Honored to have my New Year’s resolution included in a feature in Of Counsel Magazine!
“Another personal resolution that carries firm-wide repercussions comes from the Detroit offices of the international law firm Clark Hill by marketing director Roy Sexton, who also serves as the 2023 president of the Legal Marketing Association – LMA International. ‘My New Year’s resolution,’ he says, ‘is to keep elevating the level of discourse intellectually where legal marketing is concerned, to learn and share best practices from other industries, and to move us all forward in terms of more sophisticated ways of doing this work.’”
Thank you, dear pal Ross Fishman and new friend Steve Taylor, for the opportunity. AND kudos, Ross, for the magazine excerpting your Ultimate Law Firm Partner’s Marketing Checklist book, one section at a time. All of us are grateful for your leadership and everything you do for the profession and our community.
One of the great joys this year as Legal Marketing Association – LMA International prez-elect is being able to work with existing and incoming leaders to chart our path next year and beyond. One of our annual “rites of passage” is a two day (virtual for now) Leaders’ Conference where we convene leaders across our regions, committees, special interest groups, international board and more to connect and collaborate. Truth be told, I feel in my bones EVERYONE in LMA is a leader, and I don’t want anyone to feel left out. Got that trait from my mama!
The attendees get a small token of our gratitude for their volunteer hours and a note accompanies. Given that I think (and hope) these words may resonate more broadly, I’m sharing them here as well …
“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” — Edith Wharton
“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples.” — Mother Teresa
Legacy isn’t what we accomplish in this brief moment (when we are honored to carry important titles), but rather it is what we inspire in those who follow us. Our collective calling, as change agents and as growth purveyors, is in elevating our profession overall, rising above the ephemeral and stretching beyond together. We have a unique privilege to ensure success for our next generation. THAT is the moment of amplification before us. Thank you for your service, for your hearts, for your hard work, and for your generosity of time and of spirit. You make a difference in this incredible LMA community.
Oh, and here’s a box of cool stuff to say thank you for being you, to help you amplify YOUR voice AND the voices of others, and to have a laugh (and think) or two.
Love you and grateful for you. Roy
P.S. We’ve also included a book from one of your fellow LMA members – and one of our Leaders Conference speakers – Jay Harrington. This book serves a “meta” purpose. There is great guidance in there around amplifying one’s brand and voice. These tips should prove helpful to you on your leadership journey AND as counsel you can take back to any attorneys you support on their respective growth paths. As our friend and colleague Terry Isner reminds us, “Put your oxygen mask on first so you can better help others with theirs.”
P.P.S. Thank you in advance to our two keynote presenters Jay Harrington and Alycia Sutor; our workshop facilitators from Second City Works including Kat Barker; our Annual Conference chairs Megan McKeon, Lee Watts, Jennifer Petrone Dezso; our many breakout and reflection leaders over the next two days; and our marvelous HQ team Danielle Gorash Holland, Holly Amatangelo, Morgan Frohling, Jennifer Weigand, Lisa M. Kamen. And to Emily Hillman and Kelly MacKinnon for these pics!
The 2023 Annual Conference Advisory Committee (ACAC) is excited to share that the #LMA23 education program is now available! Capitalize your 2022 budgets and use this educational programming experience to justify your attendance. Explore the full 2023 education program today: https://bit.ly/3itjRJJ
It’s ALIVE! Check out our just launched #LMA23 AMPLIFY agenda! This represents hundreds of hours of work from our amazing Legal Marketing Association – LMA International volunteers and HQ team and all of our presenters. So excited! I love what Annual Conference Advisory Committee (ACAC) member Mike Mellor said about this process, “I’ve been so honored to have been a part of the ACAC of this year’s LMA! We are bringing new voices and building frameworks for a more inclusive and richer experience in Florida, and we will all benefit from the vast array of perspectives from all around the world. We hope that everyone will raise their hands and participate this year – challenging the status quo is the best way to drive the industry forward!”
Special thank you to our co-chairs Lee Watts, Jennifer Petrone Dezso, and Megan McKeon and to our HQ team Holly Amatangelo, Kaitlin Heininger, Lisa M. Kamen, CAE, Danielle Gorash Holland, Ellie Hurley, Sarah Logan. And to our fab ACAC crew Amber Bollman, Jon Brewer, Joseph Edmonds, Tahisha Fugate, Mike Mellor, Ruth E. Morayniss, Gail Porter Lamarche, and Arthur Uratani. AND our wonderful pre-con session chairs Ashraf Lakhani, Brianna Leung, Justin Portaz, Jason Klika, Alé Simmons, Susan Slifer, Julie Hollander Eichelbaum, Christine Mitchell Harris, Bobbie Conklin, EJ Stern Bearman, Cheryl Bame, and Michael Blachly. I am in AWE of these amazing humans!
Oh my goodness! Thank you, Guy Alvarez and Good2bSocial, for this lovely shout out to what we at Clark Hill Law are doing on Facebook. Kudos to my colleagues Alexandra France, Tommy Franz, and Guinevere Lehman Anderson for their leadership here and to our larger team and firm community for the beautiful content they help provide!
“Clark Hill understands that a strong visual presence is becoming more essential on Facebook than it once was. They find new and exciting ways to add visuals to their posts, whether it is a podcast sound bite with accompanying visuals or a professionally shot video. Clark Hill also uses Facebook as a place to share thought-leadership content and start conversations on topics important to their firm. They often share links to articles, rather than simply only advertising their successes.”
We are all grateful for YOU and for all you are doing for our profession and industry. EXCERPT:
“I’m Roy Sexton, Director of Marketing for Clark Hill Law and I am also the 2023 international President of the Legal Marketing Association – LMA International. I am thankful for a group of humans I met early on when I joined the Legal Marketing Association. Gina Furia Rubel, Nancy Leyes Myrland, Heather Morse-Geller, Gail Porter Lamarche, Lindsay Griffiths, and Laura Toledo
“We’ve all kind of now moved on and gone our separate ways in some respects, but that was the core group. I tell this story quite a bit. I was at the Orlando LMA annual conference and shy and nervous, which nobody believes, and feeling very insecure and I was lurking around the pool. Nothing good usually comes from that. And they were all there as a social media special interest group, having a meetup.
“And Gina saw me and she said, ‘Come over here. Who are you?’ And sometimes I cry when I say this because she just wrapped me in love and got to know me during the course of that afternoon. And they became my mentors and my friends, and they have been with me ever since, supporting me, giving me hard truth, and helping show me the way through this profession.
“And I had always had a fairly serendipitous career until I met them. And it really locked in that I like what I do, I like who I support, and I will always credit them for the mentoring they provided me early on, the way they adopted me and the way they’ve looked out for me ever since.”
Want to join me in supporting a good cause? In honor of my 50th (!!) birthday (December 28!), I’m raising money for Ronald McDonald House Charities Ann Arbor, and your contribution will make an impact, whether you donate $5 or $500. Every little bit helps. This will be my sixth year of doing this birthday fundraiser for RMHCAA: I’m honored to be an RHMCAA board member but I’m even more honored to help support this incredible mission.
The mission of the Ann Arbor Ronald McDonald Houses is to provide families of children experiencing a serious illness or injury requiring hospitalization or treatment on an outpatient basis, a “home away from home” that assists in alleviating the families’ emotional and financial stress.
Beth Little Bell, rock star!! Can’t wait! Thanks to fellow Wabash College alum and Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity brother Greg Castanias for introducing us!
Roy’s guest on our October 6 show will be Elizabeth Bell, who leads marketing efforts for DeFur Voran LLP. She has also worked in the legal space as a law firm administrator and paralegal. Spoiler alert: she, like Roy, is a Hoosier AND has a storied background with his alma mater Wabash College. (And she just may have attended Wabash’s fierce rival school DePauw … so sparks may fly!)
Beth is currently building a marketing program at her firm, and can speak to the opportunities and challenges facing the solo marketer. Roy and Beth will unpack how one can leverage servant leadership to help support a small firm on its growth journey and how to build out the resources needed to “do all the things” required for effective law firm marketing and business development when you are a mighty team of ONE!
An episode you won’t want to miss. Join us live this Thursday, October 6th at 3 PM right here on Facebook.
Legal Marketing Coffee Talk is brought to you by: By Aries and Kates Media.
Important, sobering, essential analysis done by ALM. Thank you, Kayla McCaleb, Patrick Fuller, and team. Change is needed. Yesterday. Thank you, Patrick Smith, for the wonderful chat today and for including my reactions in this coverage.
McCaleb said she was also disappointed, but not surprised, to find that even as salaries for chiefs and first-chair directors went up across all firm size segments, men were the beneficiaries of the majority of those gains.
“Probably the single most shocking finding for me was that despite the overall average annual salary increased by a stable 11% in each of those versions, the pay gap between men and women increased by 50% from 2018 to 2020 and 40% from 2020 to 2022—both of those percentages being substantially higher than the 11% overall average salary increase,” McCaleb said via email. “In 2018, men out-earned women by $50,000. In 2020, that number increased to $75,000. Now in 2022, $105,000 separates men and women chiefs and first chair directors. It just makes me wonder what that wage gap is going to look like in 2024.”
Although this pay gap exists, for most firms, it is not an intentional or malicious decision to pay women less, according to several observers. Yet, here we are, and good intentions and happy thoughts don’t fix problems.
Roy Sexton is the director of marketing for Clark Hill in Detroit and the 2023 Legal Marketing Association International President. He has been in the legal industry for over a decade.
He believes there are a series of factors that play into creating these gaps, ranging from retrograde thinking on women’s role in the workplace to how marketing and business development are viewed in the legal industry.
“There are those of us who may have felt, at our core, that we are not wanted,” Sexton said. “Historically, some organizations have treated women, as well as people of color and the LGBTQ community, that they should feel grateful to be there.”
He said this thinking perpetuates behaviors such as not asking for a raise or a larger bonus because one doesn’t want to rock the boat and be replaced by someone who can be counted on to not do so.
“We need to arm people with negotiation skills and the fortitude to walk away from a job that is underpaying them,” he said. “But there is fear, perpetuated by that ‘grateful’ mindset, that they won’t find another job. So they just accept where they are.” …
Patrick Fuller, vice president and general manager and another author of the study, said, “Over the past decade, law firms’ concerted efforts to improve diversity and inclusion amongst FTE attorneys produced steady year-over-year improvements. As the marketing and business development compensation survey data shows, law firms must also focus on compensation equity for business professionals. It is beyond unacceptable that women comprise 75% of large- and mid-market chiefs or first-chair directors, yet earn, on average, 30% less than their male counterparts.”
LMA is pleased to announce its 2023 International Board of Directors. The slate of candidates was ratified on September 2, 2022, and the newly elected and continuing officers and directors will begin their terms on January 1, 2023. More: https://legalmarketing.org/2023-International-Board
Legal Marketing Association – LMA International welcomes:
President Roy E. Sexton Director of Marketing Clark Hill Law Detroit, MI (Midwest Region)
Immediate Past President Brenda Plowman Chief Marketing Officer Fasken Vancouver, B.C. (Canada Region)
President-Elect Kevin Iredell Chief Marketing Officer Lowenstein Sandler LLP New York, NY (Northeast Region)
Secretary Amy Payton Verhulst Senior Business Development Manager Jackson Lewis PC Houston, TX (Southwest Region)
Treasurer Andrew Laver Business Development Manager Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC Philadelphia, PA (Northeast Region)
Treasurer-Elect Rachel Shields Williams Director of Knowledge Management Sidley Austin LLP Washington, D.C. (Mid-Atlantic Region)
Member-At-Large John Byrne Chief Marketing Officer Gould & Ratner LLP Chicago, IL (Midwest Region)
Member-At-Large Jessica Haarsgaard Business Development Manager Burr & Forman LLP Greenville, SC (Southeast Region)
Member-At-Large Diana Lauritson Senior Marketing and Business Development Officer Hogan Lovells Washington, DC (Mid-Atlantic Region)
Member-At-Large Trish Desilets Lilley Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer Stroock New York, NY (Northeast Region)
Member-At-Large Jaime Lira Marketing Director Cohen & Malad, LLP Indianapolis, IN (Midwest Region)
Regional Leaders’ Committee Chair Robin Devereux Gerard Chief Marketing Officer Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth PC Newport Beach, CA (West Region)
Chief Executive Officer Danielle Gorash Holland Legal Marketing Association Chicago, IL
So darn excited to work with these amazing souls, all of our fab volunteer leaders, our incredible membership, and marvelous HQ support team next year. ✨
REGISTER:https://bit.ly/3wwtImc … “Law firms and legal service providers: Know who’s gonna join us for Stack Ranking, Part 2 on 9/30?
“Meet our special guests: Roy Sexton of Clark Hill Law; Drew Hawkins of Womble Bond Dickinson US LLP; and Gordon Braun-Woodbury of Calibrate.
“Our esteemed colleagues will weigh in on the 2022 RubyLaw Legal Marketing Tech Study and opine on our insights. Come hear what they have to say!”
I seem to have started a flame war with Britney Spears 😂 – Britney, we do love you, but please stay kind.
“After supporting the rebranding of Clark Hill Law, Roy realized just how magical the combination of branding and culture development can be. In the process of branding, you’re uniting company values, the customer experience, and a diverse team, which, in turn, helps develop the true, authentic culture of your organization.”
