TL;DR

Most regional law firms build their marketing department based on available budget, not on the functions the department needs to perform. The result is a team that is either understaffed in the wrong places or carrying roles that do not connect to attorney-driven business development. Structure follows function. Function follows strategy. Most firms skip both steps.

At most regional American Lawyer (AmLaw) firms, the marketing department grew the way most things grow inside law firms: reactively. A marketing coordinator was hired when the workload got unmanageable. A director was added when the coordinator needed supervision. A business development manager was brought in when a managing partner read an article about rainmaking. Each hire made sense at the time. None of them were made against a defined structure.

The result is a department that does not match what the firm actually needs from it.

What a law firm marketing department is supposed to do

Before arguing about structure, it helps to be specific about function. A law firm marketing department has four core responsibilities.

First, firm-level brand and visibility. This includes the website, directory submissions, rankings, awards, and anything that shapes how the firm appears to prospective clients who have not yet met an attorney.

Second, practice group and attorney support. This is the campaign work: targeted content, event planning, RFP responses, pitch materials, and anything that gives an attorney a credible reason to reach out to a specific target.

Third, business development infrastructure. CRM management, pipeline tracking, contact database hygiene, and the systems that let attorneys and the department coordinate on active pursuits.

Fourth, measurement. Tracking what the department produced, not just what it did. Most departments track activity. Few track outcomes.

Most regional firm marketing departments are staffed to handle the first category competently, to struggle through the second inconsistently, and to largely ignore the third and fourth. That is not a staffing problem. It is a structural problem.

The most common structural mistake

The most common structural mistake at regional firms is hiring a marketing coordinator before hiring a director. It feels like the right order because coordinators are less expensive and the immediate need is usually administrative: someone to manage the website updates, coordinate the event logistics, send the client alerts.

But a coordinator without a director is a department without strategy. The coordinator executes whatever the managing partner or practice group chairs request, which means the department’s output is driven by whoever asks for something first. There is no prioritization. There is no connection to business development goals. There is no measurement.

The right hire is a director first. A director defines what the department is supposed to produce before adding staff to produce it.

What the right structure looks like at different firm sizes

Structure is not one-size-fits-all. It scales with firm size, but the sequencing stays consistent.

At firms with 50 to 100 attorneys, the right structure is a marketing director supported by one coordinator. The director owns strategy, attorney relationships, and measurement. The coordinator handles execution. Any specialty work, design, digital, PR, gets contracted out. Two people running a focused department will outperform five people running an unfocused one.

At firms with 100 to 250 attorneys, the department typically needs three to four people: a director, a business development manager, a content and digital specialist, and a coordinator. The business development manager is the key addition at this size, since the volume of attorney-level BD support requests outpaces what a director can handle alongside strategic work.

At firms with 250 to 500 attorneys, a chief marketing officer replaces the director title, and the department expands to include practice group-aligned BD managers, a dedicated digital and CRM function, and often a communications or PR role. The structural risk at this size is siloing: practice group teams that stop communicating with each other and with firm leadership.

The role most firms are missing

Across firm sizes, the role most consistently missing is a business development manager focused on attorney coaching and campaign execution. Not a coordinator. Not a generalist. Someone whose specific job is to sit with attorneys, understand their BD targets, brief the rest of the department on what those attorneys need, and hold both parties accountable to the plan.

This role is the structural connection between attorney intent and department output. Without it, the department produces content and events that attorneys do not use, and attorneys pursue BD relationships without the marketing support that would make those pursuits more effective.

Most firms do not have this role because it is hard to explain in a job posting and hard to justify in a budget conversation. It does not produce a deliverable you can point to. It produces attorney behavior change, which takes 90 days to see and longer to measure. That makes it the most important role in the department and the last one to get funded.

The org chart is not the problem

It is worth saying directly: restructuring a marketing department does not fix a BD problem. Structure creates the conditions for effective work. It does not do the work.

A well-structured department still needs attorneys who know how to direct it. That is a training problem, not a structure problem, and it requires a different intervention. But a poorly structured department makes even the best attorney-to-marketing handoff impossible, because there is no one on the receiving end who is set up to execute on it.

Get the structure right first. Then address the training.

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