Laura Hudson, Ward and Smith's Chief Marketing Officer, shared her expertise on the critical aspects of prioritizing marketing and business development efforts for mid-sized law firms in an insightful piece published on JD Supra.
This piece, based on a recent JD Supra Office Hours webinar for clients, highlights the unique challenges faced by mid-sized firms.
In Laura’s own words, big picture: “mid-sized firms frequently experience a tension between who is the specialist at which marketing discipline, and who supports which internal practice or client team. Unlike larger firms, we don't have separate team members for every marketing function!"
Key Insights from Laura Hudson
JD Supra's VP of Client Services, Paul Ryplewski, interviewed Laura, beginning with a question about her many, ongoing responsibilities as CMO. While she acknowledged that each day brings its own challenges, she offered a few key insights on how she gets things done. Excerpt from the article:
1. Teamwork
The team's excellent members complete all daily tasks. Each team member serves as a liaison to industry practice groups, geographic teams, and client teams, while also having their own area of specialization. Priorities for the day are determined by the communications calendar and upcoming events.
2. Strong Departmental Systems & Processes
Strong systems make a significant difference. For instance, there is a protocol for handling any attorney speaking engagement, including calendaring the event and its promotion, managing communication with the sponsoring organization, providing the bio and headshot, and requesting slide deck support from the administrative assistant for the presentation.
These robust processes enable the team to handle a large volume efficiently and prevent communication issues.
3. Keeping Marketing Staff Focused on Marketing
Efforts have been made to keep the marketing team out of administrative functions. Upon joining Ward and Smith, Laura and her team kept time so they could analyze the patterns in their workflow.
The result: 30% of the team's work was administrative rather than marketing-related. Firm management was approached, and each practice group, geographic team, and department was assigned an administrative assistant to handle tasks such as meeting schedules, reminders, minutes, slide decks, and action item list upkeep.
This allowed the marketing team to focus on their core responsibilities and advance marketing and business development initiatives.
Laura also shed light on the unique opportunities available to mid-sized and regional law firms.
“I think there is much opportunity for mid-law to innovate the delivery of services with our clients because we are fast and nimble. We don't have to map the coastline of North Carolina to rent a beach house, if you know what I mean!” We don't have several layers of people to discuss new ideas with, we talk with our firm management, and they are blessedly progressive."
Ward and Smith's emphasis on process improvement and Legal Lean Sigma training has driven significant advancements, especially during COVID. The firm's marketing culture encourages experimentation without fear of failure. Additionally, Laura points out that mid-law firms are well-positioned to attract talent by offering sought-after work-life integration, adding, “People seem genuinely happy here!”
You can read the full article here, where you'll find instructions for watching Laura's insightful discussion in its entirety. This is just part one of a two-part series, so keep an eye out for the second installment.
