Law.com Quotes Jill Huse In Article On 'Specialized Training For Legal MBD Professionals'

Jill Huse was recently quoted in the Law.com article, "Legal Marketing Pros Point to Specialized Training and Experience in Business Development Departments." The article discusses the crucial role of specialized training and experience in marketing and business development within law firms. In an ever-evolving industry, the expertise of dedicated marketing professionals plays a pivotal role in shaping the strategic direction of legal practices.

Below is an excerpt of the article. Click here to visit Law.com and read the article in its entirety.

Though some law firms may use paralegals to assist with parts of their marketing and business development work, several marketing professionals say the work they do requires specialized training and experience, and their responsibilities can’t easily be shifted to untrained staff.

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Legal Marketing Association president Roy Sexton said law firms’ marketing staff often are filled by specialists who are trained in marketing or business development.

Sexton spoke after a Daily Report article on Monday detailed that some law firms are using legal assistants and paralegals to fill gaps in their marketing and business development operations.

The article attracted social media commentary, including those who asserted that law firm staff members are not fungible, particularly in light of the specialized education, training and experience so many possess.

Indeed, Sexton said marketing staff at law firms typically take on tasks that require specialized training and experience, such as in areas of digital marketing or calculation of capacity utilization, similar to law firms’ lawyers often specializing in specific practice areas.

Trish Lilley, chief marketing officer of Thompson Coburn, said her position typically includes detailed business development tasks such as five-year pricing proposals—a job that requires experience and training in nuances of law firm operations that paralegals and legal assistants would not have.

Sexton said a traditional law firm marketing task—event planning—now requires the marketing staffer to have enough knowledge of practice areas and the legal industry so the event can be targeted to a specific audience.

On the other hand, paralegals and legal assistants specialize in areas for law firms that Sexton said he would not be proficient in.

“I wouldn’t want to be a paralegal,” said Sexton, who is marketing director for the Detroit firm Clark Hill. “We have specialization for a reason.”

Jill Huse of business development consulting firm Society 54 said the most successful marketing directors today are specialists in both marketing and business development.

She said law firm marketing has become “much more specialized” in recent years after evolving from an event organization job that firm leaders saw as business “overhead.”

“However, in the last 15 or so years, it’s grown into much more than that,” she said. “I really see legal marketing as the center point for most firms from the business intelligence perspective because most people in the marketing (and) BD space have their pulse on everything that’s going on in the law firm.”

She said lawyers originally were responsible for a firm’s business development work but it, too, evolved into a specialized job done in part by experts in such areas as pricing and competitive intelligence.

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