Marketing and BD leaders 2019
reports|April 2019Where is legal drawing its marketing and BD leaders from now?
GET YOUR COPY OF MBD LEADERS NOW
INSIDE
Who’s leading BD and marketing functions, how diverse are they, and is legal finally drawing more MBD leaders from beyond its own world?
WHAT'S ALL THIS?
In this first Briefing Leaders report, we ask law firms exactly who is leading their business services functions into 2020, and what that may ‘say’ about evolving law firm strategy. This report covers marketing and business development (MBD) leaders at 124 firms, with revenues ranging from £19m to £1.79bn. Which specific role titles are on the rise and why, where are the new leaders coming from and, importantly, how are firms doing when it comes to business leadership diversity?
LEADERS AT C-LEVEL?
The number of C-level titles over the last five years has remained flat (4%) – with ‘director’ titles decreasing 2% and ‘head of’ titles increasing 4% compared to 2013. But there are more ‘separated’ job titles – now 134 distinct roles in 124 firms. There has been more separation of ‘marketing’ and ‘business development’ as functions, though the most common title still includes both words together.
MOBILITY ON THE MOVE
The amount of ‘in hiring’ remains similar to 2013 – across firms of all revenue bands, the majority of leaders (55%) still come from other law firms, though there is proportionately more variation at the top end. Almost a fifth (19%) of leaders come from another professional services or a financial services firm, but there is little change in the sectors from which top legal MBD professionals are being hired.
IMPROVING DIVERSITY
The ‘gender gap’ has widened slightly, with women taking an expanded 58% of MBD leadership positions. More strikingly, there’s been a shift from a relatively equal share across all revenue bands to more variation between the largest and smallest firms, with the £20–50m band containing many more women BD leaders and the £200m–£600m band having more men.
