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Calibrate Founder and CEO Jennifer Johnson comments on issues in CMO hiring and retention in this Law.Com article.


Jennifer Johnson

Jennifer Johnson

“In terms of retention, a study of Am Law 200 firms conducted by Calibrate Legal set the average tenure at less than six years for “first chair” marketing professionals. On compensation, a recent report from ALM Legal Intelligence found a wide range in pay for first-chair marketing roles based on firm size. For firms of 100 to 249 attorneys, average salary is about $205,000, and average bonus about $22,000, according to the report.

Calibrate’s CEO, Jennifer Johnson, said in an interview that law firms’ approach to hiring has evolved over the years.

“The reason there was such a churn in the early 2000s: law firms realized all of a sudden, ‘we’ve got to do this,’” Johnson said—”this” being a serious approach to the in-house marketing function. Firms began hiring “big ticket people,” bringing aboard “this idea of what they wanted,” she said. Over the years, emphasis shifted to more of a pure marketing function, to business development, to a more “evened out” approach since 2013 or so, she said.”


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