare. And the consequences can be devastating, because ineffective managers can slow down or demoralize a whole team.”

Olney further adds that tying this essential skill into the responsibilities of team leaders is a critical piece to getting this right: “Leaders have a responsibility to not only model good people management themselves, but to make training around this crucial area part of the skills building for their department. Junior marketers can be trained on how to effectively communicate, and later how to handle difficult conversations with colleagues and internal clients. Training on how to be a contributing member of a team project can transition into how to lead one, and then how to formally manage those involved. We should ensure the building blocks to become a manager are in place and demonstrate through our actions and by who we choose to promote the value we place in these skills.”

Lee suggests that we should normalize how difficult this training can be: “It’s not uncommon for a new manager, particularly someone that now needs to manage former peers, to struggle a bit in the beginning. It’s important for them to recognize their role has changed and motivating, challenging, and helping your team members grow is one of their new top priorities.”

An added layer to this already notoriously tougher learned skill is the virtual nature we all pivoted to overnight and its impact on this issue. On this, Lee shares: “There have been few things during my career that have been as challenging as supporting people during the pandemic. It required diligent and consistent focus on how team members were doing, addressing their concerns, and making sure they know you are there for them. It’s critical that the team knows you have their backs, and you are thinking about their growth even though you’re not physically together.”

Why do firms struggle to add experienced people managers into their marketing teams?

It is a combination of three things:

• a certain number of years in a formal people management role (and this is different for each manager role)
• proven experience to directly and proactively deal with their team’s development
• an affinity to this type of responsibility (some people don’t want this responsibility)

Law firms don’t typically focus on this, nor do they nurture this. In my view, people managers within marketing who have a track record of success in managing others should enter a different and higher salary range. Firms only reward technical skill, not management skill. In marketing, we hire for both technical and soft skills.

On this point, Coffey shares: “Not only do firms not nurture it, they attribute almost no value to it. I think many firms have endemic people management problems because the person at the top of a given department has never been compensated for their management skills and do not know how to identify people with good or promising people management skills. The opposite of a virtuous cycle. And in most law firms the HR function is focused on, and rewards, risk management.”

Olney also adds that what does seem to get attention quickly is when marketing department leaders see behavior, communication styles, or work product that is not at the level it needs to be for our internal clients, the attorneys. She says we must “bring the same level of vigilance to what’s happening within our teams, because that’s ultimately what has the most impact on the team’s cohesiveness and ability to provide solid work product and strategic guidance to the attorneys.”

Possible solutions

• Proactive training. Either internally with a Professional Development Director, or externally with a credible coach or course. In time, I foresee a new role opening whose sole remit is to actively help and manage issues such as these for business services professionals.
• Roleplay. Hold roleplay sessions with the team using real examples. This allows pre-manager marketers to learn and practice this skill in a fail-safe environment. Debriefing and noting the positives and negatives of different outcomes will be a key accompanying piece for this to be successful. Coffey shares that he has done this in helping people deal with challenging lawyers.
• Manager peer learning sessions. Hold sessions where your managers feel comfortable to share their learnings, successes and struggles as a people manager. This needs to happen in a trusted, confidential and safe manner, whilst empowering them to acknowledge the challenges and that collaboration to enhance learning is significant.
• Unwavering support. When leaders are highly attuned to their team, the flow-on effect is powerful. Lee shares: “As a leader of a large team, there is nothing more important to me than supporting my colleagues. The higher you go in an organization, the more critically important that becomes.” Coffey also adds that emphasizing empathy as a guiding principle is critically important.
• Move quickly and informally. Training doesn’t have to be made into a big deal, nor does it have to take up a large block of time. Small, frequent displays of training can be as effective. To this point, Olney shares: “Not all training needs to be formal. Most leaders have taken the time to show a new employee or more junior member of the team how to effectively complete a task. We should be doing the same when it comes to communication and management skills. Have that coaching conversation with your new managers so they feel more confident in their skills. Give positive reinforcement to ensure they know when they get it right, and corrective feedback when they could have handled a situation better. Managers set the tone for their teams, and they should understand the impact that can have and why it can be so detrimental to the team, and ultimately the firm, when people don’t feel heard or supported.”

Next up? One of our biggest challenges yet…

The inaugural KHS People Salary Survey for legal marketing professionals was conducted during June and July 2021. ​405 respondents provided their input.

The purpose of the KHS People Salary Survey was to capture important data to help educate and drive our industry forward by ensuring there is transparency and equality. 

A summary of the results will be available to everyone. Specific, curated data will be provided upon request. 

 Each respondent answered these eight simple questions:

1. Geography: what city are you in?
2. Law firm size: how many attorneys are there in your firm?
3. Title: what is your current title?
4. Salary: what is your annual salary?
5. Bonus: how much was the last bonus you received?
6. Additional qualifications: do you have a JD or an MBA?
7. Gender: which gender do you identify with?
8. Race: what is your race?

It was a requirement to answer each question, and each question had a multiple choice format to ensure accurate and clean data at the conclusion of the survey.

Eight simple questions multiplied by 405 people produced a wonderful plethora of data. This data is expansive and can be viewed from different angles, depending on your purpose.

When looking at the data points relevant to you, keep in mind that they are accurate snapshots of salaries at this moment in time. For some, the data may be validating. For others, the data may be surprising or even disappointing. Remember that this data is a guide only.

Voluminous data can be viewed differently by different people. It is possible for each person to have a different interpretation; there will be context for each interpretation. This is perhaps both the best and worst thing about salary surveys. 

As this data is an accurate snapshot of salaries at this moment in time, know that this means it does not give you data as to what may be achieved if one were considering a move to a different role at a different firm. We're calling this the “lagging effect”.

Given the volume of data, decisions need to be made how best to present this data for the majority.

The KHS People Salary Survey reveals the median salaries. This means that the data is not skewed by especially high or low salaries. For this reason, the median is typically seen as a more neutral data point; it can't be pulled higher or lower (unlike an average).

The higher and lower ends of each range are not shown. This decision was the hardest one to make when presenting the data points. Ultimately, while helpful to some, these more extreme data points are simply too open to interpretation without the proper surrounding context. We are happy to provide this context and these data points to any person who wishes to see this. We have said from the start that a summary of the results will be available to everyone and, specific, curated data will be provided upon request. Let us know what specific need you have.

To ensure accurate and clean data, the survey questions relating to salary and bonus asked for a number range by way of an answer.

These ranges were very small so they would not impact the quality of data. For example, the majority of the salary ranges provided were in ranges of $2,500 each (such as: $100,001-$102,500 and $102,501-$105,001).

Therefore, where you see data points ending in “001” or “501”, this is the reason. 

The responses span 33 different cities.

The bigger cities naturally attract the bigger number of responses. The smaller cities naturally attract a smaller number of responses. In this context, we reiterate our comments above: where a data point in a smaller city may jeopardize the anonymity of the respondents, it has not been provided.

​Please reach out to us with your specific request if this applies to you. We will provide some general salary information and greater context to assist you.

We sincerely appreciate the CMOs and Directors who gave their feedback on the initial points of this survey. Your independent and wise comments helped guide this end result, and for that we express our heartfelt thanks and genuine gratitude.

We also wish to encourage legal marketers to reach out to offer their feedback on this final product. The KHS People Salary Survey will be run each year, and hearing from you as what was helpful, what wasn’t helpful, and your thoughts on tweaks going forward to continue to provide rich and quality data is a very important part of this process.

We will always value your feedback: kate@khspeople.com

We thank the 405 respondents who provided their data to make this survey relevant and rich. 

We appreciate you.

Thank you.

We wrote this article, which was first published in the Legal Marketing Association's Strategies & Voices publication on August 19, relating to marketing management and leadership,

This article sets out the "return to office" discussion for marketers. It provides guidance on the ideal situation for the majority and what working looks like for our team leaders (CMOs and Directors) and individual marketers.

Many marketers are looking for a new professional home. Similarly, many firms are expanding their teams, or replacing roles due to pandemic attrition. With so many resumes out there, what makes a resume stand out, and what do hiring managers appreciate?

There are 4 key things that make a resume stand out from it's peers:
​

• Start with... a short professional summary. This is a two-three sentence summary of (i) who you are as a professional and (ii) what you are seeking. This impactful, punchy introduction saves the reader any guess work.

• Try to include... the relationships you have built. Even the most qualified candidates often fall into the default pattern of simply listing all their duties. Go beyond this, and go deeper. Briefly describe the types of relationships you have with the owners or partners or key leaders. Follow up with how you built that relationship, how you nurtured it, and as a result the way in which they come to you for your work product.

 

• For each role... succinctly explain your purpose or focus. Every role you've had was to fulfill a particular need. What was that need? Why was it needed? Did you achieve it? These little insights give that "laundry list" more credibility and more clarity.

 

• What I personally love to see... the whole you. You have a life outside of work (we hope!). What is it that keeps you going? What professional or personal interests do you have that you can share. Particularly in these new times, showing that you can prioritize your working life enough so that you have time for anything outside of work is - I think - remarkable, and should be celebrated and valued. ​

For further insights on resumes, click here.

For further insights on the market, click here.

May is "Mental Health Awareness Month". I'm not sure I can remember a more important time to acknowledge this and have a real conversation about mental health. 

Luckily, I see a positive change in our firms; there is more of a willingness to have the conversation, continue the conversation, and show vulnerability when it comes to the topic of mental health.

I have asked some of our marketing friends to share how they are trying to avoid burnout and how they are looking after themselves. Burnout is an issue I've been watching closely (and providing data on). It is a very real topic for marketers right now. Put another way, self-care is critically important and these marketers capture this sentiment beautifully.

These sentiments highlight good self care and positive mental health practices for us all to take in and replicate.

Everyone is busy and its hard to see the efforts of your busyness when the pressure is on and every day feels exactly like the last (am I right?).

Further, most of us are balancing all sorts of things from our homes and offices. So even if you do get a little break in your workday, you’re probably bouncing between a child’s "urgent" request, or the various instant messages waiting for your immediate answer, or a load of laundry, or taking the dog out, or figuring out when to get food to eat... this list just goes on. Our lives are very different in 2021.

Recognize the need to stay productive amidst the busyness. Here’s my top tips that have served me well:

• Getting caught up on email. Look at only the emails you’re expecting or that require an immediate response. Everything else can wait until you have 30 minutes of downtime.
• Blocking out time. Block out small chunks of time each week which is reserved for thinking and idea creation. You’re unlikely to have fresh, bold and unique ideas when you’re stuck in execution mode.
• What is work? You don’t have to be sitting at your desk to do good work. Take a walk to think through a challenge. Call a colleague while you walk to talk through that challenge. Walk away from your computer to have lunch and check out for 20 minutes; giving your mind a break will make problem solving clearer and less overwhelming.
• When do you work best? There are “morning people”, and then there’s everyone else. (I’m only half joking on this!) Figure out when you work best, what triggers that ideal working mode, and how to sustain that. Everyone works differently and you know better than anyone what works for you.
• Take breaks. When you’re in “crazy busy mode”, taking a break is the last thing on your mind and it feels counterintuitive. Not true. I’ve tried this so many times myself and can confidently say how much calmer and manageable everything seems with a fresh perspective from a break.
• What do you want to produce? At the start of the day or week, note down what you want to have produced by the end of the week. This will help keep you centered and focused when things seem crazy mid-week or when you’re trying to sift through the noise of the busyness that is the Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday of the week.