Will: Welcome to the Passle CMO Series podcast, where we discuss all things marketing and business development in professional services. My name is Will Eke, and today on the podcast, sort of ironically, we're going to be talking about podcasts and why every law firm needs a strategy.

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.

Will: Today I'm actually doing in person as well which is pretty cool, in the Curtis office and we're going to be talking about as I say the power of podcasts and why they should be the cornerstone of every law firm's recruitment and business development strategy. Who better to discuss this with than the podcasting I'm going to call you a powerhouse, Kate Fairweather. Welcome Kate, she's the director of business development and marketing. I'm gonna try and get the name right, Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle, about right or not?  

Kate: Six out of ten, Will.

Will: Oh god, that's terrible where did I go wrong?

Kate: It's Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle.

Will: I said Mosel, I should have practiced that, but welcome we are recording in your lovely studio and the shoes on the other foot today you're you're in the you're in the seat being interviewed.

Kate: It is and it feels quite uncomfortable. I got to say. 

Will: Well, the pressure's on me. 

Kate: How the table's turned.

Will: You're normally such a brilliant host that I've got to try and live up to expectations in this lovely, lovely office. Maybe we could start, and I pronounced the name terribly wrong in terms of, I always just call it Curtis, but it's a long...as a firm, it has a long and storied history that not everyone is familiar with. Obviously, you are and everyone that works there is. But it is one of those firms that when I mention it to people, it sometimes goes under the radar, which is probably where you'd like it to be in some instances. But maybe you could tell us and provide some context around the firm and its culture, so that our listeners can understand that.

Kate: Sure. I hadn't heard of Curtis before I joined. I only heard of it when I was approached to join. But it's a very old firm. It's one of the longest established firms in New York or in London. It was set up originally by a couple of brothers, John and Laura McGraham, in 1830 in New York. And they were property developers as well as lawyers, as lots of people were at that point in New York's history. And indeed, today, you can still find in Brooklyn, there are whole streets named after the Graham brothers. So it was really very, very New York firm when it was first set up, but it became international pretty quickly. We've been in Mexico City for 28 years, I think, and one of the name partners was a Mexican national.So that's quite different from many New York firms. It's been outward looking from the beginning, and today we've got 19 offices all over the world, some in some unusual places. It's not just the usual suspects. I think when I first joined, I was told by the partners who interviewed me that culturally we thought ourselves like a private bank. You know, discreet, very, very focused on the client, not into promotional activity, that kind of thing. And I think that's true. I think it's got quite a cautious culture and a very discreet kind of old school culture. And yet it's this weird blend of cautious and entrepreneurial. It's very entrepreneurial in culture and many of the partners at the firm have built up really quite interesting practices in a way that's really suited them, so it's very far from being a massive factory type professional services firm. it's i think pretty unique actually pretty much and it's very sort of commercial and entrepreneurial but it does have this old school charm.

Will: Yeah it's fascinating and with regards to how old it is and the prestige behind it but then not many people know about it and we'll come on to this. It must be tricky doing things like recruitment, it must be tricky trying to get a rebrand right and things like that when you know no one really knows who it is.

Kate: i think so i think the fact it's never merged is also quite interesting because I was at Linklater's during the Linklater's and Alliance merger, which you talked about on one of your podcasts with Helena Kachanowicz. And when a firm merges, a two-way merger or a multi-way merger, there's so much work that goes into the integration and the re-articulation of the brand attributes, if you like, both employer brand and external sort of facing brand. And if you've never merged and there's this incredible stability through the partnership, you've never actually really sat back and articulated it. So there's a lot that is sort of passed down from lawyer to trainee or you know partner to associate over time and there's less formality in how things are articulated compared to other sorts of firms that I've worked with. Does that make sense?

Will: That certainly does yeah and there's lots of mergers going on so it's yeah a common a common theme at the moment especially in the states. Before we dive into how you know the actual topic how you're using podcasts at Curtis maybe you could tell us a bit more about, and this is probably where, not spoiler alert, dogs might come in, but maybe you could tell us a bit about your background in podcasting, broadcasting, and what sort of fuels your passion for the medium? Because you're very, you know, you love it and you're very passionate about it, hence why we wanted to get you on.

Kate: Well, I do. I do love it. I've been a radio listener forever. And I travel quite a lot with work, or I travel more before lockdown, but I still do travel. So I listen to the radio when I'm traveling and It accompanies your life if you're a radio listener. You know, you get up in the morning, you know that it's time to spring out of bed when the sport comes on, for me. And it's a very personal kind of medium. You feel like you have a stake in the show if you're a radio listener. And I think it's much the same with podcasts. In fact, in some ways, it's even more personal because there are loads of statistics to show that people are listening to podcasts on their commute, in their kitchens through Alexa speakers, and smart speakers, on dog walks and even in bed. There was a survey recently that seemed to say that nearly 30% of UK listeners listen to podcasts in bed, like an adult version of a bedtime story.So it's super personal and where you get it right, I think it's very, very powerful more than any other medium. I was fascinated to see some recent research that said that although 61% of people in the UK listen to podcasts, they almost, you know, very high proportion of them only listen to between one and five podcasts. So podcasting, podcasts and radio, it's very intentional listening. It doesn't, it doesn't whiz across your screen, like on social media. It's not on in the background like a television might be. It's very intentional, which again is part of its power, I think. And it's intentional because it's very personal. But I got into it myself during lockdown when we were obviously all at home and I started volunteering for my local community radio station and started doing some presenting, mainly behind the mic stuff. And after about six months or so, I decided to have a go at my own podcast, which I did, which I know you know, because we have this shared interest, but it was about dogs. And it's in its fifth year, amazingly. And I totally loved it. And within two years, it got podcast of the year at the National Community Radio Awards in the UK, which was a real thrill, very motivating. And I took it from there. And that's been a bit of a testbed for me in lots of ways in relation to podcasting, because I've tried different things. I've got very interested in how people listen, how you can judge the metrics, what works, what works less well, cross-pollination, you know, a whole batch of stuff. It's been like this kind of evolving special interest over the last five years. So I was totally thrilled to bring it into a work context in context of a wider communications mix in a professional services environment.

Will: And just to clarify, you don't interview the dogs on the podcast.

Kate: No, but they are in it. So that's not such a silly question. We always record outdoors if we can. I think I've done three or four using Zoom. They're always out in the fresh air and with the dog in it. And that's another beauty of podcasting. It's very flexible. You don't have to be in a studio with a dead acoustic in the way that traditional radio might have done, you know, up till 15 years ago, 10 years ago something like that so it's a it's just a great medium and i think we've only just started to scratch the surface of it in professional services.

Will: Yeah it's a fascinating story and we often hear or because we are running our own podcast we do have firms that come to us i've actually got an American firm that booked in a meeting next week to discuss how do we how do we do podcasting,  how do we start it,  how do we you know,  maybe they should be speaking to you to be honest but you don't want to give away all the secrets. But you've mentioned that that that law firms or professional service firms can overlook the power of podcasts or they feel, you know, they don't know where to start, despite it being personable and very authentic in terms of how you can communicate. What do you think makes it a really good fit, that podcast medium for law firms and professional services?

Kate: Gosh, I think there are lots of ways it's a great fit. And if I answer that by saying I spent five or six years working with an engineering and property, I guess it's a consulting firm called Arup, with 87 offices and I spent six years writing its key client communications. And oh my goodness, they had so many visuals to work with. It was like being in a crazy candy store compared to a law firm. They had photos, they had video, they had maps and blueprints and, you know, this richness. And that's exactly the difficulty with professional services in law, particularly, because the product's intangible.So the only way you can really illustrate it visually is talking heads, perhaps, if you're doing video, you know, that's all very familiar. It's hard to do anything, I think, really interesting that really aligns with what you're actually doing. You have to think more cleverly than that if you're going to be doing it visually. But I think that's why it's such a great fit with law firms, because lawyers talk well. We know that the client-lawyer relationship is the crux of that relationship. It's a very personal, very trusted advisory relationship at its best. And so, it's obvious that a very personal, trusted medium like audio would be a good fit for that. I also think that it's good to. I hope I don't alienate anyone as I say this. I did train as a lawyer myself, so I always feel a bit of latitude. A lot of lawyers are quite introverted. They don't want to perform. And although I think every firm has its small number, maybe 10% of partners, who you can stick in front of a conference audience and they'll fly and be brilliant and perform, you're left with 90% that just aren't comfortable in that way. And that's where audio comes in. because, you know, Will, you and I are sitting in a reclaimed IT cupboard with lots of acoustic tiling and it's completely informal. You don't have to, you know, check your appearance for the camera. There's nothing really performative about it. You can feel very real in the moment, having a real conversation. And I've got some amazingly compelling, articulate conversation out of some of our lawyers who I wouldn't put on a stand necessarily. You know, but who are very comfortable talking over a table and they give of their best. So I think you can get much, much better sense of what it would be like to work with a particular lawyer using audio. And I think that's the holy grail in marketing, isn't it? You know,you want almost that sense of what would you be like as my lawyer? And I think you get very close to that with podcasting.

Will: Yeah, it's great advice. It works both ways, doesn't it? The attorney or lawyer can let their hair down, but the client really benefits from it as well because they're getting that one-to-one valuable insight from their key attorney or lawyer. Yeah, I think so. Not giving away all the trade secrets and gory details, but could you maybe delve into a bit more about the podcast series that you've launched at Curtis and what the vision was behind that? What did you set out to achieve along the way? 

Kate: Okay. Well, you have to start somewhere. And I think because it's a different medium, it's very easy to overthink it, perhaps. There are very low barriers to entry with podcasting. A kid with a smartphone can start a podcast. You really can. It's not difficult. But I think it's what I wanted to do was start somewhere, establish some good high standards that align with our brand standards. I didn't want it to be too casual. It's easy. You could do a casual podcast for sure, but it needed to align with being a sensible, relatively conservative law firm and be creative. It had to align with our brand, if you like. So I was looking to develop the audio brand and set some standards and some guidelines for the future. So that was one of the things. But I didn't want to frighten the horses. So we started with a non-client audience. And of course, a recruitment graduate audience is wonderfully easy to identify. You know the age range you're looking at. You know probably they're listening on Spotify. You know quite a bit about them. And you're very clear on your key messages. So for all those reasons, it's nice to start there because I think with podcasts, you really have to be very clear about who you're talking to and how they will benefit from listening to your podcast. Because if there's no value, people don't listen. As I say, it's very intentional listening. You know, people aren't going to randomly come across your podcast. They're going to listen if they know that they're going to get something from it. So the way we position our recruitment podcast, which is called On Tour with Curtis, was research for a would-be or aspiring lawyer or early career lawyer or law student. We talk quite a bit about what success looks like. Now, we've got 19 offices, but in the States, we take in summer associates. We never take in more than 10. We sometimes take fewer. And in the UK, we've only got two trainee spots a year. So if I talk about the numbers in the UK, because we're mid-recruitment season in the UK as we speak, if you're only taking on two and you're getting roughly 300 applicants for those two spaces, when you think about what you want, we're line fishing for the best possible fit. 3,000 applicants would not be a success. That would be a massive problem for our already under pressure, time poor team who have to go through all those applications. So in a way, the aim was to make sure that anyone coming into our traineeship application process had a really clear and realistic idea of what the culture might be like, how it might be to work here. And just a proper sense to avoid that dissonance, you know, where you're wowed by amazing recruitment staff you get in the door and actually it's not as you thought it would be so does that make sense it was about fit.

Will: Yeah, absolutely, yeah and and it's a very clever way of doing it as we mentioned at the top especially when not many people know who Curtis are as well so so it helps explain more about the culture and what the what the firm is aiming to achieve what we talked about this before but interestingly for people in your role as well did you find that. Doing, doing and launching this series got you closer to some partners that you wouldn't necessarily, or Fianna's that you wouldn't necessarily have had a relationship with as well?

Kate: Sort of. I mean, I'm very fortunate. I've been at the firm for well over a decade. And so I know the partners really quite well. So when it came to casting the podcast, because we have three to four voices in every episode. And the point is that rather than saying, oh, look, we're so diverse. We're demonstrating it because we have these diverse voices. Different nationalities, different practice areas. We wanted to give a sense of the cornucopia of practices that we have here. And so I had an idea in my head. We wanted balance. I wanted male-female voices. We wanted vocal variety. We have a market-leading disputes practice, so but I didn't want every voice to be talking about the same disputes or the same disciplines. So we were going for a nice sense of variety. And we also, I was quite keen to illustrate the freedom that people have at Curtis to develop their practices in a way that fits. So for example, in our Rome episode, I'm interviewing one of the partners there who has a very successful real estate financing practice, but he's also grown an art law practice, which in Rome is really interesting. So there are many of those kinds of examples and I wanted to convey them as well, but you're right, sitting across talking to a partner is a lovely thing to do for someone in my role when I don't regularly go to all of the other offices. We've got 19 of them. I catch up with a lot of partners in London and New York, but it was nice from that perspective. And I think the whole, I mean, it's another aspect we chatted about this is that the internal cross-pollination is a lovely side benefit of this because realistically if you're an associate in our. Buenos Aires office, are you going to visit Frankfurt and get to know them? You're possibly not. You know, is an associate in our Riyadh office ever going to go to Bogota or, you know, probably not. So there's a lovely thing about hearing the voices from people in other offices. And although we've kept it slightly more partnerly, and that's partly because we've wanted to hear about how people have brought their practices to where they are today. It's also because these are the people that a prospective associate or trainee would be learning off. Are they the people you want to learn off? You know, that was what we were trying to show. Yes, they absolutely are.

Will: Makes sense. That's a good point about the cross-pollination and education of areas of the business geographically. You mentioned some of them there in terms of, I suppose, results and outcomes. Since you've launched it, have you got any tangible results that you could talk about or share specifically?

Kate: Some we're still quite early we asked for example in the uk as we're talking our applications are still open for trainees so we haven't got to the end of it so it's difficult to get drilling down into the metrics and the numbers, but we've already had a couple of approaches direct approaches to partners in the london office from associates thinking they'd like to come and work here from their current firms. And one of them, I was just, I was really tickled, but also pleased said, you know, I listened to you on the podcast and you sounded really approachable. So I just thought I'd get in touch and I hope you don't mind. And no, we didn't mind at all. You know? So I think if somebody who knows nothing about the firm. Is listening to the podcast and feeling comfortable and reaching out and thinking, actually, I'd like to work with you guys. Maybe you don't have a spot at the moment, but in the future, then it's got to be doing what we want it to do, which is give a flavour of the people. It's a bit like if you go to a city and you've read three different guidebooks on that city and you get to the city and it's almost the last bit in the jigsaw because you feel you know it already. I would hope that anyone listening to any of the episodes would learn something about the jurisdiction. There's some interesting stuff about each jurisdiction, but would also feel that they're getting to know the firm. And that's the aim really, not to do it by numbers, but to get the right fit. Because if you're a relatively small firm and you've got this very international culture, we're looking for certain people, people who really genuinely enjoy working with people from different cultures which isn't always as straightforward as working with people from your own culture who have the same cultural references as you and grew up watching the same tv programs after school you know it's very different working with so many different people. So i think that was a really good result i've also been pleased that you know i spoke to a couple of partners last week and they said oh is this the on Tour podcast. And so it's becoming... You know, better and better known within the firm, which is great. But I think I was looking to do more than only the external objective, hit the external objective here.I kind of feel that all marketing communications initiatives should do at least three things, you know, different things. So this is our recruitment. There's the cross-selling thing, but there's also getting the firm comfortable with podcasting as a medium. And we've recorded 23 people so far in the episodes that have been published. We've got three more kind of to come in the next few months. And we've got a plan for where we take it once we've gone on tour to all our offices. But yeah, I think getting comfortable with audio as a medium is one of the early objectives for any firm moving into podcasting because it's different and it's very complementary to other things but but i feel it's because niches work well and because it's easy to do perhaps a little tiny podcast on something very niche that you might not want to get your video kit out for there's lots of possibilities there for firms, and niche is good you know. I don't think podcasting if you're unless you're Joe Rogan, you know, ‘Diary of a CEO’,  a type mega media company. I mean those podcasts have probably 30 people working on them you know. You've niche is good and you shouldn't be scared of small numbers because engagement is so high when you do have someone listening it's so different to download and listen to your podcast is not remotely comparable from someone hitting like on your instagram it's just a different universe of commitment. Does that make sense?

Will: Yeah Absolutely. You don't want hundreds of thousands of people listening to it, especially if you, to your point, very clever in terms of getting partners and lawyers used to the medium, and then you change the dial slightly, and then you say, now aim it at your...Key clients, you know, your two to three key clients. And actually, if they download it, that's the gold, isn't it? You don't want thousands.

Kate: Absolutely. Do you know what, Will? If I said, you know, if anyone said to a key partner, you know, you've got your eye on these particular three prospects. If I flew these, you know, if I got these three prospects in a meeting room in our London office, would you get on a plane from New York to meet them? And if the answer was yes that's what that's you're getting towards that situation with a podcast you know if you have the right people listening it doesn't matter that the numbers don't matter and i think people can get very hung up on numbers, and i don't think numbers matter i think it's about it's about hitting the right people because it's well worth putting together a podcast episode on something if it hits home at the right time and someone you know gets in touch or you know it firms up on a warm prospect and makes them a client. I mean, how great is that? 

Will: Yeah, it's perfect. And now we're just going to go into a quickfire round where I'll throw a few questions at you, Kate. Hopefully nothing really to do with work on these ones. So the first one is going to be, and this is great coming out from the holiday season over Christmas, because there might be some new things. What are you listening to or reading from a book perspective currently?

Kate: Well, I'm going to tell you about my reading, actually. I got given for Christmas a book called Butter by Asako Yuzuki. And it's all over the bestseller books. It's, you know, book of the year or whatever at Waterstones. And it's a lovely one for January because as the title suggests, it's incredibly luxurious. And there's a lot about food and Japanese culture and eating culture. And I've only just started it. I'm about 60 pages in and I'm absolutely loving it. 

Willl: I always write these down and that sounds right up my street. My eldest daughter really wants to get to Japan and she loves everything to do with the culture. So that sounds good. Totally different tangent. What was your first job?

Kate: Oh, it depends how you define, first job. But I think the first thing that I did that I was paid to do was busing food from our village pub kitchen to the tables in the garden. And I think I must have been probably 13 when I did that, maybe 14, it was definitely my first job I felt so grown up yeah. 

Will: And very sociable as well you meet lots of people doing that important job in the pub brilliant. Personally and professionally what is the one bit of technology that you cannot live without?

Kate: I was thinking about this and it's just it's not very original, but I think it's got to be my smart watch right I have no idea how much I would enjoy it because I've always been a watch wearer i use it to time things that i'm cooking to remind me to do stuff and I love not having to have my phone next to me. So on all counts i've really enjoyed that good for fitness it gamifies exercise that kind of thing. I don't like the fact that I know it listens to me and I know it takes that information back and I feel a bit ambivalent about that, but in generally i think it's great really enjoy it.

Will: Have you got one with the sim card type thing in it so you can actually call people on it as well?

Kate: I can take a call on it. I just don't do that, I kind of use it as a kind of substitute for my phone when I don't want to be tied to my phone.

Will: Fair enough there we go. What's a small habit that you have that you think could help others?

Kate: Well, I've got lots of bad habits, but on the good habit front and thinking about work, I've always tried when I'm asking someone to do something or saying a direction in which we're going to go, I always try and explain the why. I always try and make sure, even if it's not somebody that needs to know, I'll still always try to explain the why because I think that happens to be incredibly useful, particularly in a law firm where the boundaries are a little bit blurred between the different people and it helps if everyone knows the overall direction.

Will: Good advice. There we go. Where is your favourite place to visit and why? 

Kate: Oh, it depends how you interpret that, doesn't it? It does. I'm going to take it as a place that I go back to and it's a tiny fishing village called Robin Hoods Bay. Do you know it? it's on the Northeast coast of the UK it's got the north sea on one side, it's got the North Yorkshire moors on the other, and it's very picturesque and gorgeous, but it's also quite wild because it's quite isolated. And i have been going there since I was a baby because one quarter of my grandparents came from there,  and so it's very special to me but it's also like a reset. I think there's something wholesome about going back, somewhere that reminds you of your past and my mother used to go there when she was young and it goes right back down the family line. So I kind of feel close to my roots if you like and as well as being a beautiful little village. Highly recommended.

Will: There we go I've written that down as well sounds like good for dog walking there as well, there we go lovely recommendation I'll check that out. So we're going to wrap up amazingly we're nearly there now. I was going to ask you finally for other people in your shoes, what would your top piece of advice be for your peers that are looking to integrate podcasts into their strategy for marketing and business development or from a recruitment perspective, either way?

Kate: I think that you shouldn't see podcasting as a mass medium or as an extension of other communications. One always wants a bit of content to work in more than one place. But it's different. As we've said, it's very intentional listening. And listeners often have an informational need. So if you go to social media, then that fulfills a social need. I think with podcasting, particularly in professional services, it needs to fill an informational need. It needs to give the listener something. I mean, people listen to your Passle podcast because as you look down all different episodes, you think, oh, that's right on point for what we're looking to do at the moment. And you give it a listen. So always think about the value for the listener, because it is intentional. And if it's not valuable, you know, they're not going to listen. So there's that distinction between what you want people to hear and sitting yourself in their shoes, perhaps more with podcasting than with any other medium and working out why should you listen to this. So as I said, with the recruitment series, I regard it as research material for someone who wants to be a lawyer, maybe in the most general sense or pre-interview prep for someone who's already in our application process. And I think that's the way to think about it. If you have someone listening, you've got them. You know, it's a very high bar engagement with podcasts. And so the numbers are smaller, but the engagement is huge. And that's of enormous value. I think it's much closer to business development than communications. It's not a mass medium. It's not, you shouldn't look at it in the same way as you look at other communications tools, because it's one-to-one. It's more like B2C rather than B2B in a sense, because you're very much talking to a person.

Will: Yeah account-based marketing at its finest doesn't it if you use that 

Kate: I guess yeah.

Will: Amazingly we're at the end Kate, thank you for such valuable advice. I'm sure talking about audiences and you know key engagements, I'm sure lots of people are going to listen to this, that are it's right on point for them.

Kate: I hope so yeah it's a joyful world I think and I do think podcasts can be used for thought leadership purposes for client communication purposes for recruitment purposes you've just got to get your thinking right at the beginning and just fully appreciate what the medium can do and where it's got something over other channels.

Will: Yeah everyone will be, everyone will be doing a podcast after this. Thanks for inviting me in and the office is lovely and your ex-it room is way nicer than I thought it would be. Lovely plush chairs 

Kate: Marvelous thank you it's the blue velvet 

Will: Yeah well it's great yeah. Thank you very much. 

Kate: Thank you Will, great honor to be on the podcast.

Charlie: You can follow the Passle CMO Series Podcast on your preferred podcast platform thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.