Heather Morse began her career in legal marketing in 1998, after spending 10 years working with non-profit and member service organizations. After serving in senior marketing positions with AmLaw 100 law firms, Heather is currently the Chief Business Development
Wow. I cannot believe I’ve now spent a full lifetime as a legal marketer. When I started at my first firm, back in 1998, we were just launching 2nd generation websites, and I was tasked to shepherd through this program called InterAction (by InterFace). There have been many changes over the years, and, sadly, too many things that have stayed the same.
So, what have I learned these past 18 years? A lot, I am certain. But rather than make a list, I’ll sum my experience and my job up to this, from “The Great One”:
And perhaps that is the difference between good and great legal marketers.
When I arrived at my first legal marketing job (it was a job then, not a career), we did good work. By the time I left, we were doing great work, as defined by Gretzky. We were starting to move ahead from where the business model was to where the industry was headed.
And I just kept moving forward, always playing “where the puck is going to be.”
Eighteen years have gone by. I’ve worked at mega firms, regional law, and boutiques. I have been part of a firm that acquired another, and have been on the acquiring end as well. In these 18 years I have had two kids, two husbands, and survived the Great Recession.
As an industry, we know we’re not returning to the “good ol’ days,” and our law firm leaders (managing partners, CFOs, CTOS, CMOs, CHROs) have all joined forces and are out there leading. But will the firms, and the attorneys in those firms, follow us?
I keep reading depressing story after depressing story of how law firms just aren’t moving in the right direction and the doomsday clock of 2020 has started ticking (Law Firm Leaders Still Aren’t Listening (James Bliwas), or Clients to Law Firms: Most of You Still Stuck in the Past (BTI), or Altman Weil’s 2016 Law Firms In Transition (pdf) survey, or Developing legal talent: Stepping into the future law firm (Deloitte), to link just a few.
Sometimes the depressing stories are so overwhelming that I wonder “What am I doing in this industry?”
And then my inner Pollyanna comes out to play. Continue Reading What I’ve learned in 18 years of legal marketing
I cannot believe that it’s been a week since I attended the CMO Summit at the Legal Marketing Association’s annual conference featuring Leonardo Inghilleri. Leadership can’t be taught in five hours, you need five days or more to take a deep dive. That said, what a great program. It’s an unspoken rule to not live-tweet the CMO Summit, so I did not, but I’d like to touch on a few things.
My first take-away, for LMA, is that this is a great opportunity for us to create a new online education program for our current and future leaders. Leadership is lacking in law firms, law firm marketing departments, and everything we touch. There is a void. There is a need. Fill it. (Is that direct enough??)
My second take-away is that leaders cannot lead if they don’t know where they are going. Even if you have an idea of where you are going, how are you going to get there without a guiding, moral compass?
Your compass is your personal mission statement. You have one, right? If not, I cannot underestimate the value of having one. If you don’t have one, you’re probably wondering, “What the hell is that, and how do you create one?” Continue Reading Leadership isn’t just for CMOs – Thoughts from #LMA16
We all attend professional conferences. Some are close-knit groups, such as the Legal Marketing Association’s Annual Conference; others will have 10s of thousands in attendance, and take over a whole city (ACC Annual Meeting, CES, NRF’s Big Show).
Sometimes we will know no one attending, other times hundreds due to our level of involvement in the organization.
No matter how many people you know or don’t know, speaker or not, first time attendee or not, you need to prepare to maximize the time you will be there, and out of the office.
I start to prepare for a conference approximately two weeks or so before my departure. When I say I do these things, I really do them, and I coach others to do so as well for one reason: They work. Continue Reading Don’t be a lurker. 6 Things to Do BEFORE Attending a Conference
I just watched the short (< 2 minutes) video from the National Director of Brand, Creative & Content Marketing for Deloitte Digital talking about the future of the CMO (that’s the Chief Marketing Officer if you’re wondering). He summed up the current role of the CMO as:
“Mad Men collaborating with the Math Men.”
Perfectly sums up what I do for a living right there.
I am excited to be a CMO/Director of Marketing/First Chair Marketer in a law firm in 2016. The industry continues to change and evolve. I’ve been doing this for 18 years, and in the beginning, we were about newsletters, collateral, events, and this funky thing called a website.
Today we’re collaborating with IT, finance, library and other departments on marketing data hubs, pricing and performance, CI have found their ways under our umbrella and into the board room.
We’re forward thinkers, business thinkers, change-agent thinkers.
We’re leaders. We’re collaborators. We’re colleagues.
When I look to the future of legal marketing, I don’t look to Latham, but to our colleagues in other professional services organizations. CMO.Deloitte is in my “First Read” folder for a good reason.
To me, one of the greatest attributes I can have is to be a collector of information. I go out, seek new and exciting information, return to my firm, reinterpret for my industry, and implement as best I can.
It’s not always pretty, and it is never quick, but I can also say, it is never boring.
My goal for 2016 is to get myself nominated to attend the CMO.Deloitte 2nd annual Next Generation CMO Academy.
In my morning meditation yesterday I read a quote that stuck with me throughout the day:
The only course open to me, if I was to attain a joyous life for myself (and subsequently for those I love), was one in which I imposed on myself an effort of commitment, discipline, and responsibility.
Daily Reflections, p. 55
The first thing that popped into my head was the food program I am on. I’ve not committed to it. I committed 100% the first week, got great results, and have been doing it my way for the past two, and haven’t had positive results (go figure, right?).
I’ve been yo-yoing around with 4 lbs. the past two weeks and I am tired of it. What did I need to do to commit to this program that obviously worked when I wasn’t working it? I paused and became conscious of everything thing I ate and drank during the day. I prepared, and when tempted to do it my way, I made a conscious choice not to. I stopped participating and committed to doing this once and for all, one day at a time. This morning, I will commit to my food plan for today.
Then I rounded the corner and I thought about my job. It will be a year next week that I joined my firm. I haven’t always been joyous, so I paused and asked myself: Am I committed or am I just involved? Continue Reading Am I committed, or just involved?
This year has gotten off to a horrible start. First David Bowie. Then Glenn Frye. And now Christine Milligan and Richards Barger Christine Milligan was my mother-in-law. She passed away on Sunday from complications of living a very grand life. She would have been 96 in a couple weeks, and she leaves behind a family who loved and adored her. Chris was a true lady. A gritty kind of southern belle who didn’t fit into anybody’s box or stereotype. She shocked her Alabama community by going off to college to Washington, D.C. rather than going to one of the local colleges in Tennessee or Alabama to earn her MRS. When the war broke out, she went to work for the government. She eventually married a returning soldier, who became a doctor, and settled in Newport Beach, CA. In her late 30s and early 40s she finally had her kids. Chris was the best. She opened her beach house to not only me and my kids, when we would invade her quiet sanctity for many a weekend, but she opened her home to my family, and my sister’s family, and their friends. She was a wonderful and gracious woman, and one of the greatest honors I have is to say I was able to make her a grandmother.
The other loss this week was Richards Barger. He was the founding partner of Barger & Wolen (now a part of Hinshaw & Culbertson), one of the best law firms I have ever had the pleasure of working in. Mr. Barger was an icon in the insurance regulatory community. Every conference I attended, every event our firm sponsored, the first question everyone had was, “Is Mr. Barger here?” He had such reverence and respect for the community in which he served. Young or old, everyone knew, adored and respected Mr. Barger. Continue Reading A couple of my heros have passed away
Happy New Year, everyone. I spent my morning sitting on my couch, watching the Rose Parade and trolling Facebook for healthy eating ideas (should I do the 100 Days of Real Food challenge, or just go with some detox?) and alternatives for the gym (Yogi’s Anonymous is leading my choices). The Sports Dude slept in before heading off to cover the Rose Bowl Game, and the kids slept at friends’ houses. Basically, this year began like every other year. In other words, it was quiet around here. Just me, a good cup of coffee and my laptop. I usually take the time between Christmas and New Year’s off from work as it gives me the opportunity to process, reflect, and think about the year that was, and what is to come. I’ve written before that I do not make New Year’s Resolutions; I make daily resolutions. However, if you ask my kids, I’m a control freak and I have to have a plan. I like to have a theme for the year in order to answer the inevitable, “What’s your New Year’s Resolution?” It’s much easier to live a theme on a daily basis then try and live up to the outlandish and unachievable resolutions people make. In my struggle to find my theme for the year, I found it staring at me from across the room in HD:
Find Your Adventure. Photo: @RoseParade
Thank you to the 127th Tournament of Rose’s Parade for a great theme and mantra for 2016: Find Your Adventure. Watching the parade, you can’t help but appreciate how the theme takes on different meaning for each float coming down Colorado Boulevard, just as it will mean something different for each and everyone of us. Continue Reading Don’t seek resolutions. Find your adventure.
Yes, Virginia, there is an Internet snark out there who judged me in a passive-aggressive Facebook post. Not to worry. I’ve been judged on Twitter, in a blog post (or three), and God only knows where else as well. I can take it. As I am prone to say, if you don’t have haters, you’re not doing it right. Of course, upon discovery of the post, my first reaction is to want to protect and defend myself, but I have been well trained in leadership and I took a step back to self-reflect. I asked myself a few questions: Continue Reading I’ve been judged (on Facebook). I’ll own that.
I get asked this question a lot these days, “What’s it like to fill Jonathan Fitzgarrald’s shoes?”
I just reply back honestly, “I don’t know. I brought my own.” “Filling the shoes,” so to speak, of another person is challenging. Filling the shoes of half your dog & pony show can be daunting. Like myself prior to joining this firm, Jonathan was in his position for nearly eight years. He had seen through a culture change and shift. He saw through the passing of the baton from one generation of law firm leaders to the next. He was witness as the old guard of rainmakers retired, and the new guard took root. The firm Jonathan left is much different than the firm he joined. And I am now having my own unique experience. I will get to witness the firm I joined on February 23, 2015, evolve into something different. I will hopefully have the ability to influence and help shape things where I can. But that’s not what this blog post is about. So what is this post about? I suppose my first 90 days (yes, it’s been 90 days), the things that I have noticed, and things that I would share with anyone walking into a new position. Continue Reading What’s it like to fill Jonathan Fitzgarrald’s shoes? Lessons from my first 90 days.