Legal marketing: evolving as a career.

• Author: Hickey, Brian
• Position: About This Issue

The state of legal marketing has come a long way in a relatively short time. In doing so, it has followed a clearly defined track that started in the 1970s with accounting firms, borrowing techniques from traditional product marketing. The banking industry followed suit in the 1980s; in turn, law firms followed with their first concerted attempts at strategic brand advertising in the 1990s.

Since then, law firms and legal marketing have an increasing number of marketing professionals who have worked exclusively in the legal profession for the duration of their relatively young careers. In her piece on legal marketing education, Silvia Hodges neatly brackets the state of legal marketing education. As Hodges writes: "... the legal sector has undergone greater transformations during the last three decades than in the last two centuries." Hodges draws her insights from hands-on experience, having established the "Law Firm Marketing" course at Fordham Law School, where she also teaches about law firms as businesses.

Continuing in the marketing vein, Theresa DeLoach and Gabrielle Lipson, in "Successful Practice Area Marketing," weigh in on the rigors of strategic thinking and planning. They point out that marketing and practice development personnel are being tasked with finding new ways to effectively engage in practice-specific marketing. They offer many valuable...