Legal Marketing & PR

Law Firms Starting to Hire CMOs Again

By Larry Bodine

I sense a change in the legal profession that big law firms are starting to hire CMOs again. This fulfills a  premonition by recruiter Stephen Nelson, Managing Principal of the The McCormick Group in Arlington, VA. In my blog post "CMO Positions Going Unfilled" he predicted last August that CMO hiring would revive.

"Firms have gone such a long time with a lean business development staff.  If a partner's pet project is not getting done, or the firm can't get an RFP out in time, then everything changes," he said.

Here are five recent examples:

• Susan Saltonstall Duncan was just hired as Chief Strategy and Development Officer at 500-lawyer Squire, Sanders & Dempsey in New York.
• Jolene Overbeck, who was hired in May 2007 as CMO of DLA Piper, is now the the Chief Marketing Officer at 2,500-lawyer Hogan Lovells.
• Wendy Taylor this month started as  the Chief Marketing Officer at 800-lawyer Dechert.
• Peter Columbus departed Kaye Scholer this month to become Global Director of Business Development & Marketing at 1,660-lawyer Mayer Brown in New York.  
• Mark T. Greene this month became the Chief Business Development Officer at Waller Lansden Dortch and Davis in Nashville, departing from 700-lawyer Nixon Peabody, where he was the CMO for three years.

According to Nelson's count, there are still 26 unfilled CMO jobs at major law firms. There are two causes for this large number of openings.  The first is "regime change": when a new managing partner arrives on the scene, a CMO can go from being treated like a movie star to deadwood overnight. The second is cost-cutting, which law firms did aggressively in 2009 and 2010. Naturally, firms begin by looking at the largest salaries and look for ways to eliminate highly-paid CMOs. Alternatively, firms will slash the staff and budget of a CMO, making it impossible for them to get results and telegraphing that it's time for them to leave.

It's a brutal world for CMOs. From management's viewpoint, they're only as good as the last million dollars they brought in. they need to have a fireproof nature to survive the office politics which can turn their jobs into a living hell (I know because they tell me about it). If a marketer or business developer can land one of these top-dollar jobs, they should take the ride for all it's worth.

Full post as published by Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog on January 14, 2011 (boomark / email).