Hiring leadership
Questions to ask before hiring a law-firm fractional CMO.
Use an evidence-based hiring checklist to compare fractional CMO proposals, clarify authority and evaluate the work your law firm will receive.
Define the job before evaluating the person.
Before interviewing a fractional CMO, write down the decisions and responsibilities that are not being handled well today. Maybe the owner is mediating between agencies. Maybe marketing reports never reach signed-case performance. Maybe expansion is moving faster than the team's operating plan.
That list gives the conversation a purpose. The right candidate should be able to discuss how they would approach the gap, what they would need from your firm, and where their role would end. A persuasive presentation is not a substitute for a clear working arrangement.
Compare proposals against evidence, not adjectives.
For each row, record the candidate's answer, the supporting document, the unresolved question and the person who will confirm it. Mark it supported, needs clarification or missing. Use the checklist to compare scope, responsibility and commercial terms.
At Gadient Consulting, we use these questions to define the engagement before work begins. Most firms engage us at $10 million to $25 million in annual revenue, but that is a common starting point rather than a revenue limit. For a firm with an internal social team and several vendors, the central issue is who directs the combined strategy and ensures approved changes actually happen.
Swipe or scroll the table sideways to view every column.
Compare the checklist with our CMO engagement responsibilities and outputs.
Ask for experience that matches the responsibility.
Listen for the distinction between a result they directly managed and one they were associated with. Context matters: market, case mix, budget, team, and period. An anonymized example can still be useful if it clearly explains the problem, the work, and the limitations of the evidence.
- What did you personally own in your previous law-firm work?
- How did you coordinate marketing, intake, and leadership?
- Which outcomes can you explain with a baseline, timeframe, and your specific contribution?
- What changed during an engagement when the original plan did not work?
For context on Nick's responsibilities, review his law-firm and agency career experience.
Get specific about delivery.
Ask what the first phase will establish, how the working plan will be maintained, and what the review cadence will look like. Request a clear distinction between executive oversight and production work. Website development, creative, media management, automation, and software administration require time and ownership.
The proposal should identify responsibilities, deliverables, dependencies, exclusions, fees, and how changes in scope are handled. Ask which internal team members need to participate and what happens if data or vendor access is delayed.
Discuss the practical division of work in our engagement process.
Use the first-90-days framework to discuss a practical starting scope.
Discuss how progress will be assessed.
Look for a measurement plan connected to the firm's priorities. Establish the baseline, define the terms, and account for conversion lag and incomplete attribution. A useful review should distinguish work completed, early signals, and business outcomes.
You should leave the hiring process knowing what the CMO will own, what the firm must contribute, and what evidence will guide future decisions. That clarity is the foundation for evaluating whether the engagement is useful.
Inspect the target scorecard before agreeing how progress will be reviewed.
Use one operating decision to test the working relationship.
In the interview, ask how the candidate handles this decision: your paid agency wants more budget, your internal team needs attorney participation for content, and intake has unresolved attorney-review work. Ask the candidate to explain what they need to know, which decisions can be made now, who must act and what they would defer. Supply sanitized business information only, not private client records.
A useful answer establishes the objective, checks case fit and capacity, separates execution work from leadership decisions, and produces an accountable next step. It should not default to replacing every vendor or promising a percentage improvement before seeing evidence.
If the uncertainty is a narrow diagnostic question, consider a separately scoped assessment. If the evidence already shows a continuing coordination gap, evaluate ongoing leadership. Where the need is daily embedded executive management, assess whether a full-time role better matches the job.
See how we structure weekly team and vendor accountability.
YOUR NEXT MOVE
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