In this episode of the CMO Series Podcast, we focus on the evolution of the legal and marketing landscapes and how to successfully use brand identity to drive business development to help firms effectively showcase their lawyers' expertise.
Charles Cousins sits down with Sarah Mitchell, former National Director of Marketing, Communications, and Digital Strategy at a leading Canadian law firm. Sarah shares key insights about how CMOs should prepare for the coming year and the next 10 years and reviews the last decade in legal marketing.
Sarah and Charles cover:
- The marketing strategies and projects Sarah has delivered over the last 10 years
- The biggest changes in the industry over the last decade, and the ways law firms can be prepared to adapt for the next 10 years
- The evolution of technology and AI and the ways firms can leverage the tools available to differentiate themselves in the market
- The various strategies that will be pertinent moving forward
- The biggest barriers to success for legal marketing for the next 10 years
- Advice for marketing leaders looking to stay ahead of the curve in 2025 and beyond
Transcription:
Charles: As the legal and marketing landscapes continue to evolve, law firms face the challenge of aligning their strategy and brand identity to drive business growth while highlighting their lawyers' expertise effectively. On today's episode of the Passle CMO Series podcast, we're thrilled to welcome Sarah Mitchell. With extensive experience in marketing, business development and communications across several top Canadian law firms, Sarah brings a wealth of knowledge into the conversation. She joins us to reflect on a decade of transformation in legal marketing and offers valuable insights on how marketing leaders can strategically prepare for the year ahead and the next 10 years.
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.
Charles: Welcome to the podcast, Sarah.
Sarah: Thank you, Charles. Thank you for having me today.
Charles: And you're dialling in from Montreal?
Sarah: Yes, I am.
Charles: And we'll just have to make it clear for the viewers, my French is not up to scratch. So Sarah is kindly doing this podcast in English for the benefit of all of us.
Sarah: Absolutely.
Charles: So Sarah, maybe to kick things off, can you tell us a bit about your background and career in legal marketing to date?
Sarah: Yeah, certainly. So in fact, legal marketing is my second career. So I started my professional journey as an entrepreneur and transitioned to marketing and professional service in 2013 after my MBA. And since then, I led marketing, communications and business development strategies for top-tier law firm, accounting firm, and I've helped them to expand their business, their teams, and markets. And more recently, in the last two years, I have been the National Director of Marketing, Communication, and Digital Strategy at Stikeman Elliott. And prior to that, I was CMO of BCF, Quebec's largest business law firm, and previously BD Manager at Northern Rose Fulbright Canada.
Charles: Can you talk us through some of the marketing strategies and types of projects you've delivered over the last 10 years?
Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. So I've always said I'm not a typical marketer. So first, maybe because of my entrepreneurial background, but I've always managed my team and projects like it was my own business. Happily, in an LLP where cash is king, this has certainly served me well. Secondly, I've been lucky to meet early in my career, some people who entrusted me with strategic projects with high impact on the business, managing partners and chairman of the board who saw my potential and gave me as much leeway as I wanted. When I joined BCF in 2017, the firm had gone through a constant 15% year-over-year growth, near 500 employees, and it was in need to clarify its market positioning and professionalize its processes, brand, and materials. I think CMOs are as strong as the team they have. So, first off, I've put together a high-performing team with whom I've accomplished a lot. Within a year, we delivered a complete rebranding, a modern visual identity, a new website with enhanced search navigation and content architecture to better highlight the top leadership, large profile, and representative work. To commercialize this new brand signature, we developed an awareness campaign reaching the target audience while converting the former brand recognition. We deployed this campaign in Montreal and Toronto airports, and mostly digitally through various media outlets. With now a brand personality matching the firm positioning and client experience, we undertook the modernization of multiple tools and processes. The most important one was the redesign and launch of Salesforce as a new business opportunity and relationship management tool, and this was certainly a major shift for the business and definitely an important change management challenge.
Charles: It sounds like you were very busy at your time there.
Sarah: Absolutely.
Charles: From your perspective, what have been the biggest changes in the industry that you've seen in the past decade and how do law firms need to adapt for the next 10 years?
Sarah: So the legal industry for sure changed a lot and the role of marketing and BD teams as well. To be relevant, you need to be ahead of the curve in many aspects and able to deliver value. Unfortunately, a value perception is different from one person to the other, so there's no one-size-fits-all solutions. On top, as you know, in an LLP, there's a lot of formal and informal power.So in order to deliver value, you need to be able to adapt to your internal clients, be efficient, relevant, responsive, and offer solutions and alternatives. So navigating through this dynamic is definitely an art. Now, thinking of the industry, of course, AI is on everyone's radar. That's no surprise. But as much as accounting firms underwent the consolidation over a decade ago, I'm sure we could see this happening in legal in the years to come. So as a firm, you either have to be very good at being a full-service firm and master operational efficiency, or alternatively, own whatever niche is your firm positioning. Economy being tougher with less M&A and IPOs, this means leadership has to manage expenses tightly and sometimes review their timekeeper support staff ratio. In the future, perhaps the managerial model of LPs will be adapted to minor private companies a bit more. And why not go public, right? To maybe to raise capital and consolidate the market. There's pros and cons. But we've seen it with IPH, now in control of a third of the Canadian patent and trademark law market. And in other professional service and consultancies industries. Ashen got listed a while ago and is for sure a powerhouse. So to your question of how do law firms need to adapt for the next 10 years, there's no crystal ball. But I would say they need to be aware of the trends across industries that could affect theirs and have the leadership to adapt in various ways and format to remain pertinent, attract the best talent and deliver value to succeed to whatever is ahead.
Charles: Yeah, that really resonates and something you touched on there briefly about AI and technology. That was going to be my follow-up question was with the evolution of technology and AI, how can firms leverage these tools available to sort of better position themselves in the market?
Sarah: So first to leverage the full potential of technology, firms need to understand what they do and who they reach. LinkedIn, by example, is becoming very effective to reach client and reinforce market positioning. Did you know, Charles, that 91% of executives consider LinkedIn as their first option to consume professionally relevant content, and 98% of Fortune 500 companies actively use LinkedIn as a strategic tool for making professional connections, and that 43% of LinkedIn's monthly active users are connecting to the platform on a daily basis. So that's a lot of opportunities to communicate and reach a qualified audience. Historically, content marketing wise, law firms relied a lot on pay-for-play and content aggregators to share their knowledge. As a marketer, your product, what you promote is knowledge. We basically sell brains, and selling brain is selling credibility. So to do a good job at showcasing your lawyers, you need to innovate and find new ways to share content and why, how they stand out. It can be through white papers, blogs, polls, LinkedIn Live, Coffee chats, podcasts with clients, roundtable, do something dynamic. Perhaps a commentary on the economy, on recent news, on major investments, mergers, acquisitions, tax incentives, capital gains, whatever. It can be varied, but keep it short and to the point. You have to be pertinent to be top of mind and be yourself and show your personality. Otherwise, you're just one among many.
Charles: Yeah, I like that. I like that. And I like just some of those facts you were reeling off about LinkedIn. I think in my role, actually, is what I use to find out who's where and get my sort of update. I'm probably on it every day, just checking in what's going on in the industry, what folk are up to.
Sarah: You have to match people's natural behavior.
Charles: Yeah and i guess, it it probably the reason it used some of those techniques that the likes of um you know the instagrams and that used to get people hooked on it, i know, but you almost feel like it's a bit more accepted because it's a professional platform.
Sarah: Yeah linkedin definitely is yeah.
Charles: Could you share some of the strategies you think will be particularly important moving forward, to pick up on the thing you said about selling the brains of lawyers. What sort of strategies do you think will help drive that forward?
Sarah: As you know, I believe sharing your expertise is crucial to demonstrate knowledge. Amplify your reach and reinforce your market credibility. So to have more control over your organic traffic and leverage content efficiency, I would first recommend moving away from the traditional content aggregator strategy. That ultimately uses canonical link to drive traffic away from your firm website. At first, those third-party could look appealing in terms of views, but in fact, you're actually paying for being dependent of another platform and not growing yours. So there's now so many ways to build efficient and targeted strategies to convert organic traffic to lawyers and firms. I would, by example, concentrate efforts on improving Google rankings and online searches, drive better employee and alumni engagement on social media, and probably develop a strategy to shift from a push to a pull content strategy to increase brand and knowledge awareness. Ask yourself, how can you reach your target audience? How can you be relevant so that you're top of mind? And how can you become part of your client's content consumption habit? Basically, that's a trick question.
Charles: Yeah, but do you have the answers now? You're not going to share some...
Sarah: So if your target audience are CEOs and executives and they everyday cross a bridge to go to work, well, why not think of embedding your strategy in their way and how and where they go to deliver their work? So it can be through an airport if they have to travel nationally on a regular basis, well, this is probably an area where you could get their attention. If knowing that they are usually connecting almost on a daily basis on LinkedIn you can have a targeted approach and specifically match the audience with the target audience you'd like.There's multiple ways to reach your audience. You just have to find what they do and understand who they are, so you can naturally try to bet and invest in what could be relevant for them. And being top of mind is really being pertinent, so if you have a specific individual you'd like to target and he's into sailing well, why not? So you know, send him a magazine about everything he needs to know about sailing and you know a special note you're just thinking of you and thought that might be interesting, and then you just stand out. So always try to understand your target and match, you know, be yourself and match your action with what could be relevant for that person and interesting.
Charles: Yeah, I guess part of that, you've got to understand where your clients are
and then be there to reach them with those multiple touch points.
Sarah: Absolutely. There's no one size fits all.
Charles: Yeah. And in terms of the barriers, What do you see as the biggest barriers to success for legal marketing in the near future?
Sarah: That's a great question. I know most law firms are investing massively in technology, automations, efficiency, security, data privacy, and modern HR policies, but I think the biggest challenge for firms and any companies really, will definitely be change management. With AI and technology being more and more present, it will affect law firms offering to clients. They will have to adapt from an hourly rate pricing to a value-added or risk-reward type of pricing, where they will be able to differentiate from generative AI or off-the-shelf contracts. Technology being everywhere and sometimes promising to ease everyone's reality, your adoption, on the other hand, can only go as fast as people are willing to learn and integrate those new ways of working. When I say change management will be the biggest challenge, I say it with in mind the range of generations you'll have to involve and motivate for a successful change. People close to retirement, by example, won't be eager to learn and adopt new technologies and tools, especially if they've been traditionally successful for decades. So you might have to anticipate a bumpy shifting period before all goes smoothly. And perhaps boost your training budget and develop strategies to empower those change agents. In your journey, don't forget to always consult the business, the end users, and understand and document their needs. What are the must-have and what are the nice-to-have?Last thing, socialize the change and prioritize a step-by-step approach. If you move too fast and deploy too much at a time, people just don't follow and it adds confusion. You need to communicate the plan, communicate deliverables, communicate the impact, communicate the training, how this will affect them in their day-to-day. Ask yourself, what's in it for them? What emotions will they go through? Change management is close to dealing with grief and breakup. So people go through a range of emotions. At the time, they will be frustrated, denying, stuck in pain, and after a while, it fades. They let go and accept the change. So communicate, and if you think you've communicated enough, you know what? Communicate again. Change don't have to be dry and boring. Develop a campaign, tools, reports, and dashboard to track performance and adoption. Gamify. Make it exciting. And always engage the top leadership when deploying and in your messaging otherwise it's less credible.
Charles: We are now at the point in the podcast where we like to jump into a quickfire round. So this is a chance for us to find out a bit more about you Sarah, so i'll ask you the questions and you don't need to spend too much time thinking about it, we want to hear the first things that pop into your head. The first question is what are you reading right now?
Sarah: My recent favorite books I would say I have some business and non-business books. So for a good mindset, I would recommend Becoming Supernatural from Joe Dispenza. For better understanding of the professional service business, all Davenmeister's books, The Strategy and the Fat Smoker, Doing What's Obvious But Not Easy, Managing the Professional Service Firm, True Professionalism, Practice What You Preach are very good. And for a non-business novel, a bit lighter, The Seven Husbands of Eglinigo by Taylor Jerkin Street.
Charles: Well, there's a few there, have to check them out. What was your first job?
Sarah: So my first job was making stores for the local butcher shop. But where I really got my business acumen was by running a painting franchise during my university degree and investing in real estate at a young age.
Charles: Fantastic. Sounds like you were quite savvy as a youngster.
Sarah: I tried to. I don't know if I was.
Charles: Personally and professionally, what is one piece of technology you can't live without?
Sarah: As much as I hate to admit it, I have to say my iPhone and iPad. I've turned off all notifications, but they're still a must-have.
Charles: Yeah. What is one small habit you think could help others?
Sarah: It's very simple, but don't push it tomorrow, what can be done today?
Charles: Ah, just get stuff done.
Sarah: Get it done.
Charles: Yeah.
Sarah: Out of the way. Check the box. Yeah, for sure.
Charles: Yeah. What is your favorite place to visit and why?
Sarah: I would definitely say Europe, where you can travel to many countries in a short period of time. It's definitely an asset.
Charles: Yeah, fantastic. Wonderful. So we like to finish our podcast in the same way, and that is asking you, what is your top piece of advice for marketing leaders looking to stay ahead in 2025 and beyond?
Sarah: So technology changed the landscape and life cycle of law firms. Technology also democratized the access to knowledge. Clients are more informed than ever and, you know, or at least have infinite access to knowledge now. So you have to find ways to be pertinent, credible, and top of mind for the type of work you want to track. So be aware of the trends in legal, but also elsewhere in other industries. Have a 360 degree vision on economy, on politics, on investment, and put yourself in the shoes of your clients and lawyers. How would you like your marketing team to provide value? And just be that.
Charles: Wonderful. I think that's a brilliant point to end on. Well, Sarah, thank you very much for coming on and talking about your experience in the industry today and I'm looking forward to what's to come.
Sarah: Thank you, Charles. It was my pleasure.
Charlie: That's all for today. Thank you for listening, and make sure you subscribe to the Passel CMO Series podcast on your favorite platform, so you never miss an episode. We'll see you next time.