Modernize Your Marketing Strategies: Utilizing Technology in the Legal Industry

Roy Sexton is the Director of Marketing at Clark Hill Law, a team of international legal advisors focused on helping businesses grow. Responsible for leading the team’s marketing, branding, and communications efforts, Roy’s 20 years of experience in the industry have fostered a passion for facilitating business growth, implementing strategies, and enhancing culture. Roy advises attorneys and has created opportunities for them to promote their practices. He serves as the President of the Legal Marketing Association International (LMA) and is the author of Reel Roy Reviews, Volumes 1 and 2.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Roy Sexton shares how he incorporates technology into the legal industry
Why are lawyers reluctant to implement new strategies?
How Roy encourages law firms to embrace tech innovations
Roy’s business philosophy: Work with the willing
How Roy introduces podcasts to attorneys — and the methods he utilizes to kickstart the process
How to brand a global entity
Bringing the knowledge of narrative to the legal industry — and determining which strategies elicit reactions from consumers
Roy expresses his appreciation for social outlets and how they impact relationship building

In this episode…

People perceive the legal industry as strict and professional — but out of touch with modern mediums for connecting with consumers. As an industry that is apprehensive about incorporating technology, law firms are overlooking opportunities to expand their business. Unless its marketing strategies evolve, the legal industry risks becoming more disconnected from consumers.

Attorneys and their respective firms can stay current with trending marketing strategies while maintaining a professional presence. Roy Sexton, an experienced legal marketer, encourages attorneys to welcome technology and digital mediums into their practice as a channel for growing their client network. Leveraging podcasts and social media to communicate your brand and services is an efficient step in modernizing your marketing strategy.

In this episode of the Top Business Leaders Show, John Corcoran welcomes Roy Sexton, the Director of Marketing at Clark Hill Law, to discuss the benefits of leveraging technology and digital mediums in the legal industry. Roy also offers reasons why the industry is cautious when adopting modern marketing strategies, how he encourages legal professionals to embrace innovations, and his contribution to rebranding a global entity.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

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Episode Transcript

Intro 0:04

Welcome to the Top Business Leaders Show. Powered by Rise25 media, we feature top founders, executives, and business leaders from all over the world.

John Corcoran 0:20

All right, John Corcoran. Here I am one of the CO hosts of this show. And I want to welcome you all here. Of course, if you haven’t checked out any of our archives, check them out because we got all kinds of great past interviews of smart business leaders, marketers, founders, and entrepreneurs, from companies ranging from Netflix at Kinkos, YPO, EO Activision Blizzard, and you name it. And, of course, this episode is brought to you by Rise25, where we help b2b businesses to get clients referrals and strategic partnerships with done-for-you podcast and content marketing, and learn about what we do at Rise25.com. And I’m really excited about today’s guests. Because, you know, as you know, I’m a recovering attorney practice law for a bunch of years. And I know how difficult they can be to work with attorneys No, no color whatsoever. And our guest is Roy Sexton. He’s a content expert, marketing expert, and president of a Legal Marketing Association. So talk about a tough job, not easy. He leads marketing branding and communications efforts for Clark Hill, a 650, Attorney top 200 Law Firm. Been around for over 100 years or so; it has gone through a bunch of acquisitions. So talk about a challenge in order to get that messaging out. So we’re going to talk about all of those different topics. That’s his formal bio, I didn’t tell him we’re going to do this. But I also want to introduce him with his more informal bio, which is his Twitter bio, which I tracked down as well, which connects neglects to mention that he’s also the published author of two other books, Reel Roy Reviews, Volumes 1 and 2. He’s a big movie nut, so we’re gonna talk about that. But according to Twitter, he is the 2023, Legal Marketing Association International, President, author, actor, strategist, writer, collector, comic book fan, movie, not singer. And I like that Bio A lot better than the former one, more truthful one. And if you’re listening to this, and not watching it on YouTube, which you should watch it on YouTube, as well, you can see it’s surrounded by a number of different Star Wars. Crap, big Star Wars fan. But Roy, let’s start with, first of all, the practice of law tends to be a rather staid profession, that tends to be prosody slow to change. And yet you’re working, you’re saying

Roy Sexton 2:38

these things, I am neither confirming nor denying, I liked that my I can pay my bills. So I don’t want to offend anybody.

John Corcoran 2:45

It’s all gone out of my mouth, not out your mouth. But you know, it’s an interesting role for you, because being president of a Legal Marketing Associate in the role that you do with Clark Hill, you know, you are in many ways at the forefront of taking an industry that has been very slow to adopt new technologies, law firms are some of the last businesses to even build websites and things like that. I know that because I’ve been in this industry for a long time. And so talk a little bit about your approach to all these things in and how you take an industry that is slow to adopt technology and convince them to do podcasts and convince them to do digital marketing and convince them to run online video and all the different tools that you know, businesses need to use in order to survive today.

Roy Sexton 3:36

All right, Aye. Aye, was born. No, I think you know, when I go back to my background, you know, I’m an only child grew up in the 70s. Very quick to kind of entertain myself and stay interested in a lot of things. But also, as such, I’m not quick, as quick to adopt a lot of things as people might believe that I am. I’m somewhere in the middle of the pack. I was a late bloomer, for sure. Through much of my youth and upbringing, I say that, because I do sometimes and I agree with your assessment. I do. And I know it was said with tongue in cheek. The legal industry is cautious about embracing new approaches sometimes frustratingly, so. But the benefit of that is you also get to see some things proven true or false. You know, I remember a year or so ago, Rudy was going Gung, Gung ho about clubhouse is going to disrupt all social media. And I tried clubhouse and I’m like, Oh, this is dumb. What am I missing? I don’t want to do this anymore. So sometimes being a bit slow out of the blocks is a benefit, but not being so slow that you miss out on the opportunity. So I think my personality is prone to it. introversion is prone to introspection I like film, we were talking about that as we were prepping. I like narrative. I like sort of consuming something and digesting and thinking about it. I think that skill set has served me well. Working with attorneys, I worked in healthcare before I switched to legal and I, you know, I traded doctors for lawyers. I’m not sure what guild I try next. But it’s a whole nother podcast. But so I think I approach the conversation with attorneys in such a way that I’m not the typical marketer that’s trying to upset everything off the bat. But I’m also opportunistic enough. And this might be the only child in me to think about the opportunity and the pain point. And I would say, uniquely, for us, the pandemic as awful as it has been, and disruptive it is, as it has been for people provided a unique opportunity for some of us who are wired to say, Let’s lean into thought leadership, let’s lean into digital marketing. It was all we had available for a good 18 months. And it did wipe the slate clean. And it also, attorneys are often quick, my mom used to say I’m snapping my fingers to keep the elephants away. There are no elephants, it’s working. attorneys will come to you and say I’ve been doing this symposium for 10 years, it’s where I get my business, really. Or I had an attorney tell me I send $15,000 worth of pies every Christmas and it keeps my clients happy. And I did say to her if your clients are only hiring you because the pies you sent and I think we have a bigger problem. But I think there’s a tendency to hang on to an activity that is a bit dated. Nobody asked you for people really taken by their own pie. Sure, football games. So when that wasn’t available, I jumped right in there and said, Well, we’ve got this thought leadership platform, we’ve got social media, and you take that moment and a culture ate the folks who need a megaphone to something that’s actually going to work better for them. And then you take those opportunities to show them how it’s working. And when you get the proof point that a client came from it, or a call was logged, or just the numbers of views, because the other thing about attorneys is they want everybody to know who they are, but they’re too shy to do it themselves. It’s a weird, it’s a weird dynamic. I want everyone to know I’m excellent at this. Well, have you told anybody? Oh, no, I can’t do that myself. So social media, part of

John Corcoran 7:13

that is rooted I think in this convoluted history that the profession has with for a long time, they couldn’t do any form of advertising. And so they’re very reluctant around that. Yeah, it

Roy Sexton 7:24

was frowned upon. So I know, that’s a very long-winded answer. Probably not getting to the heart of your question. But you know, what I heard in your question is, it is an industry that is not always prone to jump on the hottest new trend. Yeah, I don’t think that’s necessarily bad for us.

John Corcoran 7:40

Ya know, as you point out like clubhouse, you know, there’s a lot of people that put a ton of energy and resources and money into building up that channel. And then what good did it to do them?

Roy Sexton 7:49

And if you want to be a successful marketer, with whatever product you’re selling, I learned this working with physicians, physicians are, they’re intellectual, they’re data-driven, they are interested in taking risk-based in data. So when you’re a marketer, working with doctors, you have to approach them with enough data that they know you have been looking at it, but not so much data, they can’t ever leave the room. But also that you are trying and experimenting with different things much like they do with medications and treatments and things like that. Once I got to legal that approach didn’t work. I did. I did a client satisfaction survey at my first farm. And I’m surprised, I’m still standing. Because I didn’t check with the attorneys about the survey tool. I didn’t tell them I was doing it. I just did it because that’s how we would have done in healthcare. And I came to them with the results. And nobody wanted to talk about the results, which were pretty innocuous. The clients didn’t like the way we were answering the phone or people were getting bounced around a phone tree. Nobody wanted to talk about solutions around that they wanted to tell me I wrote the questions wrong. Who did I survey? Why did I send it? And I realized I had stepped into my first trap working in legal. Lawyers avoid risk. Doctors embrace a certain amount of risk. Once I realized that I had to shift my approach to the marketers, they don’t worry. I’m not embracing crazy new ideas like client surveys. I am figuring out the risk first. I am just as nervous as you attorney, but I will be your shield. I will be the one who goes out first with a message, and if it feels like it doesn’t work, I’ll be the first to pull that back. I’ll be the first to figure out the platform right for us. I’ll figure out all the challenges with it. And then we will go live because God forbid someone should tease you at a bar association event that we’re doing something different and I often think if this happens you know we’ve done some things and I hear I was at a bar association event so and so was teasing me that we were putting our pets we camping we did four legged co-workers on LinkedIn and I after was all over someone said someone at the Bar Association was teasing one of our attorneys about that and I said good means we were doing something right. But it was attention. Yeah, but But I digress a lot Good luck editing or whatever you want to do with us after the fact. But you have to as a marketer understand that there is that tendency, their job is to avoid risk. As a marketer, we are changing by psychology and behavior and trying to get people to make a purchasing decision. So some amount of risk is required. But you have to communicate to your attorneys that you’re looking at in their best interest. And that frees you up to do a lot of things. And the other thing, I advise people who are new to this space, don’t screw up the easy stuff, because they’ll never trust you with the hard things. You know, if they need a bio update, don’t get precious about that and go, Oh, I don’t do that, or oh, that’s beneath me, make the update, take care of it. And that builds the credibility that you have to then later say, I have a challenging idea. I’ve done all this stuff. You’ve asked me, I’ve done it really? Well. I’ve earned my stripes. Now, let me take on this harder chat,

John Corcoran 10:56

if so many questions around this. So first of all, there’s this weird thing with the lawyers where they want to take marketing advice from other lawyers. I’ve never really understood it, don’t you? How do you overcome editors? How do you overcome that?

Roy Sexton 11:10

Um, you? This is a hard question to answer in a general way. Because often the way my brain works, I have to look at the very specific example. And what I also love about lawyers is they’ll say, I heard from a few people this, what can you tell me who said it? And why? Oh, no, I can’t tell you that? Well, until I know who said it, and why I can’t really understand their motivation for why they gave you that feedback. So I often will use this propensity. You know, I don’t do jujitsu or karate or anything, but they say use your opponent’s motor movement to your advantage. Yeah, I know that attorneys are fiercely competitive. I know attorneys are very insecure about what other attorneys think of them, even their own competition. So I get there first. So if I am thinking of a new idea, I look and see are other law firms doing it. Now, what I often will hear weirdly enough, if you have a new idea, they want to know if other law firms are doing it, and they’re they want to be first to be second, they’re afraid to do some versus to be second. So you have to mix and match a little bit. I also pull from other industries, if I know there’s an industry that we are interested in being seen, well,

John Corcoran 12:20

not showing that they’re doing it is a good show that they’re

Roy Sexton 12:23

doing shows that they’re adapting. I mean, I don’t get much of this anymore. But in my early days, in this space, social media was anathema to so many of the attorneys. And I get that they’re afraid that there’s content out there that later will be discoverable and be a problem. And they hear all these sorts of things. But to be absent from the conversation is a problem as well. So I also will use examples they have brought to me, I had an attorney that said at the height of the pandemic, I took people to breakfast every Tuesday. That was my marketing, what do I do? I said, we’ll go to LinkedIn. That’s the breakfast that never ends. Yeah, who were and they go, why don’t have time for that. We have time to spend an hour and a half for breakfast every Tuesday. Yeah, spend five minutes a day on LinkedIn and tell me the 10 people who matter to you and see what they’re sharing. We live in an Orwellian age, where everybody shares everything the sandwich they ate at noon. And we do that because we want someone else to see us and comment on that you have told me relationships are important to you. That’s what you take people golfing, that’s what you take people to breakfast, here’s another way to manage those relationships. And you can do it on your own time on scale, in a manageable way. So

[continue to page 2]

John Corcoran 13:28

it’s actually less time consuming.

Roy Sexton 13:30

Yeah. So you know, I don’t know that I’ve ever been successful in talking the attorney out of because when we’re in a place of anxiety, we any of us are for whatever reason, you can’t tell shame the person out of that, like, don’t, you know, it’s like, like, you come home from school, and your friends are making fun of your shoes. And your mom says that’s because they’re jealous of you. I never believe that. You got to work that out for yourself. But if you can give the attorneys something else around which to be proud and give them the context and argument for why you’re doing it the way you’re doing it. And in those instances where you see another firm doing something, you know, doesn’t work highlight that for them and the why? It quite frankly, is why I am so engaged in the Legal Marketing Association. I learned early that attorneys live and die by credentials, they live and die by how many Bar Association committees they’re on and how many best lawyers, accolades he received and that kind of thing. I as their colleague, for lack of a better term, I have validity when I myself, am engaged in my own community, being president of the Legal Marketing Association. Does that make me a better marketer than anybody else? Oh, for God’s sake, no, I’m, I’m far behind what a lot of people are doing, and I know you can

John Corcoran 14:42

slam it down on the table and win an argument with some of your partners. I guess there’s a there’s a

Roy Sexton 14:47

there’s a pride in that for me, and there’s a sense of authority. So you know, I would say for people who are beginning this journey, get involved in don’t get involved because you have your cap set to be president necessarily, but chair or a committee, put a program together, learn from your colleagues, you will be stronger as a result, you can bring articles in that are from your colleagues and say so and so is doing this in another firm and when to back to your original question. When they look to another firm, and they say, why are they doing that this way? Why aren’t we which I think was baked into what you were saying? You might know the person who works at that firm? And you have authority to say actually I was and and attorneys do this all the time. Right. I was at cocktails with Sally Struthers who heads up marketing over there await you know that person. Yeah. And I know what they’re doing is this, what we’re doing is this, sometimes just having that inside baseball also gets you that that sense of authority that you can really try things. But again, I go back to whatever you’re doing, execute flawlessly. Don’t mess up the easy stuff, and then communicate back after you. The other thing I’ve learned working in law firms is every law firm, I’ve started when three different firms, I come in, and they’re like, oh, marketing isn’t doing a thing. And there’s actually a lot of stuff that’s already going on. Just no one in marketing has collected it, and sent it back to the attorneys in a digestible format that they like. And as corny as it sounds, no matter how big your organization is, put together a marketing digest that you send out every couple of weeks and say, here are the media hits we got, here’s what went up on the website, here are the alerts. You know, it doesn’t have to be the universe of everything. And after you do that for about a year, they’ll go oh, my gosh, there’s so much going on in marketing. And it’s some of it’s just repackaging and collecting all in one place. Because attorneys, they think about their book of business, they think about their practice area, they never bothered to look and see what else is happening in the organization. So you have to put that back in front of them to say, Wow, I’m part of this larger enterprise. How exciting,

John Corcoran 16:44

huh? I’m curious. So legal marketing, it requires the involvement of the attorneys. It’s very difficult, I’m sure for you to do your job without attorneys involved. And yet, as you mentioned earlier, one of the big objections is time. Sure, a lot of times are billing by the hour. And so you know, getting their involvement can be challenging. Do you just say, Okay, I will, whatever attorneys raise their hand are willing to get involved. I will go with

Roy Sexton 17:15

that, frankly. Yeah, I mean, I would be lousy selling Nike tennis shoes, because if someone said put together a marketing campaign that had a Gantt chart and what had go, I have to be a little more reactionary than that, because that’s how I’ve been working for 1015 years. We have a phrase we use often in Legal Marketing Association work with the willing, and it sounds, you know, it’s a little embarrassing to admit. And I might be the only one that admits this being illegal marketer is being opportunistically reactive, you have to have kind of a long game of where you’re headed. You know, the practices, where there’s market opportunity, you read the material, you know, what industries are hot. But then you also have to assess what’s my inventory of actionable product, who is going to play well, and now four or five years into Clark Hill, we’ve got a good churn because people know how to work with us. But in those early days, he got to work with the people who get it. And for me that I think that’s why Lean really heavily on media relations, social media, digital, I’m you can tell I’m not an events person. Some people really are and they do a beautiful job with it. I think first off, understand your mixes marketer, and what you do well start there, and then start to find and meet your attorneys, and collect them like you’re collecting action figures, you know, what do they like to do? Well, that one really likes to speak and present, that one likes to write, that one likes to be interviewed, and line them up. And whether it’s a grid you keep on your own and kind of plug them in against the areas that you’re going to need people. And then opportunistically, they will either come to you and say, I’ve got something I want to write, I want to get it out the door, can I work with you on that? Or work with a media relations team and say, I’ve got a pitch out there, find the attorney. And then over time, train those folks to say, I’m not going to bother you unnecessarily. But when I need you, I need you. And I need you quickly. And you’re going to find the people that work well. And that’s why that kind of weekly digest works in your favor, too. So you start with 1012 attorneys that get it. And there you go to over and over and over. And hopefully they line up with more, you know, lucrative practice areas. But then you’re gonna put that digest out and other attorneys are gonna go, Well, why am I not getting any of that? Oh, okay. I’d love to work with you. Here’s what I need. And what where do you like to kind of play what part of the sandbox Do you want to be in? And I think, as you grow, then you’re the other you’re going to have the other problem. You’re going to have the attorney that comes to you and wants to do everything. And that’s that’s almost a harder challenge than getting the one to kind of play in in a in a media relations path or a podcasting path or video. The one that wants to do every single thing wants to have an event wants to have a podcast, and they want to do it all Tuesday have to, that’s where I find is the hardest place to be as a legal marketer, because in this business model, everybody’s my boss, if they’re a partner in the firm, they all have a portion, they all kind of have that attitude like you’re and you’re Kinko’s, you’re in service to me. And if I have to say to them, I can’t do all of that. They look at me like, well, can someone else down the street? Who are all these people running around? What do you mean, can’t do all these things, and they don’t really think about you as a shared resource. There are a lot of people in this organization leaning into me for support, let’s do the one or two things, it’s gonna that are gonna make a difference for you. That’s what I pulled out the aspect of time, where I’m like, do you really want to be doing all these things?

John Corcoran 20:46

Right? Like, for example, if it’s like, taking everyone to a ballgame or something like that the costs involved the number of hours involved in putting it together. Yeah. Which kind of leads me back to I want to ask you about podcasts because I started my podcast 13 years ago as part of my LiquidSpace. Yeah, I started interviewing my legal clients, I found it led to more legal clients. And I’ve been doing it ever since. But, I mean, that was 13 years ago. And yet I still say see to this day. There’s lots of lawyers who have adopted podcasting, but there’s plenty who still think it’s an emerging medium. Even though it’s been around for quite some time. You’ve got a half dozen or so we’ll got one at the cannabis law podcast, you’ve got an immigration podcast and

Roy Sexton 21:26

labor and employment immigration. I’m sure I’m forgetting one. InsurTech. And someone’s going to be

John Corcoran 21:35

leading in a lonely world

Roy Sexton 21:36

of transactional labor and employment with Vanessa Kelly. Randy e-comm. Needleman does our banking. One. And again, this was a bit of a we knew we needed a library, podcast. And interestingly enough, I started clerking we had one attorney who’s no longer with us. He’s live, he just left. He came with his own podcast and left with that podcast, and was a real, difficult person to manage to because he believed his podcast needed to be recorded in a soundproof booth in Chicago, and he needed a marketing person to sit there with him the whole time, and push record and clap. And it was a and I learned, I said, we’re not we need to do these, but we can’t do them that way. And the blessing was his departure, like, frankly. And so I sat with the team. And I said, Do we have people that have expressed interest in this? And can we simplify this, and again, it happened to coincide just I don’t think the pandemic had quite begun. We had a couple that started before. And we did them very simply, much like you are, we got a lot of pushback on that, because they’d heard advice from other people. I’ve got to buy special equipment, I’ve got to buy this, I’ve got to buy that they always it’s like externalizing, I’m only going to be a good golf player and golf player by the most expensive clubs. And that no, no, no, you don’t need it. You need zoom, and a decent mic and a point of view. So we put our job aids together. And we found the individuals because it’s it’s tricky. And I was having this conversation with Nancy Marlin, who’s presenting at our annual conference in April, on this topic, and we were talking about she said, Well, I’ll tell them what microphone to get what headphones, they said, no, no, let’s not do that. Let’s talk about how you know what you’re doing is successful. Anybody now can buy a book and find out which microphone and that’s, that’s external. And then she goes, Well, we need to find the attorney that will regularly record I said, I’m not even sure that’s the barrier to entry anymore. Yes. Often that was what just make sure you have an attorney that’s going to do this, like a metronome. Now I’m more interested in, who’s the attorney that has a strong perspective. That’s why we have kind of unusual titles and graphics. For podcasts. We want them to be a reflection of the individual but still an outgrowth of a brand. So we figured out who are the individuals who have a strong point of view? Yes, are they going to be willing to record with regularity, but even if they’re not, we can rerun the old episodes, so let’s not worry about that too much. And then let’s talk to them. And I think guess this is what you’re doing. It’s not just about I’ve got a microphone, and I’m going to tell the world, my thoughts. And everybody will come and hire me figure out other people out there that have their own big network that will help cross promote this podcast that you’re in. And I would say, all of our podcasts and host to a one are really smart about. That person has 45,000 followers on LinkedIn. And they’re interesting. And we’re going to have an interesting conversation. And maybe 10 People will listen to it, maybe 300 People will listen to but it’ll be out there. It will be an asset they feel good about. They may become a referral source either for business or other guests. They will create greater awareness of the firm and the individual. And to me, that’s the more interesting conversation to have about the podcast. And again, we did a couple of these successfully, Joanne Needleman was our first we felt really good about it. And then I think Vanessa Kelly was next. And again, we promoted those back inside the organizations. We put a little money against them on LinkedIn. And then we had other people Bob Hoban, step forward. He actually came to us with a podcast and then started a new one Robert Thompson came for we just had people going well, I want to do that too. But now they’re willing to follow the recipe you’ve already established for a couple of other people because you’re demonstrating the results and outcomes and Joanne said to me after a year or two of that podcast I hope she won’t mind she said I’m I’m almost too busy to do my podcast anymore. It’s working so well I don’t have time to do this they said well don’t sweat and she felt really guilty about that. I said don’t sweat it. Do do fewer episodes but don’t stop keep the momentum keep it going up slow down because she was doing one a week for one I was like oh my god but you know because you get that go into we have we look like we’re the Clark Hill is just the join LMA podcast so you get them to slow down a little bit and then you say join you’ve got you’re sitting on 40 episodes are there ones that you want to rerun because we can repost those at you but it takes it takes some cycling through to get people to work with that personality first you’re going to end maybe it’s you know we both are film people and theater people i That’s my training is theater so I look to cast for the park first and I go that personal work and then everything else around them.

John Corcoran 26:12

I want to ask you about that Film Connection your interest in film and how that shows up in narrative but before we get to that, I want to ask you about branding a 130-year-old firm that’s been through multiple acquisitions. You said you went through a rebranding A little while back how do you hold on you know you have multiple different locations some in other countries as well how do you how do you hold all of that how you determine one brand for such a large entity?

Roy Sexton 26:41

I think you can’t be a control freak and do this kind of job and be mentally well so if your control freaky at all, and a lot of brand people are I’m not I’m colorblind, I can barely tell if we’re using the same font half the time and I’m I’m bad I’m bad at all of that. The stuff that matters to most people about brand I will freely admit that that’s why I have a team around me that’s an ROI it’s for Danna not okay. But I know it when I feel it and sense it and for most people brand that resonates is brand they experience and again I go back to I don’t go back to legal for my my energy around brand I go back to Disney I go back to Apple I go back to Nike I go back to organizations that I I purchase a lot from as you can see, Disney is probably half of this house. Is Disney the perfect company? No. Well, people laugh what what kind of lessons do you take from Disney for legal marketing? Well, what I like about Disney is once Disney has encompassed something we all now feel like Star Wars has always been Disney. It was no it isn’t that crazy? Yeah, Marvel feels like it’s always been part of Disney. Yeah. And I think that’s what we tried to do a little bit with our brand, we came up with the look and feel. And it was a clean European very different. We had a very kind of traditional Harvard burgundy ish color and a weird kind of avant garde haunted house font. But when I started and we went to a very clean font, black with a pop of green, kind of Adecco effect, just like very sleek, so that alone, just the look is gonna be very clean and different. But now we have to fold the humanity into that. And my boss, I mean, I’m talking a lot like this is all me, I got it, we got a whole great team. My boss Susan Hearn is genius. And she and our chief HR officer just right before we’re about to launch, the brand said, we need to bring our values into this clerk had been sitting on a great set of values, they’ve never really communicated externally to the world. And that became the aha moment. So this clean, sleek, bland brand and part of that development brand. We knew we needed to bring people together, we brought in these Texas offices, and they still felt a little resentful that they were part of something else. And why do we leave him behind some of the great ideas they had once upon a time. And there were folks in California, it felt a bit that way on the east coast. So through that brand development, the the esoteric picking of colors and fonts and things, we had a lot of conversations with everybody. And we had surveys of all the attorneys, all the employees. What do you love about the portion of the organization in which you work? What do you treasure here, and we fold it all of that together. So it wasn’t just all Detroit or all Texas or so all that got baked into the language we were using. And then the values were just a natural Aha. So we filmed this video six weeks right before we’re going to launch the brand and in the height of a pandemic all over the country, like how are we going to get this done? And we populated it with different voices that have been part of that brand process. And we just ask them questions about why do you work here? Why do you do what you do? What do you love about your client service? nothing groundbreaking, but we pulled it together and then when this beautiful look, it’s clean, new look that was fresh. But then human beings expressing who they were and what they were. That became the platform of upon which we could fold in everybody else that came. So we’ve had other acquisitions since they’ve gone so much more smoothly, because people want to be part of that you can bring them in, just like Marvel just became part of the Disney empire. And they started to populate those characters everywhere. And I think the pandemic, again, I wish we didn’t ever had to live through this. It forced attorneys to work across geography in a way they’ve never done before. And they were very beholden to I work in Birmingham, Michigan, or Ghana, I worked in Houston, Texas, well, they had to really think about, oh, I don’t know how to solve this problem. But there’s an attorney at Clark Hill, in Grand Rapids that does. And we also then launched industry teams in the last year and a half right after the brand launch, because it’s a great way to kind of capitalize on, we’ve created this moment of we’re inclusive, and everybody’s seen and their stories are being told, now collaborate. And our industries we support think about themselves as they might have a labor and employment issue. They might have an m&a issue, they might have an intellectual property issue. They want us to bring a team together that consult for all of those things. Not I go to this practice area, and I go over here, you know, and so we’ve been shifting the thinking to a more collaborative state. We already had a culture that wanted to be that way. They just needed the language, the imagery, the opportunity. And so I think now our brand, we continue to find ways to refine it and open it up. We’re never done. I think this is the most important point I can make. And I’m sure this is such a ramble. You’re like God, why to have this guy on? No, no, I did. You’re never finished branding. Yeah, that’s the part that makes me nuts in legal especially Aaron’s like, well, we launched our brand. No, it’s a lot. Nobody cares. Nobody’s sitting around waiting for Clark Hill, new logo, they don’t care. What they care about is, what does that Mickey Mouse emblem mean? To me? What does the apple mean? What does it represent in terms of the experience I have with you? And that’s the fun about branding. That’s where I get excited. I don’t care about fonts. I don’t care about colors. But I realize the iconography triggers something for people. Yeah. What I want is, what stories do they associate with us? What kind of experience do they have when they’re either a client? Or employed? Or, you know, at a charity event with us, whatever? Do they get a sense of who we are as people? And do they like that? I think that’s to me what we do well, with our brand now we’re finding different ways to tell the stories all the time. So now I

John Corcoran 32:27

want to ask you also about narrative and we chatted before and a little bit about movies. You grew up as a movie night you said your mom was a big movie night. My father was a film critic when I was growing up. So literally, we’re going on to see so many movies. Yeah, it was it was a deli, dinner table conversation, all that kind of stuff. We just thought

Roy Sexton 32:47

we were film critics in my house, you actually were and you’re literally was,

John Corcoran 32:51

yeah, put food on the table. And so how does that show up in the work that you do? Now? How do you bring that kind of knowledge of narrative to

Roy Sexton 33:02

I can’t help myself? I need to, I need to come up with concise answers for every question you ask. But this is one that I could probably ramble on for days, I I’m an English and theater major, because my parents said, study what you like, and that’s why they never had any money. And I spend too much money on theater props and things. I you know, I, I am very interested in the human condition, and how we react to any kind of stimuli, particularly emotional. So when I’ve been in plays, for me, the most interesting moment is after you’ve been through the whole rehearsal, and you have that first experience in front of an audience, and you’re figuring out what they react to, and how the play you’re in completely changes. By the end of its run, not not not taking away from what the director has created, because it needs to be locked in amber. And you know, but it just because the audience is that additional character you are missing in rehearsal, but they laugh at what they cry at what they react to. So that’s in my DNA, I can’t help myself. And I find it endlessly fascinating to see what people will react to. And I think it’s why I enjoy social media so much. I don’t actually have to talk to anybody because I am kind of an introvert except under circumstances like this, and you can’t get me to shut up. But I am interested to see what people react to what they don’t. And sometimes, when my body is telling me oh, I don’t know if I should post this. For example, my Legal Marketing Association presidency, our annual conference, everybody come legalmarketing.org and of April. We’re in Florida. Now, as a gay man and a liberal. Florida is a difficult place for me to be. And I understand we’ve had people send us some nasty emails going How dare you be in Florida. But as LMA president, I know we’ve been planning this for three years and we have contracts and there are people in Florida who will benefit from us being in Florida, and we are doing outreach to LGBTQ plus and people of color and different folks, and we’re going to do the best we can to offset maybe challenges without overly politicizing. But last night, I’d written a couple emails to people on the side. And I said to our CEO, should I post those online? And I thought, I don’t think I should do this. I might be drawing attention to something. And she goes, Yeah, why not? Well, 3000 views later, 24 hours later and 78 comments from people going, thank you for saying this. I was feeling this and wasn’t sure how, you know, I just was open about, here’s where we are, here’s what we’re going to do. I know how people are feeling. But we’re going to make the most of this. That’s the kind of thing you wouldn’t necessarily think you need to put out in the world because you’re promoting the conference and the agenda, who’s going to be there and the keynote. But sometimes taking that moment of humanity is exactly the thing everybody responds to. And I’m secretly I hope, a bunch of people sign up to go to the conference, because I put that out there. It’s not part of our marketing message, but it got a reaction. So to your point about narrative, sometimes it’s what is the audience reacting to and feeling and there’s a bit of a high wire act of going, what are they going to respond to, and sometimes I think people are actually going to love this, it’s crickets. And I find that interesting. And I think as a branding person and a marketing person, you are having an ongoing dialogue with consumers, you might know them you might not. But that is a narrative, that is a play. That is a that is a two hander play. Now film is different from theater, because once it’s locked, you don’t know how the audience is going to respond to that they hate it. Unless you’re Martin Scorsese, you never get another thought on that. But it’s still interesting to me how the audience becomes part of the act of communication, and the storytelling. And I think anything we do as marketers, if you’re having fun with it, and experimenting, and you’re in an organization where you’re allowed to, like I am, you can have some wonderful discoveries. You know, the old Reese’s cup ads are the peanut butter found the chocolate, they were likely to be found in New York, there, there are times like that, we landed on a q&a series, which we should have thought of at the beginning, because we’re all about featuring our people and their stories. But it came about because one attorney in a different part of the country, I think was a little jealous that we had another attorney that was in a leadership role. And this person had been part of the organization long before I didn’t want to sell too much, because you know who I’m talking about. And one of our execs said, We need to get some media for this person. And I’m like, they volunteered at that organization. 20 years ago, what kind of media am I gonna get? But now it’s on my plate to do something out. This person has a big book of business and feels jealous, basically. So I turned to one of my colleagues, I said, could you just do a q&a with them, and let’s put it on the website and on social media, and if the media pick it up, great. Now everyone kind of felt like there was a letdown until it went out. Because I was smart enough. This Tommy frowns is a colleague of mine, he’s a journalist by training, he has done sports journalism. And and he he does, he’s having fun with these. And he pulled such good stuff out of that, it’s now become a continuing series that people look forward to on a monthly basis. It’s just a q&a. Yeah, novel. But it’s something that’s a feature we’re putting out, it makes somebody in the organization feels good, feel good. But they get to tell their story as a person as a professional. So you got to sometimes lean into the moment and say, this is part of our ongoing story we’re telling about Clark Hill and who we are. And you know, sometimes they think of myself as like an editor of a small town paper more than anything. It’s like, what are the stories coming out of this organization that aren’t just self serving? But maybe ring that bell a little bit, but have some interest? Outside?

John Corcoran 38:27

Yeah, yeah. And express an expression of our humanity, which is really what people connect over is our our shared humanity. Roy, this has been really great. Where can people go to learn more about you, and

Roy Sexton 38:40

they’re not going to want to there, they’ve already tuned out 20 minutes ago, I’m, I’m prolific on LinkedIn. So you can find me on LinkedIn, you can check out my website, I haven’t written a movie review, really, since the pandemic began. It’s a lot of legal marketing stuff, but ReelRoyReviews.com Hopefully, one day soon, I’ll start writing about movies again, check out ClarkHill.com to see kind of the work we’re doing there and go to LegalMarketing.org. And if you know, if you’re so inclined to go to Florida at the end of April, you can meet me in person at our conference, we’d love to see you there.

John Corcoran 39:10

And thank you, Roy, for just being yourself. You know, so often I think in the legal profession, there can be a tendency to to be a sanitized version of ourselves. And so I don’t know

Roy Sexton 39:21

how to do that. I’m waiting. I’m waiting for someone to bring up the hook and go, we’ve had enough with you.

John Corcoran 39:27

Yeah, no, I think that’s probably why people connect with you is because you are willing to do that. So thank you. And we look forward to checking out more work on what you do.

Roy Sexton 39:37

Well, thanks for having me. And thanks for what you’re doing. You have a wonderful voice in the market and just someone who has established what podcasts and can do over 13 years ago. I mean, you were a trailblazer people were not doing this 13 years ago, and the fact that you’ve stuck with it, and it’s working for you, I think is a wonderful example that we as legal marketers should lean into, no matter what part of the cycle if you’re starting them in your firm or your well into them, look at what what John is doing and celebrate that. It’ll be a great example, I think for your attorneys.

John Corcoran 40:06

So I mean, 100% I mean, it’s brought such great joy and benefit to my life from you know, my business partner to go into people’s weddings were connected with your podcasting, no joke seriously. So you know, just so many great relationships come from it. So I tell people all the time, you know, we My company is a small part of the market. But I tell people all the time when I meet people, oh, you know, podcasting is such a blessing to your life.

Roy Sexton 40:30

I know you’re wrapping us up the man ask you a question, or do you consider yourself introverted or extroverted?

John Corcoran 40:36

Well, it’s funny because I, I’m kind of more of an ambivert, because there’s no way you can I definitely get it. The classic definition is if you get energy from others, correct, and you’re an extrovert, right, I do get energy from others, I don’t need to go, you know, withdraw to my room after being in a room full of people. But on the other hand, in order to get through three years of law school as I did, and the bar exam, you got to have some introverted tendencies for long periods of time,

Roy Sexton 41:03

when the reason I ask is, I know that I do absolutely get energy by being by myself, not for not long, like 1020 minutes, I just need to be away. If I’m in a huge crowd of people, I just melt one on one, I get a lot of energy from something like this. But what strikes me about your approach and why I finally found something that works for me is, if I have a job to do in a circumstance, if I’m in an event, and I’m taking the pictures, or I’m interviewing somebody, or I’m speaking, I feel far more comfortable engaging with everybody. And I feel like, this is where I’m my point I’m driving to when you’re when you have a podcast, and you’re in the driver’s seat of that, it gives you this opportunity to have conversations with a lot of people over time, and develop those relationships, because I’m honored to be asked, you’ve gotten to learn some things about me. And you have created that connection point. I feel that way about social media to it cousin, it’s always like, Are you friends with all these people? Do you know all of them in real life? I go, No. But some of the people I’ve developed relationships with online sounds a little creepy, have become people I have gone, I have gone to weddings, and I have gotten to know them in real life. But it started because we had a mutual interest in comic books or, you know, we, somebody’s friend of a friend, and I kind of had a spark and comments on something they posted. And I became friends with that person. And sometimes I’ve even forgotten later the person will say, how do you know my friend so and so on? I’m like, I think through you. But I think this is another channel where, again, if you’re developing relationships in a network, this is a great authentic way to do that. And if you feel self conscious about that, this helps take away from some of that. Oh, for

John Corcoran 42:34

sure. Yeah, and I definitely think it’s a great tool for people that feel a bit introverted, because it’s not that hard. Like everyone’s done one on one over Zoom. You know, it’s not a big crowd of people or anything like that. So

Roy Sexton 42:45

and people love talking about themselves. And sometimes they’ll say last conversation I had and I’m like, I didn’t say anything. I just asked you a couple questions and you never shut up. So yeah, which is probably how you’re feeling today. Anyway, to wrap this up five minutes ago, but thank you for I wanted to ask you about that.

John Corcoran 42:59

Great. Thanks for Thanks for

Outro 43:00

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