In this episode, John Byrne, the Chief Marketing Officer at Gould & Ratner and the 2025 President of the Legal Marketing Association, disputes the idea that legal marketing is behind other professional services industries. He and Michelle Calcote King discuss how forward-thinking law firms are harnessing the power of content marketing and leveraging data analysis to bolster client retention. John emphasizes the vital role of relationship selling in legal marketing and explores how marketers can earn a seat at the table at their firms. John’s insights empower marketers to recognize their influence and champion the value of their profession.
Here's a glimpse of what you'll learn
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About John Byrne’s journey from journalist to becoming a leader in the legal marketing field.
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About the Legal Marketing Association and its current strategic plan to support and uplift marketers.
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The unique challenges of the legal marketing field and examples of how innovating marketers are tackling them.
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Advice for legal marketers to earn a seat at the table at their law firms.
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Why John encourages legal marketers to embrace relationship selling.
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The value of content marketing for law firms.
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How legal marketers are using data analysis to improve client retention.
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The importance of tracking your achievements and not being deterred by negative feedback.
About our featured guest
John Byrne is the Chief Marketing Officer of Gould & Ratner. John has spent nearly 30 years in the legal profession, with much of that time devoted to helping lawyers attract new clients and engagements. He has particular skill in business development and traditional sales, as well as writing, marketing communications and public relations. John's most valuable skill, though, is his ability to connect with lawyers and clients alike, listening to them and understanding their needs to create strategies for success.
An active participant in the 4,000-member Legal Marketing Association, John is its president for 2025. His service on its International Board of Directors includes roles as president-elect, an at-large member, chair of the Regional Leaders Committee, treasurer-elect and treasurer. He has also served as president of the group's Midwest Region as well as co-executive editor of LMA's Strategies magazine from 2015 to 2016, and as co-chair of LMA's Annual Conference in 2014.
John earned his law degree from Loyola University Chicago and his bachelor's degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where he was the editor in chief of The Daily Northwestern. For the past few years, John has served as chair of the board of directors for Students Publishing Co., Inc., the independent nonprofit entity that owns and operates The Daily Northwestern.
Resources mentioned in this episode
Sponsor for this episode
This episode is brought to you by Reputation Ink.
Founded by Michelle Calcote King, Reputation Ink is a public relations and content marketing agency that serves professional services firms of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including corporate law firms and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms.
Reputation Ink understands how sophisticated corporate buyers find and select professional services firms. For more than a decade, they have helped firms grow through thought leadership-fueled strategies, including public relations, content marketing, video marketing, social media, podcasting, marketing strategy services and more.
To learn more, visit www.rep-ink.com or email them at info@rep-ink.com today.
Transcript
Disclaimer: What you’re reading is an AI-transcribed version of our podcast. It may contain mistakes, including spelling and grammar errors.
[00:00:00] John Byrne: We are, as a profession, worthy of being at the table, providing the strategy that we can push forward. And sometimes taking our licks, because sometimes not every idea is a good one, but I will tell you, not every lawyer wins every case.
[00:00:21] Announcer: Welcome to Spill the Ink, a podcast by Reputation Ink, where we feature experts in growth and brand visibility for law firms and architecture, engineering and construction firms. Now let's get started with the show.
[00:00:38] Michelle Calcote King: Hello, and thanks for being with us for another episode of Spill the Ink. I'm Michelle Calcote King, your host and the principal and president of Reputation Ink. We're a public relations and thought leadership marketing agency for B2B professional services firms, including law firms. To learn more, go to rep-ink.com.
So if you've ever heard the phrase, "legal marketing is behind the times," this conversation is for you. Our guest today argues that many law firms are actually doing some incredible things and deserve some credit. We're also going to dive into what it really takes to succeed in legal marketing from understanding complex service cycles to earning that coveted seat at the table.
So I'm going to welcome John Byrne to our podcast. I know a lot of people in the community know him. He is the chief marketing officer at Gould & Ratner. Did I just mispronounce that again? Did I do it right, John?
Oh yeah, I got it right. I had mispronounced it in our pre-session conversation there.
And he's also the current president. He just started his term of the Legal Marketing Association, and I'm on the board. I got to already hear him talk and hear his vision for the year. So I'm very excited about that. But he has three decades in the legal marketing profession. He brings a unique blend of experience as a former practicing attorney, journalist, publisher and marketing leader.
Boy, you haven't, you've hit all the right background skillsets. No, that's like the rough, that's the perfect mix. And he leans on that to create strategies that drive growth and deliver unparalleled service to clients. So welcome to the show, John, really excited to have you here.
[00:02:22] John Byrne: Thank you, Michelle. I really appreciate the invite and hopefully this will be worth your while and worth others.
[00:02:26] Michelle Calcote King: No, I'm excited to talk about it. So, I guess I did that small intro, but if you don't mind for anyone who's listening and hasn't met you before, tell me a little bit about your career. That's a really great background, but give us a little flavor.
[00:02:43] John Byrne: So I like to say I started life as a journalist. I was a sports desk editor, not editor, a clerk at a local paper where I grew up in suburban Chicago, went to journalism school at Northwestern, got a job at the St. Petersburg Times in Florida after college.
Realized I was interested in the law and I wanted to be a media lawyer. Lo and behold, went to law school back in Chicago at Loyola, discovered there's only about a handful of media lawyers and they all work in New York at really highfalutin firms that weren't going to hire me.
So went into litigation, did that for a couple of years. This is all in the early to mid-90s. So I'm unfortunately a little bit of a grizzled veteran, I guess, when it comes to understanding that you can actually practice law with a dictaphone and not a computer, which is terrifying probably.
But then actually went back to my roots and started working for a unit back at Loyola, actually doing some PR and marketing and sales and career development for both their undergrad degree completion program and the law school. I ended up joining the burgeoning field of legal marketing in the late '90s, working at a small little firm called Katten Muchin in Chicago, which is not small for those of you who aren't familiar.
[00:03:54] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah.
[00:03:54] John Byrne: And hired by someone who's been well known in the legal industry, Teresa Jaffe, there for a couple of years. I actually ended up moving down south. Did some more recruiting, did some more marketing, did some more publishing of a local magazine. Which is when people who don't understand what publishing is sometimes don't understand that, yeah, that's a lot of sales.
And we had a lot of sales back when actually people still looked at magazines in paper as opposed to online. And then ended up in Philadelphia working for Drinker Biddle and Reath, started as a manager, ended up CMO, was there for eight years. Did a couple of years doing some consulting work for myself, decided I hated my boss and found a firm in Chicago that, boy, going on nine years since 2016.
And it's a sophisticated firm, relatively small, 55 lawyers, we have an office in Denver too, we just opened. We do a ton of M&A and real estate and fund work and trust in the estates, private clients. And it's a lot of fun and sophisticated. So I've kind of seen it all. Big firm, small firm, mid firm.
[00:04:59] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah.
[00:04:59] John Byrne: I've been a consultant too, so I have been doing that for a long time. Have been involved in LMA for over, going on 26-27 years. Since '97, I think. So have been on the board for a while and then now am the president and we got a lot of stuff cooking. We're past the pandemic and we've got a lot going on that I think is really positive for individual members and the industry at large.
[00:05:25] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah. And like I said, I'm on the board of the Southeast and, you know, our focus today isn't to talk about your role on LMA, but I'd love to hear what your focus for the year is and what you're hoping to achieve.
[00:05:40] John Byrne: Well, we've got a bunch of different things. We've got a new strategic plan. One of them is to take a look at member benefits and the membership experience as a whole. And we've got a whole plan for that. We're actually going to recommit to DEI principles that we've already committed to, but we're going to go back and recommit to them, especially given the times. There are a lot of people who are still very interested and committed to diversity and inclusion. And we are one of them as an organization, and we're independent. So we can be.
The other aspect, which is kind of getting into today's topics, I think, is one that involves and revolves around advocacy for the profession and for the individuals in the profession. And part of that is trying to build up the association as an advocate for our members and the profession at large and to really come into our own, in a way that even though it's our 40th anniversary this year, we're still working on it and it's a work in progress in many ways.
And we have made significant strides, leaps and bounds, but to the topic we've picked today to talk a little bit about, maybe it's not so much an inferiority complex, but it's a little bit of a mix of maybe occasional imposter syndrome and occasional inferiority syndrome, occasional naivete, perhaps in some ways, shapes or forms, and maybe a little overconfidence in others. So I'm happy to dig in whenever.
[00:07:03] Michelle Calcote King: No, let's talk about that. So, you know, I know you said, one of the things you were telling my producer is, a lot of people say legal marketing is behind the times compared to other professional services firms. And you're saying that's not true in a lot of cases. Tell me why you say, look, there's a lot of firms actually out there doing some really impressive things.
[00:07:25] John Byrne: Yeah. So, it's funny, this came up as an idea because I was sitting, as many CMOs are, and even others in the legal marketing profession, member of a roundtable that meets a couple times a year. We were sitting at one of these roundtables, maybe about six months ago. And we were talking about just this very topic.
And we've got one of our members, a great terrific guy who worked at one of the big four, back then I think it was the big eight when he was there, but he's been the CMO at a firm for a long time too. And we got into like, well, you know, the big four, the consulting and accounting firms are still far ahead of us. And I said, wait a minute. Are they really? Because there's a lot of things that we could talk about that I don't think that they really are that ahead of us. And the room kind of broke up in laughter and scoffed at me. And my usual role, when I'm not in a leadership role, I tend to be a little kind of classic, which I'm sure drives leaders crazy.
But I said, you know, this is true. And they're like, give me three reasons. I'm like, well, how much time do we have? So I think what happens is that because we sort of were a follow-on addition to the business of law at law firms, at least, right? Because law firms always have had to have accountants or bookkeepers at the very least, right? They've always had to have secretaries. They've always had to have paralegals and obviously lawyers. They've always had to have a docking system. If you're a litigation firm, they always have had a file room, all this stuff, this infrastructure that was in place for literally decades, if not centuries, marketing is relatively new.
'77 was the onset of the ability for lawyers to actually advertise and market in the United States. And so it's still relatively new, and we're only 40 years old as an association. I think the ALA, which is the administrator slash, you know, the folks who do all the other business side, I think they're turning 50 or 55 somewhere around there. I'm a member. I should know that. So I apologize. My boss is actually on their board of directors. So I should probably get that number in my head, keep it there.
But, you know, so we're still kind of relatively young in comparison, right? And law, you know, common law is...
[00:09:27] Michelle Calcote King: Right?
[00:09:28] John Byrne: Millennia. So it's not hard necessarily to get into like, oh, we're still kind of feeling our way, but we've actually come a long way. And we've had a lot of people to learn from. And we've come up with some other ideas. And I think what happens too is that we tend to forget that law is a tough business overall, especially to market because there's a lot of different restrictions.
I've brought along many people over my career from other industries, other professional services firms who aren't laws and haven't been working for lawyers. I say, okay, well let's start. You can't do this. You can't do this. You can't do this. You can't do this. There's a lot of can'ts and shouldn'ts and rights. And so that already creates bumpers around some of the stuff we can do, but I think, and sales used to be a dirty word. I don't think it is anymore, but, you know, lawyers have changed, thankfully overall, and then suddenly started to embrace marketing because they realized that despite some of the hue and the cry over the years of how much the law profession is going to change.
And you know that it was going to be multidisciplinary practice 25 years ago and then it was going to be, I don't even remember, it was going to be the death of the billable hour and all this other stuff. Some of that stuff has happened around the edges. Arizona just approved a multidisciplinary practice type of thing for one of the big four firms coming in. Billable hour is still around even though we now have all these alternative fees arrangements that are out there.
And now what's the big bugaboo? AI. Oh my, right. Well, I don't know if you've used any type of generative or other types of AI. It is a wonderful magical tool when it works, and it doesn't always work, at least as far as I would like it to work as much as possible.
[00:11:04] Michelle Calcote King: Right? Yeah.
[00:11:04] John Byrne: Still a little ways to go. So I think having that sort of perspective and understanding that we already started from kind of behind the starting line when it came to marketing and see how far we've gotten in comparison to other professional services firms who can operate sometimes without one arm tied behind their back.
And if you go back and look at the big four, I mean, Arthur Andersen decided to split off Accenture because it wanted to take its audit business and not have the conflicts with this consulting business. And so it said, here, let's put these apart.
Law firms can't do that, right? We still can't represent two sides against the other without some sort of waiver. And there's some unwaivable matters that you never do. And you have to pick sides. Do you represent employers or do you represent unions? Do you represent banks or do you represent the people? Insurance companies versus people who sue insurance?
So I think there's a lot of sophistication just in the nature of having to do legal marketing that we don't give ourselves enough credit for.
[00:12:01] Michelle Calcote King: Mm.
[00:12:02] John Byrne: And I think that the lawyers actually don't give themselves credit too. And so that kind of filters its way down too to the people who are trying to help the lawyers sell 'cause like it or not, for the most part, the people closing deals to get new business are the lawyers. Yes, there are situations where it's not always the lawyers, but at the end of the day, we're paid to help them. And it's fun. It should be fun.
[00:12:26] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:12:28] John Byrne: A lot of times the, like the accounting firms or whatever, even just simple tactical stuff. They don't do this much as we do. I defy you to find that every single large accounting firm, forget the big four from it, every single larger accounting firm has bios for every single one of its accountants on the web.
[00:12:44] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah.
[00:12:47] John Byrne: Number in their email address. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we've got friends like DLA Piper or Dentons or Baker or Kirkland that would have thousands, like my old firm have thousands of lawyers on their website. Every single one of them has a bio, right?
[00:13:02] Michelle Calcote King: Right. Yeah.
[00:13:04] John Byrne: That's, and maybe we can sit and have a conversation not here, but you know, well, is that a good thing or a bad thing? It's not a, it's not either or, in my opinion, but it is indicative of the fact that we are doing stuff that others aren't, even if it's just maybe more work.
But let's talk about the sophisticated stuff. That's very tactical, sophisticated stuff. Law firms have been on a strategic level and with the help of marketing and others in the business operate, have been able to basically raise rates above the rate of inflation for decades and make a fair amount of money, do and have a very good profit margin.
Now you could argue that some of the consulting firms, especially the big ones have been able to do that too. There's a lot of accounting firms that have not, and a lot of firms from a strategic marketing level are still trying to just go after and leverage the heck out of their accountants doing any type of work that they can that's commodity based.
And now I'm gonna have people flinging arrows at me for this. But look on the whole, pound for pound, professional services firms like accounting firms are doing a lot more commodity work than most big time law firms. Certainly most big time law firms and even law firms like mine that still do sophisticated work, but maybe at it for the middle market.
[00:14:22] Michelle Calcote King: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:22] John Byrne: So I think that there's, and we can talk more about this. I'll finish my long-winded answer here, but I think that there's a lot more pride that we can be taking in the stuff that we do overall and how far we've come as legal marketers because we are to the, and I would defy anybody to dispute this, we are to the point where you cannot be a successful law firm without talented marketers and business developers behind you.
[00:14:47] Michelle Calcote King: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. One of the things, I'd love your take on what are some of the things that you think law firms do particularly well? Because when I was thinking about this topic, I remember when I first got into legal marketing, it was sort of the beginning of content marketing and thought leadership as a concept. This was like 15 years ago or so, and no one was creating content, but, you know, who was? Law firms.
Law firms were the only ones, and this was new. This was, no one was writing blog posts or emails offering educational advice. That was a new concept back then, except for law firms. And I remember looking at that thinking, these people are actually ahead of the game. I mean, lawyers were blogging before blogging was really cool. And we kind of forget that they actually kind of were ahead of the game with that tactic.
In terms of content marketing, I often have to explain to my employees that that didn't exist as a tactic or strategy. And law firms got it, 'cause we work with other professional services firms and I'm still convincing architecture firms, engineering firms to develop educational content. And I've never had to do that. And yes, there's issues with getting it right, all those things like doing it consistently, all that kind of thing, but they still understand the need to educate their clients.
So I'd love to hear what you think are some of the things that law firms are doing particularly well. And I thought that other point you made about all the bios, that's another thing we forget is that we have to market a lot of individual people. It's not just one brand. And that is a challenge, you know, that we often forget. You're not just, you don't have that one brand and maybe that CEO brand, you've got hundreds. So, but yeah, I'd love to hear your take.
[00:17:01] John Byrne: Yeah. So there's like two questions in there, both of which I'll try and touch on. I'll take the last one first because it dovetails into the first one.
[00:17:12] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah.
[00:17:13] John Byrne: This idea of, and this is sort of one of those age-old debates, you know, is it, do people hire the lawyer or do people hire the firm?
[00:17:20] Michelle Calcote King: Right.
[00:17:21] John Byrne: Yes. Right. Exactly. And, but how do you deal with that as a marketer or business developer and as communication strategist or any type of, you know, trying to figure that out? And you're exactly right. You know, there are, and it goes back to what I said is that while law firms are doing some really interesting things about using non-lawyers and we can have a fight about that term.
And I just at this point, there's not a better one in my head. And I don't mean it to be derogatory. People who are not lawyers is a longer way of saying that. Working on practicing lawyers, you know, working for the firm, people who are not those people bringing in business, is definitely something that is happening more and more kind of like a rock rolling downhill at a lot of firms.
And you know, I'm going to be going on an RFP pitch, and a lot of my colleagues have gone on RFP pitches for a variety of different areas, selling the firm and selling our services that aren't necessarily related to the individual who is the lead on the account. And that's another word that we're gonna talk about in a minute, I'm sure.
But the idea that we have to create relationships one-on-one with individuals at a business to get business, on the other hand, they have to trust that the institution that they're hiring, the relationship that they have with the person that works for is going to have sufficient resources, depth, knowledge, strategy, all the stuff to be able to stand behind the person that they have the relationship with that they chose to hire.
So it's a balancing act. And the answer, like I said, is they hire the lawyer of the firm. Yes. You know, and it can depend on the type of business they're hiring too obviously, but I think that that is a challenge not necessarily faced, certainly not necessarily faced by a lot of consumer-oriented B2C businesses. It's faced in architecture and engineering firms, maybe, but I would argue not as much in the architecture firms, engineering firms.
I think you just hire somebody, you hire a firm that's really good. Architecture firms, you might hire someone who's really good, but it's only the superstars that get hired specifically for who they are. Right, right. I live in Chicago, which is a huge architecture town, you know, and people don't even remember sometimes the name of the architecture firm, but they remember, they know the person who's at the top or at least who started, correct Helmet or Jeanne Gang, or one of those, even though there's a little bit of an architecture about. But not that. And, but I still know that I couldn't tell you what the name of their businesses are.
So that is a specific challenge that I think, and threading that needle is something that legal marketers, the successful ones, and I think that's a lot of us, most of us, do really well and don't get enough credit for because it's really hard.
[00:20:24] Michelle Calcote King: Absolutely.
[00:20:28] John Byrne: So, but the first question, the first idea is, um, If I remember correctly, so guide me if I've gone too far is this idea of, um, now I totally lost the thread, but...
[00:20:33] Michelle Calcote King: What, yep, no, go ahead. Well, I mean, I wanted to, what I'd love your take on what are some of the things that you think that firms are doing?
[00:20:39] John Byrne: Oh! Innovation and stuff like that. So, and it's, and it's funny, you talk about content marketing. I went to Content Marketing World, which was a mostly B2C event, oh God, probably 10 years ago in Cleveland. Very interesting. I was one of maybe three people from a law firm and there was over a thousand people.
And you know, what I realized there is that you are right. I think there were many lawyers or law firms who had kind of realized, hey, content is going to get me some eyeballs on my website in a way, you know, using the Google algorithm or me sending out emails or whatever is going to get me some attention and maybe even a conversation or two that might lead to a relationship that maybe is a short sale or maybe it's a long play.
But I'm going to get some business out of it. A lot of consumer firms hadn't really reached that, and they were trying to think how that differed from advertising, which a lot of lawyers don't do and still don't do in any way, taking out the B2C folks for a minute because they do a lot of advertising.
But you know, in the more business law firm oriented areas, the advertising wasn't a thing. So a lot of B2C companies, non-law firms used advertising, but this content — I was like, huh. Well, lawyers realized, well, heck, this is about the only thing we can do. And by the way, it's a lot less expensive than advertising. So we should do this.
And, you know, there have been some leaders in the legal industry who've recognized that. Kevin O'Keefe at LexBlog is, I'll call him out. There's a couple of folks who were sort of the forefathers and mothers.
[00:22:04] Michelle Calcote King: Right. Pioneered. Yeah.
[00:22:06] John Byrne: All this stuff. And now we all recognize it for what it is as just a cornerstone bedrock of a marketing plan strategy, social media, LinkedIn, all this stuff.
So other stuff that people are doing, I think, is recognizing that there is this sort of siren call of getting new clients. But most law firms, unless you're in a churn law firm, and that's a different story. But most law firms, business law firms, B2B law firms are looking at and live by the 80-20 rule, right? 80% of the revenue is coming from current clients and 20% is coming from new clients.
And now of that 80%, another 80-20 rule tends to also occur, maybe even 70-30, is you're getting new work from clients. I'm not going to use the word cross-sell or cross whatever people use. Trying to say is that law firms have recognized that there's a lot less time, energy, money needs to be spent in trying to make sure we manage our current clients as well as possible.
So they've gone and done a variety of things on a more account management basis than I think a lot of other professional services firms have done strategically. Again, accepting the consulting firms, accepting maybe the big four, the ones with tons of resources, but actually some of the big firms now, law firms have started to do a lot of stuff that's really cool.
So two things. One is this idea of account management and going strategically and understanding and working through the partnership comp systems in such a way that there's not a competition necessarily to get the client's business. It's a, we're all in this together and rising tide lifts all boats kind of situation.
And in those cases, you'll see firms hold on to clients and really increase their depth, retention, leverage, profitability, all that stuff in ways that is really, maybe it's not cutting edge, but it's pretty out there. There's still firms that wish that they were doing that stuff. So that's one thing.
The other thing is another focus on data and how data and knowledge management affects the actual provision of legal services and retention of clients. A while back, DLA was one of the first firms. And I know there's now been a bunch of other firms who have done this, who basically took all of the data that they had collected over the years, whether it's accounting, billing collections, marketing, you know, website, RFPs, the whole nine yards and have said, how do we predict who's going to stay a client? Who's not going to stay a client?
And then let's do some regressive analysis to find out the ones who aren't going to stay a client. Why are they not going to stay a client? And the ones who are staying client, why are they staying a client? Right? So you've got sort of a gap analysis in some ways, that regressive analysis to kind of look back into the past and see that.
And they came up with this very cool way — and they won tons of awards for it — of basically saying, okay, so here's this client, been around for a couple of years. They're not gonna be here next year. And then you can reach a decision point from a strategic standpoint and say, do we want to keep them or do we want to let them go?
You know, that is really sophisticated stuff. And it's stuff that there's now many law firms starting to do in ways that are substantive, not just sort of dabbling or dipping their toes in the water. And that's cool. And that is one of those things that I wish I could do more of, you know, we can do it around the edges as a small group because we just don't have as many resources, but I imagine with the advent of greater access and frankly, greater products in AI related, we're going to be able to do that in a way that is going to be really helpful.
The last thing I'll say, I've almost promised two things, but the other thing is that I think law firms have finally gotten religion, so to speak, about understanding that what they've been doing all along by keeping and nurturing relationships is sales, a different kind of sales than what they think they're used to, you know, sales in the used car setting always gets a bad rap. Sales in the, you know, I'm flipping burgers or selling burgers or I'm Walmart or any of those types of things, which kind of are nonsensical comparisons.
[00:26:10] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah.
[00:26:11] John Byrne: They're realizing that relationship selling is what they should have been doing if they haven't been, but they always, they realize that finally when they're kind of like maybe hit upside the head a little bit through training or through talking and coaching and whatever article reading even.
[00:26:26] Michelle Calcote King: Right. Yeah.
[00:26:27] John Byrne: I had one lawyer at my old firm who we sent through a training process with business development training folks. And she was just adamant, new partners, just adamant. Like this is, this is distasteful. I don't want to do this. I don't want to be here, but she did it because she kind of had to.
And at the end of the six-week program, she's like, this is great. I just realized this made me understand I've already been doing this stuff and I feel comfortable and I'm all good with it and I'm going to do it more. And so, you know, it's really interesting, the evolutionary step that we take and realizing and recognizing, feeling comfortable with some of the stuff we've been doing all along is what we should be keep doing. And we can actually now call it what it is.
[00:27:14] Michelle Calcote King: Right. Yeah, absolutely. Those are really, really good points. The other thing we talk about a lot in this profession is earning a seat at the table.
Yes, I know. And I'd love your take on this concept and the fact that we talk a lot about it. And I think it's important to have a seat at the table, but what are your thoughts around how legal marketers do that effectively? It's important. And what should legal marketers be thinking about?
[00:27:59] John Byrne: How much time do you have? No, just kidding. The seat, the proverbial seat at the table. Lord help us.
I always wonder when I hear that phrase, I'm like, which table. And is the seat comfortable? So, taking it for what it's intended to be and then letting that sort of more smart ass tendencies fall to the wayside here.
I think that the getting a seat at the table or having a seat at the table is a two-way street in many ways. It is, it has to be earned, but it should also be provided. So does that mean — it means that law firms in general need to understand that marketing should always have a seat at the table. But it is marketing's — and I use marketing in general to mean, you know, not just flat out marketing, but business development and the whole nine yards that we ended up doing — marketing should be able to perform while they're sitting at the table.
And so I think that from an advocacy basis, either for LMA or just the legal marketing profession in general, we've kind of got to understand that while we need to be thinking of creative ways of making sure people understand why it's valuable to have us be at the seat of the table, we have to also do the work that will show that we should and should stay at the table at the very least, if not be invited to the table.
And I think that gets into a different question of what kind of role should, let's just take the CMO for instance, you know, the first CMO title wasn't given until about, I guess it's now maybe 20 years. It was, I think we were talking to a friend of mine about this yesterday. I think it was Alvin Romanowski at Sidley and Austin way back in the day. Could be wrong about that. So feel free to write in and correct me.
But the title was just like, oh, it's a chief. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there's been CFOs at law firms since, you know, most...
[00:29:52] Michelle Calcote King: Right.
[00:29:52] John Byrne: So, and everybody was excited and CIOs actually hit most law firms many, many times, many, many years. So the idea of having a CMO was one who's like, oh, my gosh. Now it's just sort of like, yeah, should it be a CMO or CMBDO? Should it be the CBDOM or, you know, whatever we've been.
Now we've gotten to sometimes a little bit silly chief strategy officers, whether all these, all these titles, we still struggle with actually what that role should be in terms of how it operates at the firm. And I'm going to say, if you're at that level, you should be primarily strategic, depending again on your firm or certainly mostly strategic as opposed to operating, what I like to call — and I don't mean it in a derogatory way — a concierge service.
And so I think that, you know, certainly the concierge services provided by a marketing department at any law firm is and are important in the same way that any service is internally or externally, for that matter. There still needs to be an inherent aspect of the job as the marketing leader at any law firm that is strategic in nature, that you understand the business, that you understand what you're selling and you know it deep in your bones, like you are one of three people who can stand out in front on a firm of thousands and describe that firm in such a way to get a client.
And someone asks you, what does your firm do? You say, what do you want? You know, you do X, you say, of course we do X. And here's the three different things we've done in X over the last years. And it doesn't mean that you have to memorize everything obviously, but you have to...
[00:31:30] Michelle Calcote King: Understand the business. Yes, absolutely. Yeah.
[00:31:34] John Byrne: That whole big two-minute soliloquy I just had does boil down to that. You want to get a seat at the table, you have to make sure that you understand that business and you can bring something to the table.
[00:31:46] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah. How do they make money? I preach that all the time. How do they make money and know it very well. And what are the factors? What's influencing that? Absolutely. I'm a big champion of that and earning that seat at the table, not just banging your wall against the door to the room.
[00:32:13] John Byrne: Or peering through the glass.
[00:32:16] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah. Absolutely. Earn it. Once leadership sees what an impact you can have on the business, you're there. But you have to make an impact on the business. You have to understand it. You have to know it. You have to speak their language. As an agency owner, I couldn't exist if I didn't do that. You have to do that as an in-house marketer. It's table stakes. I'd love to give you a chance before we go. This has been a really fantastic conversation, but is there something we haven't covered? Is there a final thought you want to leave our listeners with around this topic that we haven't covered?
[00:32:59] John Byrne: Final thoughts. Wow. Be proud of what you do as a legal marketer. I think that — and it's hard sometimes. I make a joke and I probably shouldn't, but I did this with a previous firm where our marketing partner, we used to joke about it. I caught him a couple of times doing this. You work through, you get something, you make a deliverable or you work through a process or you come up with a strategic plan or whatever. And the response and the feedback is, "Well, that didn't suck." And that's the highest form of praise that we can expect as legal marketers. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Maybe it still is, and that's just the nature of the business, because like I said at the beginning, law business is tough and legal marketers have to be tough and smart and understand that sometimes maybe the best that you can get is, "Well, that didn't suck."
Take the praise as much as you can. Take the credit as much as you can. Understand and keep track of things that you can take credit for and should take credit for. Don't be cowed by others who are trying to elbow you out of the way for influence or some other type of — I hate to use this word — power within a firm. Marketing is a discipline. It's a discipline they get PhDs in. They don't get PhDs in law, and I have a JD. It's terminal, but it ain't a PhD. And so we are as a profession worthy of being at the table, providing the strategy that we can push forward and sometimes taking our licks because sometimes not every idea is a good one. But I will tell you, not every lawyer wins every case. To the extent that we can keep honestly improving and having some fun, hopefully, because it is marketing, and feel the reward from doing a job well done. So that was hopefully a little inspirational. Feel good about it.
[00:35:07] Michelle Calcote King: I love it. We need a little bit of that right now. Thank you so much. We have been talking to John Byrne of Gould & Ratner. Thank you so much for your time.
[00:35:14] John Byrne: Thanks. This was fun. Thanks for the invite.
[00:35:19] Announcer: Thanks for listening to Spill the Ink, a podcast by Reputation Ink. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.
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