Getting schooled: a legal marketer learns the value of an MBA.

• Author: Nathanson, Cortney R.
• Position: Master in Business Administration - Viewpoint essay

Like most LMA members, I spend my time navigating through a myriad of activities: crafting competitive RFP responses; sponsoring conferences and charitable events; cross-selling practice areas to clients with unrealized billing potential. However, there is more to our jobs than just marketing and business development--we must also strive to understand how the firm operates as a business with the goal of influencing not only the firm's marketing strategy, but its corporate strategy as well.

During this economic crisis, law firms face extraordinary challenges, including increased competition for business, pressure to reduce rates, opportunities to merge or be acquired and an overall decrease in profitability. In order to survive, law firms must reduce expenses and strive to maintain revenue, if not increase it. This has translated into layoffs and salary freezes, a mirror image of what is happening in corporate America. Given these pressures, we must evolve our roles and perform more like business advisors to our lawyers than we ever have before. To appreciate the business side of law and to optimize my firm's business development opportunities, I decided to pursue a Master in Business Administration (MBA) degree at the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College in New York. Now, just a few months shy of graduation, I can reflect on what a productive and rewarding, albeit time-intensive, experience it has been.

The MBA education provides an arsenal of knowledge, communications skills, models and tools that can be readily applied to a firm's strategic efforts and critical business decisions. Through the theoretical and practical business management training of an MBA, marketers are better equipped to assess the needs of clients, the challenges posed by competitors, external opportunities and threats and the interrelationships among various functions within the firm.

It also provides for a greater breadth and depth of understanding of business concepts and their applications. In addition to hard skills such as accounting, finance and statistics, the MBA curriculum focuses on soft skills such as leadership, critical thinking and business strategy. According to John Elliott, vice president and dean of the Zicklin School of Business, a key benefit of the MBA program is that "it provides a structured approach to the business vocabulary and the constructs embedded in that vocabulary." He views the MBA in two distinct ways, either as a transitional...