Thank you, Society 54! Honored to be one of your Outlaws! This intro tho (blushing!) … wow!
“Discover the extraordinary leadership of Roy Sexton, the driving force behind Clark Hill Law’s marketing, branding, and communications triumphs. With over 25 years of rich experience in the fields of marketing, communications, business development, and strategic planning, he’s a true mastermind. His crowning achievement? Serving as the 2023 International President of the Legal Marketing Association – LMA International. Together with his exceptional team, Roy is forging a new path in professional services marketing. Meet the man steering the ship to success.”
Roy is a highly accomplished professional with a wealth of experience in marketing, branding, communications, and business development. He has spent more than 25 years in the industry, honing his skills and expertise to become one of the most sought-after experts in his field.
Throughout his career, Roy has worked with numerous organizations across different industries, helping them develop and implement effective marketing strategies that drive growth and success. He is known for his exceptional abilities in strategic planning, identifying new opportunities for businesses to expand their reach and improve their bottom line.
Enjoy getting to know the Outlaw, Roy Sexton!
Q: What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? A: Being in a particularly boisterous crowd who won’t let me finish one story.
Q:Where would you like to live? A: Narnia, Wonderland, or Oz … my hubby would like to move one day to Portland or Seattle (but we probably should visit there first!)
Q:What is your idea of happiness? A: Having a quiet, slightly rainy day with zero requests from anyone, my husband on the couch napping with our dogs Henry J and Hudson, and me in my chair with a big pile of comic books.
Q:Who is your real-life hero? A: My husband is one of the most generous, selfless people I know with a deep commitment to his friends. I aspire to be more like him as I fear I’m a mile wide and an inch deep where relationships are concerned.
Q:What is your motto? A: “Tell people what they mean to you in the moment when it will mean something to them.” – Susie Sexton … also, “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde
Q:What is your greatest fear? A: Filling out questionnaires where I say something too revealing, stupid, or misspelled.
Q:To what faults do you feel most indulgent? A: Is there a word count limit here? Talking too much, co-opting others’ stories with my own, overstaying my welcome, buying too many action figures, wearing costumes when other people simply wear clothing, eating too much fried food, wishing to rescue every homeless animal …
Q:Finish this sentence: “If I could have one super-power, it would be…” A: To make sure people never act like smart alecks with each other, never tease each other, never act snide, and always simply support one another
Q:Who are your favorite authors or what are your favorite books? A: Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury, Eugene O’Neill, Toni Morrison, Tennessee Williams, Alice Walker, Tony Kushner, Susie Duncan Sexton
Q:If you could have dinner with one person, dead or alive, who would it be and why? A: Jennifer Garner. She just seems like a deeply decent human being who doesn’t take herself too seriously but would still have wicked stories to share.
Q:What got you into working in the legal industry? A: Serendipity. I had been in health care strategic planning and marketing for over a decade. And I’d grown tired of that bureaucracy. I threw my resume out there in 2011 and was hired by my first firm. That said, I also joined the Legal Marketing Association then as well, and that’s when I knew I’d found my calling.
Q:Your favorite musician or band? A: Madonna. Janet. Kylie. Britney. Beyonce. Gaga. Do you really need to ask?
Q:What is your current state of mind? A: Loopy. I think I’m generally loopy. But when I embrace it, magic happens.
Q:Your favorite virtue? A: Decency. It takes so little to simply be decent. It takes so much more energy to act like a jerk.
Q:What would you consider your greatest achievement? A: My relationship – 25 years strong. My professional network – 32,000 and counting on LinkedIn. And serving as the 2023 International President of the Legal Marketing Association – including singing with a drag queen in Florida at the height of their governor’s homophobia.
Q:Finish this sentence: “If I won the lottery tomorrow I would…” A: Build the biggest animal rescue the world had ever seen.
Q:Who would you have liked to be? A: Ryan Reynolds, Ryan Gosling, or Hugh Jackman.
You know you’re a certain age when films you saw in the theatre in your adult life are being remade with some regularity. I think I first felt this pang when they remade Footloose and “reimagined” The Karate Kid, but actually I had seen neither of those films in the theatre during their original runs (and even now I don’t think I’ve watched either all the way through). Carrieand Robocopappear to get remade every ten minutes, but for some reason this déjà vu feeling doesn’t quite apply to horror movies nor thrillers. Nor to cash grab live action re-dos of Disney animated films. And Endless Love I’d never seen the first time (nor wanted to), and I can barely remember seeing the remake (but apparently I did … thank heavens for this blog’s archive).
However, seeing The Color Purple last month (which I loved) hit a little too close to home. Admittedly, the original came out nearly 40 years ago, but I have clear memories of seeing it on the big screen in 1985 as well as studying it in college.
Annnnd then … Mean Girls hit cineplexes just a few weeks later, another film that became a Broadway hit musical that re-became a film. This one is messing with my temporal triangulation! The first flick, starring Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Amanda Seyfried, Lacey Chabert, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Lizzy Caplan, and Tim Meadows still feels like a “new” movie to me. I know it’s 20 years old … hush. So, I approached this latest iteration with some trepidation. I don’t mind remakes. In fact, I enjoy seeing what people do with a time-tested tale, contemporizing and offering new contextual commentary. I just couldn’t envision how Mean Girls could be revisited without becoming cliché.
Color me wrong. And let’s all wear pink on Wednesdays. The new film musical of Mean Girls is so fetch. Yes, they finally made fetch happen.
In great part because Tina Fey has remained the chief architect of this franchise (does it qualify as a “multiverse” now?), the 2023 Mean Girls keeps its true north around tolerance, acceptance, authenticity, and, yes, feminism. The central thesis of the original film is a) teenagers can be truly awful to each other, b) said behavior is a reflection of endemic misogyny and classism in our society, and c) human beings can be gobsmackingly shallow regardless their age.
Mean Girls has always offered a wink and a sneer at Hollywood’s arrested development regarding high school-set coming of age stories. On its surface, Mean Girls is just as self-reverentially, um, plastic as, say, Grease or Breakfast Club or anything on The CW. But under the marabou feathers and platform sneakers, Mean Girls is a witty and dark-hearted satire on the state of our have/have-not instant gratification culture. For someone to rise, someone else must fall – why live in abundance when you can elevate yourself by ruining someone else? In this way, Mean Girls has as much Arthur Miller and Nathaniel Hawthorne in its DNA as it does Clueless or Fast Times at Ridgemont High or even Heathers(three other teen-centered flicks that get it right … Easy A and Edge of Seventeen which arrived after the first Mean Girls do so as well).
So what does the addition of wry, at times nightmarishly day-glo and surreal musical numbers add to this mélange? Quite a bit, in fact. My only quibble with the original film was what felt like tonal whiplash between Mel Brooks-level absurdity and Afterschool Special angst and back again. Perhaps unsurprisingly, wedging one teen pastiche pop ditty after another into the mix brings it all into perfect relief.
Admittedly, the songs by Jeff Richmond (Fey’s husband) and lyricist Nell Benjamin (who also worked on the musically superior Legally Blonde the Musical … I’m sensing a pattern here) are a smidge forgettable. Less than 24 hours later, I couldn’t hum a bar of any number to save my soul. Sorry … “Revenge Party” … THAT one sticks in your head – catchy AND grating at the same time. But no one goes to Mean Girls expecting Sondheim or Rodgers & Hammerstein.
That said, the staging of each number is clever and frisky and fun. The hum drum environs of high school hallways unfold into African pride lands; science labs explode in confetti and parade floats; teen ragers freeze into chiaroscuro tableaus … all while the respective musical confessionals proceed. First time directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. and cinematographer Bill Kirstein run headlong into the delightful kitsch of musical theatre while breaking it wide open cinematically. That ain’t easy. The Hollywood box office is strewn with the corpses of other movie musicals that have tried and really, really, really failed (see: Cats … no don’t).
The cast is damn dynamite, achieving the near impossible – honoring what came before (which lives on digitally for instant streaming comparison) while enhancing and expanding. The original film was an artifact of its day – social media wasn’t the monster it is now, cell phones were still a luxury for some, and fat-shaming and light homophobia were easy punch lines. Thankfully, Fey is a sensitive progressive who knows just what to walk back and what to bring forward. There is also more nuance in what a “mean girl” even is, highlighting that we are taught by a patriarchal society to turn on each other in a mistaken bid for relevance and that true relevance comes from embracing (and loving) the awkward in us all.
To that end, one of the best additions to the script is a final act chat between protagonist Cady Harron (a relatable and temperate Angourie Rice, channeling a teen version of Amy Adams with less vocal prowess) and queen bee Regina George (an ass-kicking star turn by Renee Rapp who could be the love child of Madonna, Adele, and Will & Grace’s Karen Walker). The two run into each other in the restroom during their high school’s “Spring Fling.” If you know the original film, basically all the bad stuff has happened at this point, Regina is in a neck brace, and Cady has won the math competition. So this scene is just, well, a conversation – a long overdue one, between two human beings who have spent the past two hours misunderstanding each other, trying to outdo each other, and scoring points against each other. For the first time, we see them communing as beautifully vulnerable humans and as the kids they are. Don’t fret. The scene isn’t maudlin, and Rapp is far too gifted to not wring a laugh out of every moment; yet, this quiet scene is an important addition to the Mean Girls canon as it demonstrates the power of true connection.
I would be remiss – asleep at the switch in fact – if I didn’t give a huge shout out to Moana’s Auli’i Cravalho as tragicomic narrator/instigator Janis ‘Imi’ike and her partner in well-intentioned crime Jaquel Spivey playing Damian Hubbard. Whereas Cady was the heart and soul of the original film, the remake takes its cue from some of Shakespeare’s best comedies and shifts that spotlight onto the more interesting second bananas. Spivey is genius with the kind of zingers only the long-bullied can muster (“the safe joy of dancing with theatre boys”), but Cravalho nearly runs away with the picture: think Vanessa Hudgens meets Janeane Garafalo, yet still entirely her own creation. Lizzy Caplan was arch perfection as Janis Ian in the original Mean Girls, and Cravalho takes it all next level. The screen lights up every time she enters the frame. She channels brilliantly how so many of us felt in high school, still discovering our sarcastic abilities to critique the artifice of it all while hurting that we weren’t simply accepted for the differences that made us freakishly perfect.
I can’t wait to see what Cravalho – and Rapp – do next. The future is queer. And beautiful.
My Legal Marketing Association pals Sarah Minjoe and Amy Trevino absolutely made my day with this arrival a few weeks back! At our #LMASW23 conference they had included me in a presentation that also referenced Ted Lasso. Fine company in which to be!
They mailed me some of the materials, as I was not able to attend, and included this beautiful letter. Their kindness means the world and their contributions to our community are joyous and profound.
In return, I framed all of this, placed it all on my office wall (which dangerously is starting to resemble the decor of a Ruby Tuesday restaurant), and sent a photo along with this note: “I told you I’d frame these! You are now proudly alongside the boys of 98 Degrees in my Detroit Clark Hill office!”
WHICH … in turn, prompted them to ask: 98 Degrees?! And I replied …
As for how this 98 Degrees thing came to be, it’s a long and sordid story. Not that you need to read these posts but somewhat captured over years on my blog:
In short, my hubby is CRAZY for them – I was always like, “meh.” (I was more of a 90s diva gay – Madonna, Janet, Whitney, etc.) That said, I took my hubby to see them in 2000 at the height of their … fame. My husband, who is a gentle soul, was embarrassed that we were the only dudes and the only people over 12 in attendance, so we left after one song.
Years later, I took him for his birthday to a NKOTB/BoyzIIMen/98 Degrees package tour and paid a ridiculous amount for a meet and greet. John was less embarrassed this time. Everyone was … older. And gayer.
Interestingly, in a twist on inclusion, our VIP package included two … women’s t-shirts. Nick Lachey seemed particularly befuddled there were boys in the VIP line to meet them. Jeff Timmons (who we’d met a year or two prior at a Ferndale Pride event) couldn’t have been lovelier.
And then, a few years later (tracking against where their popularity now is), they were playing the Motor City Casino. We saw them twice in two successive years. I sprung for the VIP meet and greets again. John is now at this point giddy to meet them. They “get” that their audience is far more diverse. I suspect Jeff helped with that. Drew is also lovely. And they couldn’t have been kinder the last few times we saw them. Genuinely appreciative.
I mean, they are all basically my age. I think it helps that I’m just like “hey guys, good to see you again” (while my hubby melts). And looking at these pictures you’ll see how comical that is.
Jeff and I now have a light twitter friendship – for lack of any better term. I’m not saying there’s a strong connection, but he’s savvy enough to respond on twitter and insta and is always very gracious. And I in turn comment and share his content sometimes.
So … that’s how this happened. Welcome to my very weird world.
Thank you, Joseph Panetta and Anna Spektor at Expert Webcast for this opportunity to talk about authenticity, branding, marketing (legal or otherwise), and community. This conversation Friday afternoon sent me into the weekend on Cloud 9. Such a joy to be able to share stories with a friend I love and admire. Joseph, you are THE consummate host – prepared, warm, accessible, kind. Such a welcoming environment. Thank you.
“Roy Sexton, Legal Marketing Association President and Clark Hill Law Head of Marketing, gets up close and personal on our CMO Toe-to-Toe with Joseph Panetta, sharing his non-traditional start in legal marketing; his very personal approach and process for working with partners and teams; and the background on his epic LMA Annual keynote address.”
Shout outs during the show include: Alycia Sutor, Brenda Meller 🥧, Inforum, Alexandra France, Kate Harry Shipham, David Ackert, Athena Dion, Laura Gassner Otting, Rob Kates, Jennifer Weigand, Lisa M. Kamen, Danielle Gorash Holland, Megan McKeon, Susie Sexton, Don Sexton, Jonathan Fitzgarrald, Mary Ann Hastings, Holly Amatangelo, Jennifer Dezso, Lee Watts, Kaitlin Heininger, Edna Duncan, Clark Hill Law, Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit, Ronald McDonald House Charities Ann Arbor, Legal Marketing Association – LMA International, Managing Partners’ Forum, Wabash College, The Ohio State University, Deloitte, University of Michigan-Flint, UM-Flint School of Management, glittering #unicorns, Lady Gaga, The Flash, the movie Michael, Oprah Winfrey, George Orwell, Andy Warhol, Kurt Vonnegut, Madonna, Taylor Swift, Madonna, Janet Jackson, Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez, Stephen Sondheim, Barbie, Florida, DEI, LGBTQIA, The Birdcage, Jack LaLane, BornThisWay, Hudson, dogs, branding, authenticity, marketing, legal marketing.
Thank you, Sheila Pursglove, Joel K. Epstein, Brian Cox, Brad Thompson, and crew! Front page above the fold TWO WEEKS in a row? It’s the hair, isn’t it? Tell me it’s the hair. In all seriousness, thank you for the kindness, friendship, and support – it means the world.
Roy Sexton leads Clark Hill Law’s marketing, branding, and communications efforts in collaboration with the firm’s team of marketing and business development professionals. He has nearly 20 years of experience in marketing, communications, business development, and strategic planning.
Sexton is passionate about problem solving, facilitating business growth, crafting communications strategy, and enhancing law firm culture. He works closely with the marketing team to advance the firm’s digital and social media presence and external engagement, using multi-channel distribution and data collection. This enables the team to quantify results and use those results to produce thoughtfully and strategically organized content for clients and prospects. He also advises attorneys on marketing and business development strategy by curating relationships among external publications and media outlets and creating the appropriate platforms and opportunities for attorneys to promote their knowledge and practice.
A resident of Saline, Sexton has been heavily involved regionally and nationally in the Legal Marketing Association – LMA International (LMA) as a board member, content expert, and presenter. He will serve as the LMA’s president in 2023. In addition, Sexton is a published author of two books: “ReelRoyReviews,” Volumes 1 and 2.
What would surprise people about your job?
People still seem pleasantly surprised that I have a global focus. Clark Hill is a huge firm with an international footprint, and, while Michigan will always be home, my responsibilities span the U.S., Mexico, and Ireland. And my fab boss Susan Ahern, our CMBDO, is based in Dublin. I’ve learned to become quite savvy about time zones!
What’s your favorite law-related TV show?
I always say “The Good Wife.” The trials and tribulations of Alan Cumming’s character in particular. In a law firm, no two days are the same when you hold a marketing role. It’s thrilling and sometimes comical how your work runs the gamut from the sublime to, well, I won’t finish that sentence.
If you could trade places with someone for a day, who would that be?
Weird as this is to type, I’d trade places with my mom Susie Sexton (who recently passed) so she could have a good chance to say goodbye. She left this world rather abruptly (heart attack), and, having sheltered away for months and months because of COVID, I don’t know that she got a chance to reconnect with people she loved before she vanished. I don’t mean all that to seem as dour as it reads, but I wish she’d had one truly happy day before she was gone.
What do you do to relax?
My inner introvert shines on days off. Admittedly, I have to get through any and all chores first. I also eat the things I don’t much like on my plate first too. But once I’m free and clear, it’s pajamas, comic books, bad pop music, playing with our fur baby Hudson, having a quiet dinner with my husband, and watching some escapist TV.
What other career path might you have chosen?
I have a master’s degree in theatre and thought for a while that I would get a Ph.D. and go into academia. But I wanted to eat. I still wonder what would have happened if I’d tried the “chuck it all and audition for Broadway/Hollywood” route also. But I have such a happy and fulfilling life that I have zero regrets.
What would you say to your 16-year-old self?
Enjoy the moments with people you might not know you will see again. We are always all so enmeshed in petty dramas or accomplishing some task or rushing off to the next event that we miss the moments that matter. I wish I’d curbed my rampant collecting habits (books, movies, music, toys) early on and put more energy into collecting experiences. And I wish I’d enjoyed being skinny! I was so self-conscious back then about not looking like a Men’s Health model, and I should have just appreciated being me!
Favorite local hangouts?
Seva Ann Arbor has become our “Cheers.” We are vegetarians and still a bit cautious about getting out and about too many places. The food is glorious but it’s the staff who have made us feel so welcome and loved. Every Saturday night – and sometimes Fridays too. I also am a bit obsessed with Target, and I love Vault of Midnight (comic book shop). I really need to get a life!
Oh, I’m such a menace on all social media apps. And I still love iTunes/Apple Music (lord, I’m a dinosaur). And Layout is a great little app for simple photo collages.
Favorite music?
I’m a gay man raised in the ’80s: Madonna, Janet Jackson, Tori Amos, Cher, Whitney Houston, George Michael, New Order, Kylie Minogue, Annie Lennox, k.d. lang … basically any and all dance pop with a slight edge to it. And that sensibility continues: Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Dua Lipa, Lizzo, Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry … well, you get the gist.
What is your happiest childhood memory?
I didn’t have many birthday parties. I am an only child, but it just wasn’t something we did. My birthday is December 28, which coincided with my parents’ wedding anniversary. Smack dab in the middle of the holidays, not super conducive to adding another gathering to the mix. But I remember one (of two) childhood parties where my parents, grandparents, and a couple of friends all gathered in our dining room for cake and ice cream. And it was all just quiet and loving and warm. I had a wonderful childhood, and have so many memories but that one sticks out right now as I just turned 50!
What is your most treasured material possession?
When he died, my grandfather Roy Duncan left me his mother’s college ring with “1900” (her graduation year) emblazoned across it. He wore it every day of his life, and I’ve worn it every day of my life since he passed in 1983. In fact, my fingers are so fat now I can’t remove it even if I wanted to. And I don’t! I just think it’s a beautiful reminder of legacy.
What do you wish someone would invent?
Something that makes everyone less reactionary and adversarial over the smallest things. As I age, I just find it harder and harder to understand why people point out flaws, undercut others, argue to prove a point … it’s just so much time wasted. And when I’m being ugly or receiving ugliness, I just feel it as tension in my chest, and I don’t know why people want to walk around like that.
What has been your favorite year so far and why?
2000 – the year I met my husband. It was also a very tough year – I came out to my parents (didn’t go well … like spectacularly so) and John ended up getting a foreign assignment in Japan just months after we met. But it was a year that brought him into my life, it was a year that taught me resilience, and it was a year that set me on a path to genuine happiness.
What’s the most awe-inspiring place you’ve ever been?
Tokyo, Japan when I was in high school. The U.S. Senate had a program in the ‘80s with Youth for Understanding where they sent two “youth ambassadors” from each state to Japan for the summer. I’d never been anywhere. To be immersed in such a vibrant, dynamic, bustling environment with so much to see and try and do, it was overwhelming in all the best ways. A transformative summer. I still feel electricity in my bones when I’m in big city like that.
If you could have one super power, what would it be?
Help everyone be a bit kinder. It’s easy and lazy to be mean. It takes a little effort to show appreciation. But is so much more rewarding.
What’s one thing you would like to learn to do?
Play the piano. Not ever gonna happen. I’ve tried a few times. I don’t have the discipline. But I wish I could accompany myself as a singer. Would save money!
What is something most people don’t know about you?
I wrote a column for our hometown paper in high school. It was called “AdoleSENSE” and was about my experience in small town America. I also wrote the occasional feature story, and the longer they were, the more money I got. I could write a LOT … which bought me more comic books. I also won the national PTA Reflections writing contest three (or four?) years in a row in elementary school.
If you could have dinner with three people, past or present, who would they be?
Jennifer Garner, Wanda Sykes, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, Mindy Kaling, Kelly Ripa, Parker Posey, Aidy Bryant, and Jane Fonda. Yes, I know that is triple the requested number. This answer has evolved for me over the years. Now I just want to have dinner with nice people who will make me laugh or inspire me.
What’s the best advice you ever received?
From my boss Susan Ahern: “Take the pause. Not everything has to be rushed. Pick up the phone before the e-mails escalate. You don’t need to feel pressured to entertain or make everyone laugh. Just be.” It’s a paraphrased compilation of thoughts, but her advice has been transformative.
Favorite place to spend money?
Seva Ann Arbor, Target, Vault of Midnight … and Amazon.com! Heaven help me.
What is your motto?
“It’s okay to not be okay.” Something more recent, but I have a lapel pin with that thought and I wear it frequently. As much to remind myself as anyone else!
Which living person do you most admire?
My dad Don Sexton has been through a lot the past couple of years. He retired, lost my mom, began a new relationship with a wonderful soul, transformed his home (still working on that), travels, and has remained buoyant and resilient throughout. I admire how he has embraced life when others might have crumbled. It’s kept me from crumbling myself just to observe!
What do you consider to be your greatest achievement?
Staying true to myself. I’m odd. Some have called me quirky. But (mostly) I’ve not twisted myself into some unrecognizable version of Roy to get ahead or to be liked. At least I hope that’s the case!
What is the most unusual thing you have done?
I don’t know if this qualifies, but my husband John Mola is a fan of the singing group 98 Degrees. Over the years, we’ve seen them multiple times as they’ve devolved into a career of casino performing. Consequently, their meet and greets are pretty affordable, and we’ve gotten to the point of affirmative facial recognition from them when we show up! Jeff Timmons even follows me on Twitter. Ah, we’ve arrived!
Clark Hill assembled a list of “meaningful media” to honor Pride month, with contributions and (most importantly) heartfelt stories from all across our great firm. Thank you to my colleagues Hannah Reisdorff who organized the list’s development and Ray Koenig and Tobias Smith who are leading our overall Pride recognition activities. Here is my contribution to the list …
For me, there were two albums that helped me as a young high school man living in a small town in Indiana still trying to figure out what his sexuality might mean. Might be surprising to hear but in the late 80s there wasn’t a lot of good guidance for people like me. Lol. But I found a voice in two records that weren’t overtly LGBTQ but were recorded by artists who have always been allies to our community.
In 1989, I wandered into our mall’s Musicland and bought a cassette of Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814. It was all the money I had in my pocket, and that album with its day-glo, percolating inclusivity gave me a summer soundtrack that made me feel like the world could be a better place.
The following summer, I was chosen by the US Senate as a youth ambassador to Japan. A bit homesick, I bought another cassette, this time of Madonna’s I’m Breathless, a pastiche of songs from Dick Tracy and songs inspired by the film. Problematic as the song “Vogue” has become as we are increasingly sensitized to cultural appropriation, nonetheless its thundering pulse and message of liberation – as well as the fizzy camp with which the queen of pop delivered the album’s other show tunes – spoke to my soul and gave me a sense of self.
I still listen to both of these albums often, now streaming, and they transport me to a time of discovery and give me a sense of great gratitude that these artists were willing to push the envelope of popular entertainment and acceptance.
Truly thrilled with this coverage from Law360 of our Clark Hill Law marketing and business development transformation. Every member of our incredible team and their efforts are represented in this overview. So proud to work with these talented souls who all lead with data, ingenuity, strategy, grit, inclusion, collaboration, and heart. And we’ve had a lot of fun along the way!
We discuss a lot in legal marketing circles the need to approach this work with intentionality as other industries do (no more “random acts of marketing”!) and the desire to advocate for ourselves as a substantive profession. For me, I couldn’t be prouder of how my colleagues’ efforts as outlined here align with that direction.
How Clark Hill Makes Use Of Technology To Market Itself
By Aebra Coe
Law360 (May 19, 2022, 3:59 PM EDT) — Asana, SharePoint, Wufoo, Sprout Social, Google Docs, SQL database and PowerBI are all fairly typical technologies for law firms to use in their marketing and business development efforts, but Detroit-based Clark Hill has leveraged those ordinary technologies for some interesting uses, earning it a recent international award.
Susan Ahern, Clark Hill PLC’s chief marketing and business development officer, is the quarterback behind much of the tech-heavy marketing tactics that earned the firm Best Marketing Initiative honors at the Managing Partners’ Forum Awards for Management Excellence in 2020.
Ahern recently spoke to Law360 Pulse, offering a look behind the scenes at the firm’s marketing and business development technology, and the platform around which the technology spins. The system has been up and running for around four years now.
Using off-the-shelf technologies like Power BI and SharePoint for data analytics and team collaboration, Ahern and her team have been able to build an online platform that allows them to track and make use of data in their decision-making around business development.
The data is input through a combination of sources. Digital collection forms are used to gather data directly from attorneys, and other data flows in from the marketing and business development team. Additionally, some streams of data, like digital reach and engagement, are automated through the firm’s other platforms.
“We have been able to implement online data collection processes for different types of data throughout the firm,” Ahern said. “Our systems then organize and store the information into different datasets, [and] our dashboards pivot on these datasets.”
Examples of the types of reports the dashboards can produce include detailed information on client feedback and check-ins, client pitches, event sponsorships and their success, attendance information on events and webinars, and data on social media marketing campaigns.
The dashboards, which are accessible through an online portal, visually illustrate through charts the activities the team engages in and the results of those activities on a wide range of the firm’s marketing and business development operations, according to Ahern. They run and update in real time.
“We have the flexibility to adjust the dashboards to communicate what is most useful,” she said. “Each dashboard is dynamic and can be filtered in multiple different ways by the user. We have been able to identify trend lines year-on-year through dashboards we’ve had up and running over a number of years.”
When it comes to event sponsorships, for example, individual partners and the business development team can see who has requested sponsorships, whether they were granted, and where that money went in terms of industry, client or geography. There’s also data on how much revenue was generated by the attorney making the request.
Since the firm implemented tracking around sponsorships, the number of requests for them has actually declined, Ahern said.
“Having that information has helped hold everyone accountable for what they requested,” she said.
When it comes to pitching clients, attorneys and business development professionals can search and sort data by the rates pitched, client, industry of the client, rate of success by office or business unit, and reasons the pitch was unsuccessful. The firm gathers somewhere between 35 and 40 pieces of information on any given pitch, Ahern said.
According to Ahern, she is often approached by legal technology providers trying to sell her platforms and services related to business development and marketing, but when she asks how they would capture, collate, organize and leverage the data the firm is currently using, the response tends to be underwhelming.
“The more I see of these technologies, the more I realize that they are limited. They are different versions of the same thing,” she said.
Earlier this year, the firm hired a data coordinator Todd Krigner.
Ahern says she remains happy with the system the firm has created in-house, which allows her to translate data, and at times non-numerical data, into something measurable that can help direct the firm’s actions and strategy.
“What we did was look at information that could be useful in influencing the firm’s direction and strategy,” she said. “Most technology in law firms is not being used to its full potential. There are so many other creative ways it can be used to really bring the firm forward.”
I always enjoy the arrival of Wabash Magazine in our mailbox. Egomaniacally, even more so when I’m mentioned in it. Let alone TWICE (!) in this Spring ‘22 issue.
First, for my Legal Marketing Association – LMA International work.
Second, for … buying a record player in pandemic. I might have misunderstood the assignment from Editor Kim Carter Johnson since everyone else wrote about Hadron Colliers, Bosendorfers, The Beatles, Van Gogh, and Pearl Jam.
Truth be told, I spent more money than I’d care to admit for (almost) front row tix for Madonna’s Rebel Heart 2015 tour stop in Detroit (worth the bucks for having met divine Aussie Glenn Nolan and his man). And then again for a complete collection of vintage Strawberry Shortcake dolls (inspired by my elementary school boo Hope Ross Dressler).
Now that I type these past two sentences, maybe it’s good I stuck with the Victrola. 😅✨
Stephen Sondheim’s passing hit me harder than I even had thought it might. I have been privileged to play BOTH Bobby and Buddy (from Company and Follies respectively): two sides of the same male-arrested-development coin. And, speaking of sides, I did my time in Side by Side by Sondheim. I have cherry-picked from his inestimable songbook for one-man cabaret shows over the years. I spent my high school summer in Japan obsessed with Madonna’sDick Tracy-inspired I’m Breathless, most notably the numbers “Sooner or Later,” “More,” and “What Can You Lose?”
But my deep love of his story-songs began with Barbra Streisand, Betty Buckley, and Dawn Upshaw, who wove magic with Sondheim, plucking tunes from his catalog, disentangling them from their source shows, imprinting the vocalists’ own hopes and heartaches on his twisty-turny lyrics, and giving the soon-to-be standards new life through clever and evocative arrangements. That’s when I saw Sondheim’s true musical brilliance, as a Rorschach test on the soul, malleable and elastic but never losing the unique zing that was purely him.
I find myself heartbroken yet also optimistic that generations of similarly intrepid performers will continue to be inspired by Sondheim and to explore the maps of their hearts through his work.
Let me see the world with clouds Take me to the world Out where I can push through crowds Take me to the world
A world that smiles With streets instead of aisles Where I can walk for miles with you
Take me to the world that’s real Show me how it’s done Teach me how to laugh, to feel Move me to the sun
Just hold my hand whenever we arrive Take me to a world where I can be alive
LMA’s Got SKILLS! What fun tonight, and, for those who missed the Legal Marketing Association – LMA International annual conference talent show, the performances from #legalmarketing luminaries Jason Klika, Heather Layfield McCullough, Jim Jarrell, Jim Durham, Lauren McNee, Richard Hefner, Brenda Pontiff, Matt Parfitt, and Renee Branson were divine! Congrats to our winner – voted on by the audience – Jason! Highlights included glorious vocals, evocative poetry, whimsical interpretive dance routines, soothing instrumentals, grand comedy, soothing bedtime stories, a sh*t-ton of Sondheim, ridiculous costumes, and some very cute dogs. Heaven!
Divine Renee Branson viewing from home. Wisely drinking.
Thank you to an incredibly patient team, including Kristy Perkins, Malaika Palmer, Christina Abes (and my fearless engineer husband John Mola) who worked through my various and sundry tech issues and general hysteria earlier in the afternoon. Such grace, calm, and talent! Thanks to our conference co-chairs Kristen Bateman and Jonathan Mattson and LMA president Jill Mason Huse for their faith in me, for their encouragement, and for allowing me to let my freak flag fly (photographic evidence aplenty).
Thanks for this screen grab, Renee!
This is a helluva community! I am grateful to have been embraced by such kind and talented humans, and, as we noted tonight, our personal “brands” should celebrate every aspect of our personalities, talents, and interests. Thank you to HQ’s Danielle Holland , Kat Seiffert , Kristin Frankiewicz and team for their tireless support and promotion.
Congrats to friends Nathalie M. Daum, Adam Severson, and Despina Kartson who were inducted into LMA’s Hall of Fame tonight. So well-deserved! (VIDEO HERE.) Sally Feldman noted, “Congratulations to all of the inductees on this recognition, to Jennifer Manton and Jeanne Burger Hammerstrom for being such gracious co-hosts and Rob Kates for a great production.” Truth!
Unwinding after the big show!
The LMA Hall of Fame recognizes lifetime achievement of individuals in the legal marketing industry and their outstanding contributions to the association. Members of the Hall of Fame have a demonstrated history of career achievement, sustained commitment to the advancement of the profession, and significant contributions to LMA, as well as conduct themselves with professionalism among their peers.
Thank you, Lauren McNee, for this screen grab!Someone left the snowman in the rain. (Think “MacArthur Park.”) Thank you, Carman Janenne Akins, for this melting Olaf pic!
