THE LAW FIRM CHIEF BDO.

A position like marketing or selling may be perceived to lack mental or intellectual depth or may be seen as a position for party animals or people who lack intellectual weight and come up with all sorts of shenanigans to sell the law firms services.
It may even be seen to be undeserving of a seat at the law firm's management level.
Now this where the marketing people need to acquire the needed weight, thought and intellectual depth to communicate their work, what they do and never lose sight of their invaluable contribution to the wheels of legal.

Why are Mergers and Acquisition as a practice area more sought after or looked up to than marketing legal services? I mean is M and A not largely about dating and getting companies to say I do. While it is because of the sexiness of M&A, it is also because people who have a modicum of seriousness, do not go to marketing and those who are in it, present it as gimmickry and quackery and are unable to disguise their weightlessness.
I mean acting and singing was for the weak and wastrels but even then there were those among them who took it for the Christopher Wren Cathedral they saw it as and that attitude has led to the $10 Billion dollars in tickets that Hollywood did in 2006.

This one is for the marketers of legal services. Lawyers and their ilk are a knowledgeable breed who read a lot and are thoughtful people if a tad arrogant but you will not get through to them if you lack depth if you cannot bring any TRANSFORMATIVE results to your work for them.
Your work levels must match theirs, your obsession with your marketing services must surpass theirs and the connection between what you do and what they do must be a tool you build on and exploit.

Imagine the effect on legal if a notable legal partner became a full time marketing professional for legal services and brought the weight of his drive, intellect and exposure to making it the next phase of his career? That is the kind of weight legal services marketers are looking to attain.

When chaps say marketing a certain image comes to mind and you will be looked upon in that way so you cannot help that. But you can stand as an independent bulwark by the level of thought and individual ingenuity you bring to the way that you do your own work and the answers you proffer for the accusations your fellow marketing brethren have brought your way by the way they do their work.