Top Marketers Leaving Philly Law Firms
In an article titled, "Chief Marketing Officers Are Dropping Off at Some Law Firms," (subscription required) the Philadelphia Legal Intelligencer is reporting:
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Stephen D. Barrett will be leaving Drinker Biddle, but has yet to provide an exact date of departure. He joined Drinker as its CMO in September 2005 and has been commuting from his Boston home to Philadelphia each week. He would spend the week in the city and travel back to Massachusetts for the weekend.
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Since January 2008, Duane Morris has seen the departure of its senior marketing manager, Holly Lentz Kleeman, and its senior director of marketing/CRM manager, Pat Purdy now works for Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman in New York.
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Mark P. Trice, announced in August 2007 that he would be leaving the firm to move to become Chief Marketing Officer at vcfo, a financial consulting and administrative infrastructure support services company in Austin, TX.
- Blain Banick started at Ballard Spahr in October 2004 as the firm's CMO. He left the firm in the fall of 2007 to take a similar position at Dallas-based Haynes & Boone.
- Morgan Lewis lost its director of communications, Paul Webb, and decided to do away with the position.
Doesn't sound like a domino effect. Any thoughts on why? or is it still just dangerous to be a CMO?
Some of the turnover is actually due to personal reasons, like long commutes or spouses getting jobs elsewhere.
But it's tough being a CMO. The biggest danger they face is a change in leadership. With a new managing partner, a CMO can go from being a movie star to deadwood in a day.
The next fearsome danger is a drop in firm revenue. Many law firms don't understand that marketing is the jet fuel that's keeping the plane in the air, and they cut marketing dollars in bad times.
~Larry