Interview: Karen Morton, Chief Marketing Officer at Cleary Gottlieb

Legal MBD specialist Karen Morton has recently joined Clearly Gottlieb, having previously held various roles at Simmons & Simmons and Hogan Lovells. In this interview, she talks about the importance of analytics, the role of technology and the changing shape of the profession.
How did you start work in MBD?
I started work as a management consultant in telecoms, working mainly for private equity houses investing in telecoms start-ups. I’ve always enjoyed analytics, number crunching and market strategy! I am as comfortable with a spreadsheet as with Word or PowerPoint.
I moved to Simmons & Simmons as a business analyst, working on researching firm strategy, expansion plans, practice expansion and market analysis for the firm, working within the Marketing and Business Development (MBD) function. There was a wide range of requests from lawyers for research on markets and clients.
Opportunities then opened up. Thanks to my previous experience with telecoms, I did a lot of work in technology as well as life sciences, and then I was offered the role of BD lead for life sciences. Following a restructuring of the team, I moved into a practice role – and I became senior BD manager for the commercial litigation practice. It made sense as I had worked a lot with litigators and worked closely with a big pharma client that we did a lot of litigation for.
I was offered an opportunity by Adam Soames to join Hogan Lovells to lead the business development for IP, which came at a good time for me. I did that for almost eight years and it was a phenomenal practice. It involved lots of interesting and ground-breaking work and clients, for example working with start-ups and giant tech businesses in Silicon Valley and major pharma and phone companies on IP strategy and litigation. Those start-ups have now become some of Hogan Lovells’ biggest clients for corporate and litigation work.
It was also exciting because we were doing new and innovative things – I remember the first time we did an interactive pitch on a tablet rather than in Word or PDF! We were allowed to push the boundaries a bit when it came to creativity because we were pitching to innovative clients.
For the past three years I headed up MBD for Hogan Lovells across Europe, Middle East and Africa. This was a large and diverse role covering 21 offices with nearly 400 partners and $1.4 billion in revenue.
Now I’m taking the next step in my career as Chief Marketing Officer at Cleary Gottlieb, a highly regarded international firm.
How has MBD in law firms changed in the past 20 years?
Enormously. Simmons & Simmons was pretty progressive when I joined in 2003. For example, they had an industry sector programme and were introducing practice area business plans. I felt they were pushing the boundaries and from the top down there was a lot of respect for the value MBD could bring.
But 20 years ago, across the legal sector, there was a big focus on corporate hospitality, such as trips to sporting events and wine tasting. At the time law firms asked: did you go to a fee-paying school or not? If you went to a non-fee-paying school you were considered diverse. There was very little focus on DE&I at that time. The City and the world have changed for the better in that respect.
Another change was that we had very little direct contact with clients back then unless we happened to be at events or dinners. Now there’s a recognition that the MBD team can add value, you often have direct access to clients and you can really help influence the relationship. We do client feedback interviews directly and can be direct points of contact for clients. We’re not just directories, pitches and event machines – there is more to our skillset.
Does that mean more use of data and analysis too?
A lot of firms didn’t have a business analysis or business intelligence function when I started out, and some still don’t, but it’s incredibly important. There’s also a recognition that MBD is no longer a silo: we work very close with finance, people, operations, risk and technology teams to develop the best solutions for the business and our clients. Collectively, we now use a much broader range of data to make decisions.
Everything used to be in a spreadsheet. I love data but there is so much of it that the challenge is: how do you capture it and use it, and how do you get the different tech systems to talk to each other? It always used to feel very manual and Excel-based, and it could take months to get information.
What has been the impact of the pandemic?
You’ve seen firms shine with a focus on individual client relationships – where do we have relationships where we can pick up the phone to the GC and they will answer? That one-to-one relationship has become much more important and allows you to know the clients better: we’ve seen people’s pets and wallpaper!
It has changed the nature of relationships. People really value these relationships in uncertain times. It’s also been a leveller for associates, who can now have individual relationships with clients. If you’re doing everything on Zoom, you don’t have to worry about travel costs and associates can talk to their peers within the client. It has empowered associates to start building relationships and it is easier to involve them in virtual pitch meetings.
What do law firms do well in MBD and where can they improve?
Many firms now have good CRM, client listening and client feedback programmes. The challenge is genuinely listening to clients and responding to them individually. General counsel often complain that they get sent hundreds of newsletters a week but what they really appreciate and prefer is a personal message saying: this is relevant to you and this is what you need to know. People don’t want to be spammed with things they don’t want and haven’t got time to read.
If you can say “I’ve heard what you’re saying, and you should know this …” then you will have the strongest relationships. There’s still far too much spamming in the industry.
What impact is technology having?
Given my tech background, I’m interested to see where AI tools can take us. At the moment, there is still a lot of reinventing the wheel when it comes to MBD content.
We should be able to leverage tech and AI to get the first draft, which can otherwise take weeks, and then tailor for the specific purpose. Anything that can increase efficiencies will be really valuable.
I would also like to see this evolution of MBD teams having closer relationships with clients, supporting lawyers in understanding and tailoring what the firm does for specific clients.