Eugene: Hello, folks, and welcome to another edition of the Passle CMO Series podcast. Creating a culture of collaboration and trust is difficult, and indeed, doing that in a way which enables a firm to thrive and grow, especially with a CEO and chairman who's been at the firm for 36 years, and a chief marketing officer who's only been at the firm for 10 months. It's a real challenge, and we're going to discuss that just today, because in today's episode of the Passle CMO Series podcast, I am delighted to welcome Jim Newell, Chairman and CEO of Buchanan, Ingersoll, and Rooney, and Liz Lockett, Chief Marketing Officer. We're going to discuss their approach to cultivating collaboration and trust across firm leadership and how that drives innovation, growth, and ultimately success.

Charlie: The CMO Series podcast is brought to you by Passle. Passle makes thought leadership simple, scalable, and effective, so professional services firms can stay front of mind with their clients and prospects when it matters most. Find out more and request a demo at Passle.net. Now back to the podcast. 

Eugene: Jim, Liz, thank you for joining us today.

Jim: Thank you, Eugene. 

Eugene: Pleasure. Now, Jim, I'm going to pick on you first of all. I must apologize, but can you please start by sharing a little bit of your journey to becoming chairman and CEO at Buchanan? Are there any key learnings or moments from your career which stick out, which have influenced you, and in particular, influence how you lead, collaborate, and drive that Buchanan culture?

Jim: Sure. And thank you, Eugene. It's great to be with you here today. So as you mentioned, I've been here my entire career. Effectively, I've had the same phone number since 1987. And in that time, I've had the opportunity, first of all, to see a lot of different leadership styles throughout the years. Most of those experiences were really positive, but there were times when I saw steps that leadership had taken that I thought, ah, this isn't going to go well. And sure enough, it didn't. But having said that, I think it was a rich experience to be able to compare and contrast the styles that everybody had over that time period. I really think that a lot of the reasons, or many of the reasons, that I ended up in this seat was because early on, I decided that when opportunities arose, I would take advantage of them. And by that, I mean engaging in sort of smaller subcommittee or committee leadership roles early on in my career, just as an example. When I think about this as a turning point, I think it was a second year lawyer. This would have been 1988, the fall of 1988. I had joined the firm in 87 and an opportunity or a need came up to have somebody go up and interview on campus at Cornell Law School, Cornell University Law School. And the partner who normally would have done the interviews was under the weather. Another fella had a closing that day. So the head of recruiting came to me and said, this is unusual, but I know you're only 26 years old, but can you go and conduct these on-campus interviews at Cornell? And I had never done one before. I had never done any type of interview before, but kind of jumped into it headfirst as usual and liked it. And I did a lot of on-campus recruiting and recruiting for the law firm. And that 10 or 12 year span ended up carrying the recruiting committee and before that, the associates committee and sort of built on that. And I tell our younger lawyers that when an opportunity comes up, if you are interested in having leadership roles within the firm, engage, have a passion for it. And I've sort of taken that track throughout my entire career, frankly.

Eugene: It seems like that's actually quite a, you realized early on that you had opportunities to build trust and integrity, not just with your current colleagues, but the future ones as well. 

Jim: Correct. And that was key in many ways over the years of doing quite a bit of recruiting and leading other tasks and committees within the firm. But you're right, Eugene, on recruiting. And one of the things I'm most proud of, so many of my younger colleagues, younger than me, but colleagues who have been here for 20 or 25 years are people that I helped to recruit right out of law school and mentored in many ways. And so I know I was asked this question once earlier, what are you most proud of? And I think I can honestly say it's having built that team of people who wanted to stay here. And, you know, that leads to cultural strengths. And when these people and I are in meetings, we have a history. And that creates stickiness and kind of defines collaboration for me, really.

Eugene: Well, I've been a parcel for eight years, Jim. Jim, so I have a few years yet before I catch you up on your current tenure. It was interesting you mentioned, Jim, about recruiting the right people. Liz, I want to turn to you on this because you're less than a year into your tenure at Buchanan. Can you tell us a wee bit about the firm's culture of collaboration? And indeed, how does that culture of collaboration, trust, engaging with one another, How's that manifest itself in your marketing and business development efforts?

Liz: Sure. So I was very lucky because when I walked into this job last September, I joined a pretty incredible C-suite. We have five other incredibly competent and experienced chiefs, and none of us can do our jobs without the other one. I think we work very close-knit together, and we understand that it takes all six of us in order to accomplish the strategy that the firm has put together, and it's our job to execute that. And we all have to rely upon one another. We do work very well together quite seamlessly. We talk to one another all the time. And I think that having that admiration, respect, and trust with one another is what allows us to do our jobs most effectively. Again, I feel really lucky and blessed that when I took this job, I had a fantastic team, but also a fantastic group of colleagues to work with as well. At the end of the day, we're all trying to drive revenue and growth. I mean, we all have a different role in it, but each part is intrinsically connected. So whether it's lateral recruiting or innovation, diversity and inclusion, finance, setting rates, and leveraging associates, all those things work together to drive our strategy and be successful. 

Eugene: I want to throw this next one to you, Jim, but I’d love Liz to chime in as well. Can you talk about the alignment of effective communication between marketing and other departments? There used to be a perception that everyone worked in silos, doing their own job, and meeting up once a quarter to see how to collaborate. It was more talk than action. How are you now building a cohesive business strategy between departments?

Jim: Yeah, that's a timely and spot-on question. We’ve realigned our organizational chart recently, following the appointment of a new COO a few weeks ago. We’ve been working to ensure our C-suite, the ones Liz mentioned, have a direct voice with management. We’ve increased the number of meetings held as a group to drive revenue and growth. In order to meet our goals, that team needs to work seamlessly together. They have for quite some time, but we’re enhancing that by giving them direct input with management, myself, and our two executive shareholders. It’s important to me to know what everyone is doing. Instead of a silo mentality, our approach is more about connected, dotted lines at the C-suite level. Our CTO, CFO, Liz in marketing, and our COO all work closely together, and that needs to continue for us to seize opportunities. This team is the right one to improve this collaboration. I also want to add that I interviewed Liz for her position in the spring of 2023, and I knew within minutes that she spoke our language. She brings energy and vibrancy to one of our most important tasks - improving our brand, getting our names out there, and getting our lawyers in front of the right people. Liz and her team do an incredible job.

Eugene: Really great to hear. Liz, how do you empower your team, who may not interact with Jim every day, to work cohesively with other departments and lawyers? How do you lead them to achieve this BD strategy?

Liz: It's a similar model to what we're instilling within the C-suite. I’m fortunate to have an incredible BD and marketing team. The BD managers are integrated with practice and industry teams, forming strong rapports with the lawyers. One thing I love about Buchanan is there’s no hierarchy or bureaucracy between the lawyers and us. The lawyers value the strategic input from my BD team. We can't do BD without marketing, and marketing can’t succeed without BD. I reiterate this point in every team meeting. It's about constant communication, leaving ego at the door, and remembering we’re all trying to drive the same strategic growth. I dislike hearing "that’s not my job", “ that’s not my budget”, “that's not my team”. We’re all Buchanan, and we keep a firm-first mindset at all times. Keep the communication lines open. That there's never an “us vs them” mentality. I also believe in giving people insight into how their work contributes to the success of the firm. I don’t just assign tasks; I explain their importance, how it ties into the bigger picture, and I invite input. I maintain an open-door policy, just like Jim. It's all about communication, collaboration, and staying aligned.

Eugene: I love that. The idea of being on the same team is so important. This brings me to my next question, Liz. You’re new to the firm, and Jim, you’re newly stepping into this leadership role. Liz, can you tell us about the firm's five-year plan and how innovation plays into that?

Liz: Absolutely. Also a very timely question because we just discussed this as a whole on Friday afternoon. So, yeah, some of the things that I'm working on are differentiating ourselves. And as you mentioned, Eugene, innovation and advanced technology, both internally and externally, is something that I think we can really shine, particularly against our competitors. I also know our diversity inclusion program is outstanding. Lloyd Freeman does an incredible job. And it's the first time I've worked with the Chief Diversity Inclusion Officer, where we're also using that to leverage business development. Same with Scott Angelo at the CIO role, innovation. So we're partnering with our clients on their D&I and innovation projects and initiatives. Also utilizing the industry teams. So again, I inherited a fantastic strategic plan. It was very well thought out, got some good KPIs. It's achievable. And I think we can absolutely accomplish what we've set out for the next four years. It was launched last March. But again, the industry team's really delving into that and kind of getting to 2.0. In my mind, a strategic plan is always a living document, and it's going to evolve as we continue to grow and see where our strengths and opportunities are. So I'm working on our four core industry teams and delving down more into what is going to differentiate us with our competitors and also be more attractive to our clients. Big proponents of client service and feedback. So that's going to be a big project and continue to work on. Launched a client team program earlier this year. So we're going to continue to evolve that as well. And then really building our expertise. It's a lot of rainmaking, coaching, training to make sure that we're giving our lawyers the tools to be as successful as possible.

Eugene: Oh, for God's sake, Liz, I got dizzy trying to follow that.

Liz: I'm happy to give you my list if it's easier. 

Eugene: My little pen can't write that fast. Look, you're incredibly busy. You're doing a lot. And I almost want to come back to one of the first things we talked about, which is the people side of things, because I know both of you as leaders, I think one of the most rewarding things for both of you is seeing the growth of your team. Jim, you said at the beginning about collaboration and in previous discussions, you talked to me about the human, the business side of law, how important that is. You know, there's no magic bullet, how you manage those key relationships. Can you tell us a little bit about Buchanan's collaborative culture, but more as that pertains to attracting and retaining talent? You've done everything from going out and sitting at the booth and recruiting at Ithaca to now, you know, thinking about how do we recruit and grow as a firm. Can you talk a little bit about that culture and how you help attract and retain talent?

Jim: I sat and thought about this a little bit from a 30,000-foot standpoint, as opposed to, you know, being in the trenches every day. It occurred to me that, well, there are generational differences in communications. We've all read all the articles about, you know, Gen Z and millennials, how they communicate differently and the tail-end boomer, myself. But what I've seen over the years in my career is that everybody, regardless of generation, wants to feel as if they're part of a team. They want to feel seen. They want to be heard. And fortunately, it comes somewhat naturally to me, kind of organically to me, of being able to engender that sense of belonging and team membership with our younger lawyers. And every time I'm having a phone call or meeting with our people, I want them to be famous for calling on people at meetings as opposed to trying to run the meeting and everybody just listening to my voice. I find it to be effective. I find it to get people engaged. And what you hope the case is, is that people will continue that behavior. When we're out recruiting for new talent, whether at the associate level or at the shareholder level, those issues come across in a genuine fashion. You need to spread a wide net in order to find the right people that fit our culture. But you do hope, I do hope, and I rely on our people being out there who are doing the recruiting, who are actually doing the meetings, to convey those kind of cultural touch points that I think we have built here. Many of my colleagues, like me, have been here their entire careers. And there's a reason for that. We've all had opportunities to do other things. I'm not sitting here telling you that we don't lose people that we would prefer to stay here. That happens. But in large part, we've been extremely fortunate in maintaining and keeping the people that are part of the fabric of the law firm. And as I said earlier, this is, you know, I'm just sort of the caretaker here. While we continue to grow, somebody else is going to be sitting in my seat in a few years. I want to make sure that when I'm retired and gone, the next generation of folks are continuing with the same emphasis on the cultural aspects that we bring to the table.

Eugene: Jim, I want to pick up on something you said there—you cast the net far and wide, you get the right people. How do you get the right people, who then will drive the business on? And I mean this from a marketing and business development point of view. This is obviously the CMO Series podcast, so I would get a kick in the backside if I didn't ask this question.

Jim: Sure. 

Eugene: You run some of the biggest relationships at your firm. And when we spoke before, you talked about there's no magic bullets, it's timely consistency. Was that in you innately? Was that who Jim was when he started as a lawyer? Or was that developed or nurtured by your mentors at the firm? And how do you get the next wave of people to do what you've done? How do you do that?

Jim: That's a fabulous question—the nature versus nurture aspects of it. I don't know. And when I came through in the late 80s, I was much less sophisticated and knowledgeable about the practice of law than the young lawyers who join us today are. But I was extremely fortunate, personally, to have had great mentors, both on the business side and how you go out and how you treat clients. And I would sit there with these senior lawyers and watch how they dealt with clients and listen to how they dealt with difficult adversaries and difficult clients or judges for that matter. So, much of it was nurture, but I do think from the nature standpoint, Eugene, one has to be, in order to succeed, all in. And by that, I mean, work-life balance is important. It's important to me. It's important to our law firm, but this has to be a focus, right? It has to be something that you are passionate about, as I said, and you need to have that internal drive to succeed. But I would say mostly for me, it was the sort of self-esteem that you get from landing a new client and building that relationship. There was in-house counsel for one of our largest firm clients that I've been working with and I've known since 1992. And he's a couple of years older than I am. And he always raises, "Do you remember the case back in '92 when we first met each other?" That's 32 years of not treating somebody like just a file because they're real people. And you need to do that with everybody. And it's time-consuming, but it's very much worth it to me.

Eugene: I love that. Thank you. I'm going to sort of push towards maybe closing off this conversation, but I have two other things I want to cover first. And this one's to both of you. Liz, I'm going to kick off with you. Give Jim a breather. Liz, for you, what are the biggest challenges, but also opportunities that you see today in legal marketing and BD? And indeed, we've talked at length about the collaborative leadership style, which you all follow at Buchanan. But how is that going to help them? And indeed, what do you see as the biggest challenges and opportunities, and how are you addressing them at Buchanan?

Liz: Yeah, I mean, to me, the biggest challenge is not being bogged down in the urgent and immediate, but keeping the strategic and the important in the back of your mind. It's very easy each day, and I know Jim can attest to this, to get bogged down into blocking and tackling. I mean, we all get busy, but at the end of the day, we've got to keep the big picture at the forefront of our minds and continue to push that strategy. I think that's one of the biggest challenges for all of us. I think the opportunity is that we do have a concrete plan. We have an incredibly talented workforce, both administration and lawyers, and we have an opportunity to really drive with the new leadership of Jim, as well as Jim Mentor and Joe Centeno. And I think we're very much poised to be successful. I think continuing to give the lawyers the confidence and the tools to go out and do what we're trying to achieve is critical, which is one of the big focuses that I mentioned previously. And as Jim said, we are, again, all rowing in the same direction. We're all on the same team, and we're doing this in a collaborative effort so we can continue to enjoy work as much as we do. And, you know, we spend more time at work than we do at home. And I think it's critical that we have a very healthy work-life balance but are, at the end of the day, proud of what we're trying to accomplish and how we do it.

Eugene: I love that point about enjoyment. I think it's so, so important. Jim, I'm going to turn it over to you. Same question. Biggest challenges and opportunities you see at the firm, and indeed, how are you going to approach them from the Buchanan point of view?

Jim: Much of what I said earlier about learning from senior lawyers in the early phases of my career, Eugene, has become more of a challenge these days with the hybrid work schedule. Working to improve that, it's a challenge that law firms and corporations in all industries are facing these days. I would put that under the category of a challenge that exists. We're working hard with section leaders, with the C-suite team to make sure that our younger lawyers are getting the type of mentorship and on-the-job training, if you will. Some of it's just through osmosis. We're working hard to make sure that happens. As I mentioned at the outset, I'm a boomer, and I would love for it to be five days a week. It's not going to be that way, and we need to adapt to that process. So that's just the challenge. In terms of opportunities, what I really believe here is that we're having another great year. Thank goodness, I'm knocking wood as I speak, but we're having a great year, and we're looking to continue to build on our successes. Liz talked about our strategic plan, and growth and advancing our expertise is key to that. I'll drop a name. We joined forces with a lawyer in Washington, DC, a few years ago who has built, virtually from whole cloth, an incredible international trade practice. His name's Dan Pickard, but he's built a team and has his own wing down in Washington, DC, of offices with new bodies. And it's something that fits directly into our strategic plan in making sure that we're at the forefront of practices where there are excellent revenue opportunities and the opportunity to cross-sell through our firm, a new practice area that just didn't exist here five years ago. Those types of opportunities excite me. Continuing to find opportunities like that in whatever markets we're in, whether it's Philadelphia or New York or Florida or Charlotte, North Carolina, or San Diego, California. Those are exciting to me. While we continue to build our core here in Pennsylvania, I look at that as nothing but growth and opportunities for success.

Eugene: The last thing, going a little bit off-piste on this one, but again, I will be remiss in my role seeing as I very rarely have to manage part of the chairman and the CMO at the same time. In one sentence, I want to ask each of you just one question. For someone like you, Liz, who is a chief marketing officer, how can they better work with their chairman? And Jim, I will ask you the opposite straight after Liz. What's the best way that they can work with a chairman? Because you and Jim have a fantastic relationship. And I don't think everyone is as lucky as you.

Liz: Well, I can't do it in one sentence because I talk too much, but I can attempt to answer it. Jim is incredibly open and easy to work with. So that makes a huge difference. He's always got an open line of communication and encourages us to call whenever we have anything to bounce off of him or need any input. That is critical. I have worked with managing partners in the past that do not do that as well. So I think a big part of it is Jim's approach to leadership and his openness of communication. I think being transparent and then, you know, having some loyalty to the firm and to Jim. I've got to be the eyes and the ears of the firm, both internally and externally. And that trust and building that rapport of honesty and communication is critical with that.

Eugene: I love that. And Jim, again, advice to a counterpart if you were sat on the golf course or someone else, sorted like all the managing partners work so collaboratively and drive innovation in the way that you folks are with your marketing and BD team integrated.

Jim: This is not going to be one sentence, so I'm going to fail that part of this test, but it's a couple of things. Liz mentioned openness, and I haven't done this, but if you looked up collaboration in the dictionary, I'm sure that it would talk about open communications. This is something that I've preached to our lawyers here over the years, and I hope it's imparted also to the C-suite and the rest of our administrative folks in the law firm. What lawyers do for a living, whether they're litigators or transactional lawyers or tax lawyers, is difficult. It's time-consuming. It's stressful. Working with, as I said, clients who have high expectations, deservedly so, working with adversaries who are on scholarship too, they're doing the best for their clients, getting results is stressful. Working as a team, and as Liz said, rowing in the same direction all the time is the best way to allow our professionals to go out there and do what they do best. Internal fighting, having internecine battles over turf, if you will, is counterproductive. We don't have the time or the energy for those things. So my view of my role here is to make sure that we're rowing in the same direction. And if somebody's not, we have to, and thank goodness it hasn't occurred, but if somebody's not, we need to deal with that. So again, we've been using the word collaboration a lot, but it's really about openness and communications and nipping problems in the bud, all of those kinds of things. It sounds somewhat trite, but I really do think that's the best way to operate a business and the best way to run a law firm.

Eugene: Thank you for that. And with that, I wanted to draw this episode of the Passle CMO Series podcast to a close. Liz, Jim, thank you so much for your time.

Liz: Thank you, Jim. Appreciate it. 

Jim: Thank you.