Marketing Salaries in Law Firms--Why is the Accounting Industry So Far Behind??

This just in...according to the new Legal Marketing Association "Roles and Compensation Survey" that will be released July 22,

"Marketers with the word "Chief" in their title earn an average of $225,208 and a median (half are above/blow) of $200,000, according to statistics released today.  The compensation for marketers with "Director" in their title averaged $111,696 in salary and a median of $99,000.

The average annual base salary for 51% of all law firm marketers combined is less than $75,000; however 26% receive $100,000 or more.  At the same time 17% of marketers said they received no annual bonus; 51% received a bonus of only $5,000 or less."

Larry Bodine broke the news on his blog today. He also reports the findings of recruiter Bill Crooks:

Crooks said that in his placement work, he found the following salaries being paid:

• Marketing Assistants (e.g., who do data entry work) at a Top 200 firm are paid $30K to $40K.
• Marketing Coordinators are paid from $40K to $70K in large cities like New York and DC.
• Marketing Managers earn $75K to $110K depending on their duties.
• Practice Group Managers $80K to $180K.
• In the future the higher salaries will be in business development, not marketing.

Some great tips from contributors mentioned in Larry's story:

• New marketers should make certain that there is a mechanism in place for marketers to get sales reports from partners and feedback on sales calls.  Otherwise it's difficult for the marketer to demonstrate ROI to the firm.
• Make sure that the partners know what you are doing for them.  "Provide a report on what kind of activities you're doing on their behalf," she said.
• Marketers must provide competitive intelligence on salaries. 
• Elizabeth Lampert credits the LawMarketing Listserve and the LawMarketing Portal Jobs Page for requiring employers to state the salary in a job posting. 

Maybe accounting marketing should be more up-front about salaries, too. The openness is doing wonders for their legal counterparts.

The spread between law and accounting firm salaries seemed much smaller only five years ago when Association for Accounting Marketing did a comparison between its compensation survey and that of Legal Marketing Association. At that time, law firms led accounting by about $30,000 in the average marketing salary.