Fractional CMO

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As a fractional CMO, I work with law firm leadership to set strategy, build the budget, structure the team, evaluate and hire vendors, and develop the KPIs for the marketing and business development team to track. 

Not every firm needs a full-time chief marketing officer, but every firm needs someone at the leadership table who knows how a legal marketing and business development department should operate. With me, you get someone who has sat in the chair, built marketing functions from the ground up, and restructured existing departments to meet the growing needs of a firm. 

Firms that have never had a senior marketing leader. There may be a coordinator or two, a website, a signature conference, and a partner or two who took on the responsibilities of being the “marketing partner,” but are ready to let them go. What’s missing is a plan, and someone with the expertise to create one.

Firms between CMOs. A search for a CMO can take months. But the work doesn’t stop, and the team in place still needs to be managed. As an interim CMO, I keep the department moving towards its goals and help you figure out what the next hire needs to focus on first.

Firms with a team that isn’t producing. The first question to ask here is not, “Are the right people on the bus?” Most likely they are. They’re just not in the right seats. Roles may overlap or are not properly defined. Priorities may not be clear. Without a clear reporting structure, people end up reacting instead of being proactive. As an outside consultant, my focus is getting to the heart of the “why.” Then we build the plan and execute it. 

Firms in the middle of a big change. AI is changing the practice of law, and that is changing the business of law. When your leadership is ready for the hard conversations that change requires, it helps to have people in the room who are prepared to guide your firm through it. I do that work through Heather Morse Advisory together with FIRM Guidance, and it begins with a FIRM Signal™ diagnostic. 

Most law firms’ marketing budgets are last year’s budget, plus or minus a few percent. In my experience, the budget-to-spend is rarely tracked and many expenses are buried in other departments’ or offices’ budgets. I start by rebuilding the budgeting process so spend follows the firm’s priorities and the department’s actual spend over the past two years. This includes a full review of GL codes. I develop tracking for the discretionary dollars: the conferences, sponsorships, and attorney budgets that rarely get a second look. Tracking can live in a spreadsheet or be automated through your CRM.  

 No two firms structure marketing the same way. Depending on the size of the firm, it may make sense to separate the functions: marketing & communications, business development, client experience, marketing technology & operations. I start with a clean slate, mapping the roles the firm needs to meet its strategic objectives. Then I review who is on the team, what they’re actually doing, and who they report to. From there, I revise job descriptions, or create new ones, along with revamping the reporting structure (including salary reviews based on industry surveys for roles, firm size, and location). For a firm looking to develop its first marketing department, that often starts with defining the first hire, evaluating candidates, and training and mentoring. 

 A growth plan nobody opens after the annual retreat or budgeting process isn’t a plan. Today’s CRMs let firms of any size track whether they’re actually moving toward the goals they set. In addition to helping a firm evaluate and buy the right system, I design plans at the firm, practice group, client team, and attorney level, and connect them to a CRM people will actually use. If your firm already has a CRM, creating a system to track pipelines, manage the marketing department’s activities, and provide leadership a dashboard they can read in five minutes is the goal.  

 Firms need BD coaching for the lawyers who want it (and a few who need it). Client listening programs, so you hear about problems before a client puts the work out to bid. Client teams that bring partners from different practices together around the same relationship, which is where cross-selling actually happens. Public relations and content distribution. No one person can do it all. Helping a firm figure out what it needs, then vetting and hiring the right vendors and consultants, is some of the most valuable work a CMO does.  

I sit with firm leadership as the senior marketing and BD voice. That includes the technology and AI decisions now landing on every executive committee agenda. It means working alongside the rest of the leadership team, from the CIO to the CHRO, so the firm’s administrative leaders operate as one team instead of in silos. And most importantly, it positions the client’s experience and voice at the center of every decision.