Counsel Collective · Brand & Reputation Architects
Behind the BrandEdition Two
Edition One recognised twenty chiefs. Edition Two recognises the bench. Forty five people across thirty five organisations, at every level and every title, who built the reputation of a law firm or a legal company. Congratulations to every one of them.
Grouped by organisation, not ranked
A growth function is a bench, not a person. Where a firm has depth, the chief and the leader beneath them appear under one header.
Every title verified at source
Each seat was confirmed against the person’s own record in August 2026. Firm pages and association rosters go stale. Seven did.
Earned, never sold
Every name on this page was chosen by our editors and appears at no cost. A place here cannot be bought, and neither can a better one.
The Firms
28 Organisations
Law firms, from Am Law 50 to a sixty person patent boutique, and every level in between.
Vedder
Chicago
iRoy E. Sexton
Chief Marketing and Client Development Officer
Served as the Legal Marketing Association’s 2023 international president. Took Vedder’s chief marketing and client development seat in 2025.
Clark Hill
Dublin
iSusan Collier Ahern
Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer
Seven years running marketing, brand, PR, digital, events and communications, from Dublin, on the senior leadership team of a US firm.
Bass, Berry & Sims
Washington DC · Nashville2 Honorees
iRachel Shields Williams
Director of AI and Knowledge Management
The Legal Marketing Association’s 2026 international president, three months into an AI role after seventeen years at Sidley.
iKerry M. Price
Chief Strategy and Operations Officer
The structure she manages puts marketing and business development alongside finance, pricing, recruiting and professional development.
Gould & Ratner
Chicago2 Honorees
iJohn Byrne
Chief Business Development Officer
Copy editor, litigator, law school career services, search firm founder, chief marketing officer, publisher. Now ten years running growth here.
iKeith Ecker
Director of Marketing
Came to law firm marketing from the editor’s desk at a national magazine for in house counsel.
Baker McKenzie
New York · Washington DC2 Honorees
iAngela Petros
Chief Marketing Officer
An M&A associate in Perth and Sydney, then Boston Consulting Group, then software marketing, then eight years as a chief before the global seat.
iDiana Lauritson
Associate Director of Business Development
Four years leading global business development for a firm’s regulatory practices, including a geopolitical risk platform she launched.
Kirkland & Ellis
Chicago
iMaria A. Black
Chief Marketing Officer
Thirty eight years at one firm. She joined in 1987 in library technical services and conflicts, and has held the chief marketing seat since 2017.
Greenberg Traurig
New York2 Honorees
Joey Kaiser
Chief Communications Officer
Twenty one years at one firm, event manager to the chief communications seat, with every step in between on the record.
Jill Perry
Managing Director
Twenty nine years at one firm. She was its chief marketing officer for thirteen of them, then moved into the managing director seat in 2010.
Barnes & Thornburg
Greater Philadelphia
Trish Lilley
Chief Marketing & Business Development Officer
Federal courts reporter to chief, now leading a fifty person team where client and alumni relations sit inside the remit.
Akerman
Austin
iIris J. Jones
Chief Marketing and Client Development Officer
A trial defense shareholder representing Fortune 500 companies and municipalities before she moved into client development.
Benesch
Cleveland
iJeanne Hammerstrom
Chief Marketing Officer
Twenty one years in the chief seat at one firm. The Legal Marketing Association’s 2011 national president and a 2019 hall of fame inductee.
Kilpatrick
Washington DC
iIwona Kesting
Chief Business Development & Marketing Officer
Recognised in the first edition and again here. She arrived from Jones Day in June 2026 to a firm mid-reinvention, and Kilpatrick Labs launched two days later.
Husch Blackwell
Dallas · Boston2 Honorees
iErin Banks
Chief Business Development Officer
Named the firm’s first ever chief business development officer, with marketing, martech, events and key accounts in one division.
iKaty Admirand
Senior Director, Marketing & Communications
Brand, content and the martech stack at an Am Law 100 firm built around a virtual office.
Burr & Forman
Charleston · Greenville2 Honorees
Kathryn Whitaker
Chief Marketing Officer
Sits on the advisory board for the Thomson Reuters Institute’s annual forum for chief marketing and business development officers.
Jessica E. Haarsgaard
Director of Business Development
Nine years at one firm, coordinator to director, and president of the Legal Marketing Association’s Southeast region in 2019.
Baker Donelson
Nashville · Birmingham2 Honorees
iAdam Severson
Chief Marketing & Business Development Officer
Named his office’s business services leader of the year in 2025, and a steady voice in the trade press on what marketing departments are becoming.
iDanielle Smith
Director, Baker Women
Five years directing the firm’s women’s initiative, a seat that sits across HR, recruiting, retention, business development and talent at once.
Davis Wright Tremaine
Washington DC · New York2 Honorees
Julia Bennett
Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer
A former Shearman and Crowell associate who rebuilt the growth function into one unit spanning practice management, client experience and marketing.
Meredith Coppola Rosenthal
Director of Business Development
Business development at a firm that put client experience and marketing under one roof rather than treating them as neighbours.
Saul Ewing
Philadelphia
Justin Portaz
Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer
Took the chief seat in January, arriving from the same role at Jenner & Block.
Lathrop GPM
Seattle
iJasmine Trillos-Decarie
Chief Client Officer
A chief client officer rather than a chief marketing officer, and president of the Legal Marketing Association’s West region for 2026.
Venable
Washington DC
iPaul Bonner
Vice President of Marketing and Business Development
Twelve years at one firm, now across brand, client engagement, events, PR, martech and business development. The Legal Marketing Association’s incoming president.
Ashurst Perkins Coie
Portland
iAmber Bollman
Senior Client Relationship Manager
Covered trials for a daily newspaper, then law school, then fifteen years building client relationships across four firms.
Foley & Lardner
Denver
Koree Khongphand-Buckman
Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer
Business development, marketing, client service and branding, all under one mandate since 2021.
Paul Hastings
New York
iRJ Williams
Chief Marketing Officer
Arrived from Skadden, where he ran global marketing, communications and alumni initiatives.
King & Spalding
New York
Kevin A. Cavanaugh
Chief Marketing Officer
Left law firm marketing for communications at a multibillion dollar charitable trust, then came back to run it globally.
Willkie Farr & Gallagher
Dallas
iIan Ribald
Chief Business Development & Marketing Officer
A law degree, an MBA, an adjunct teaching post, and a remit that runs from alumni relations to media.
Mintz
Boston
Chris Newman
Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer
Nine years at McDermott and a start at Cravath before the chief seat.
Bressler, Amery & Ross
Miami
iShanon Webster
Director of Marketing and Business Development
An attorney who moved into marketing and has run the function for seven years.
Steptoe & Johnson PLLC
Columbus
iRyan R. Daniels
Chief Marketing Officer
Twenty years of marketing built around an energy and natural resources practice.
Bookoff McAndrews
Washington DC
iArthur Uratani
Director of Marketing and Outreach
Conflicts analyst, then five years in proposals, then twelve years running marketing at a sixty person patent firm.
Axinn
New York
Julie Chodos
Chief Marketing & Business Development Officer
Chief of a growth function at an antitrust and IP firm that competes on specialization rather than scale.
The Providers
7 Organisations
The companies that sell to law departments and law firms, and the people who gave them a voice.
NetDocuments
Dallas2 Honorees
iAlecha Stackle
Chief Marketing Officer
Chief marketing officer through the year the company absorbed a competitor’s document management install base.
iMelissa Mickelson
Vice President, Brand Strategy and Corporate Marketing
Brand strategy and corporate marketing through an acquisition integration, the least forgiving moment to hold that seat.
Everlaw
Oakland · San Francisco2 Honorees
iJoshua Schnoll
Chief Marketing Officer
Took the chief seat in late 2024 and launched the brand campaign that came with it.
iCasey Sullivan
Director, Content Marketing
A lawyer who writes. Leads the content team at a company whose own bio says his ediscovery writing has been cited by federal courts.
SurePoint Technologies
Austin
iOlivia Mockel
Chief Operating Officer
Chief operating officer since 2024, with marketing, client success, channel partnerships and payments all inside one remit.
Axiom
New York
iAndy Burtis
Chief Marketing Officer
The company’s in house research on legal AI adoption keeps getting quoted back at the industry.
Litera
Chicago
iCynthia Gumbert
Chief Marketing Officer
Hired in January 2025 to unify a brand assembled out of many acquisitions. The company relaunched that brand in July 2026.
Exterro
Portland
iJohn Vincenzo
Chief Marketing Officer
Joined to move a company known for ediscovery into the language of data risk management.
Burford Capital
New York
iDavid Helfenbein
Senior Vice President, Communications
Carries global communications at a NYSE listed litigation funder that has not filled its chief marketing seat since early 2025.
How these names were chosen
Every name arrived one of three ways. A peer put them forward, our editors found them while building the edition, or their work surfaced while we were reporting something else.
All three routes then met the same bar. Each seat was confirmed against the person’s own record in August 2026, and where a firm page or an association roster disagreed with that record, the person’s own record won.
And all three routes are free. A place on this page is never sold, placement never moves for anyone who advertises with us, and no advertising runs beside this piece.
Know someone who belongs here?
Editions are built from nominations and from what our editors find. Both are free, and the person you name never pays to appear.
