Five keys to building your firm's marketing committee.

• Author: Altholz, Eric D.

Most law firms that engage in serious business development activities have a marketing committee of some kind. A strong and active committee--made up of the right people working in an efficient structure--will help the larger marketing efforts of the firm gain traction and ultimately yield results. There is no magic size or structure for a marketing committee, and what's right for your firm depends on your "marketing culture" and objective factors like size, budget and market position. But here are five things to keep in mind as you build your committee or consider how to improve the effectiveness of a current committee.

[1] Right-Size the Group

A marketing committee should be large enough to allow for reasonable delegation of duties and division of labor, but small enough to be nimble and relatively easy to assemble or poll for quick decisions. Our firm's marketing committee was originally made up of our managing partner, director of administration and marketing coordinator. That approach worked for a while, but it soon became clear that we needed to overhaul our Web site, ads and collateral materials. We also needed to expand our marketing efforts overall in response to developments in our local market and in anticipation of a planned strategic expansion into a new geographic market. More hands were needed on deck.

Shortly after I joined the committee, we significantly expanded the budget and expectations for the firm's marketing activities. We hired a director of marketing, and we engaged a legal marketing consulting firm to help us with our strategy and Web site redesign. With the added horsepower of our consultants and a senior-level marketing professional on staff, we elevated our overall marketing program both in terms of quality and capacity. Clearly, we were moving forward.

More recently, we realized that the committee needed broader representation from our stakeholders. So we added two more partners to our committee: one from our relatively new Boston office and the other from a successful, specialty practice group, which brought our total lawyer count to four. For now, we think the committee is the right size for our 100-lawyer firm. Any smaller, and we'd feel even more overwhelmed by the task and not as connected to the firm; any larger, and the group would become unwieldy.

[2] Get the Right People (No Experience Necessary)

As organizational hierarchies go, law firms in general are relatively flat, and that's the case for many...