Gone are the days when marketing professionals had a low-key role in a law firm. Today, they inspire business success, says Clare Rodway

Unusually for the public relations industry press, a legal PR story made front-page news of the industry’s bible PR Week earlier in the summer - the fact that Clifford Chance was preparing to hire its first UK PR consultancy. It was refreshing to see a law firm PR story grabbing such headlines.

PR Week considered this so novel that it devoted a full page to investigating ‘the climate in which law firms and their communicators operate’. It painted a bleak picture of law firms supposedly ‘lacking any single corporate message for agencies to sell’, even of ‘extremely knowledgeable and arrogant people in the law disagreeing with PR consultancy advice’, and the abject ‘failure of PR companies to build successful relationships with law firms’, plus an assertion that such failure is ‘inevitable’.


Having specialised in legal profession communications since restrictions on marketing and PR were relaxed in 1987, I was horrified by the analysis of the (allegedly minimal) progress the lawyers have made since then. It is, of course, bunkum.


Initially, law firms did struggle to understand marketing concepts such as ‘brands’ and ‘brand values’, preferring to cling to a pre-occupation with the superficial - the quick-fix logos, the gloss on the brochures, corporate brollies, pens and untargeted, ill-thought-out parties. But in a relatively short time, they learned to look deeper and focus first on identifying the underlying strengths and values in the business - the common vision and purpose of the equity partners - and then moving on to how to communicate these values to key audiences.


Similarly, it is true that in the earliest days of legal marketing, in-house marketing professionals struggled to find an authoritative voice inside the business and found themselves often marginalised. It is always going to be hard for a fee- spender to gain respect in what is essentially a fee-earning culture.


However, much has changed in the past 15 years. First, the profile and pedigree of the marketing and PR professionals operating in the legal sector, whether in-house or consultancy, have changed. Today, senior professionals in major firms typically have a strong business or strategic planning background. They are increasingly seen as core members of the management team, with partner-equivalent status and, in the best cases, seats on the management board. They are expected to make a real business contribution, rather than being just ‘the lady (sic) who organises the brochures and brollies’.


Hand in hand with this is the fact that law firms themselves have learned to listen to these professionals, to work with them and to make space in the organisation to allow them to play out their role properly.


Some larger PR consultancies say they are unhappy with monthly retainer fees typically below £10,000 - perhaps this explains the anecdotal stories of big agencies delegating work to juniors who, understandably, struggle to do good work for such unusual, complex and demanding clients. One suspects it is precisely this kind of attitude from agencies that leads law firms to complain about them.


Marketing professionals have done much to promote their standing in the legal profession and thus increase their recognition, respect and influence. Perhaps it is time for lawyers and advisers to turn their attention to the outside world, to shout about how far the profession has evolved to smart commercial businesses with a sophisticated understanding of both marketing and PR.


Clare Rodway is managing director of specialist professional services consultancy Kysen PR