Dallas-based Haynes and Boone decided last year to kick its marketing efforts up a notch by reorganizing the department and hiring a chief marketing officer who is not an attorney. “We totally restructured what we had done for the past 20 years to put ourselves in a position to be more competitive,” says partner Timothy E. Powers, chairman of the firm’s business development committee. “It’s going to the next level in a more competitive environment,” he says.
The firm, which has 414 attorneys in Texas and 481 firmwide, reorganized its efforts into a business development group and a marketing group, with the nonlawyer directors of each group reporting to chief marketing officer Blain Banick.
Powers says the firm did a national search to find Banick, who has an M.B.A. The marketing staff, which is centralized in Dallas, is responsible for activities such as sponsorships, advertising and communications, Powers says. “The director of business development has a team of professionals embedded with our practice groups and offices that work on business development and opportunities,” he says.
Haynes and Boone is one of several Texas firms — large and small — that have reorganized, restructured or created marketing departments over the past year. El Paso-based Kemp Smith hired its first marketing professional in December 2007. Dallas-based Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell is currently trying to hire its first chief marketing officer. Dallas-based Munsch Hardt Kopf & Harr decided that one staff member could no longer handle both the recruiting and marketing responsibilities for the 100-attorney firm, and hired an additional professional on staff to handle marketing and public relations. And Thompson & Knight promoted its marketing manager to a newly created position of chief client services officer.
This focus on marketing staff members is reflected in Texas Lawyer‘s 2008 Salary and Billing Survey, which indicates that marketers are among the law firm employees who are enjoying the largest salary increases for 2008. Firms across Texas gave raises this year of about 4 percent to 4.5 percent for most legal and nonlegal staff members, according to the 71 firms responding to the survey. Marketing directors were among those to see the highest average pay raises of 7.8 percent from $68,636 to $73,984. Technology and finance managers also received hefty increases over the previous year’s survey, of 7.8 percent and 7.5 percent respectively. Average salaries for information services managers rose from $94,825 in 2007 to $102,243 this year. And average salaries for finance directors increased from $98,481 last year to $105,872 in 2008.
The firms also reported increased hourly billing rates for attorneys, ranging from an average 4.5 percent for first-year associates from $176 to $184 per hour, to 5.8 percent for non-equity partners from $292 to $309 per hour.
Haynes and Boone was one of the large Texas firms that last summer raised associate salaries including an increase to $160,000 for first-year associates. Powers says that billing rates have to include the increasing costs of competing for the market’s best talent. “If you want to hire the best and the brightest, you have to be able to compete by providing top salaries in the marketplace,” he says. “The market drives everything.”
The firms reported only slightly higher expectations than last year when it comes to attorneys’ billable hours. According to the 2008 survey, billable hours ranged from an average 1.6 percent increase for associates from 37.5 to 38.1 hours per week, to a 2.8 percent average increase for equity partners from 35.9 to 36.9 hours per week.
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