The Conversation: Hannah Sparkes

Monckton Chambers Head of Marketing Hannah Sparkes believes the secret to marketing success at the Bar is to go with the natural rhythm of chambers, not against it.?Over her 10-plus years marketing barristers sets, she has learned to embrace the prevailing last-minute culture that's a natural consequence of the work that barristers do - regularly having to drop everything and attend court at a moment's notice - and turn it to advantage.?

“Yes,?at Monckton?we have annual marketing initiatives that we can plan ahead for,?which?are repeated every year with updated content, such as client-focussed events, email campaigns, directory submissions, etc.? But a big part of our marketing programme is made up of ad-hoc responses to breaking news of judgments and other legal developments.” ??

Hannah talked to me about?‘Rapid Response’ initiatives, for example around embargoed judgments where the clerking and marketing teams can’t know a decision ahead of time, but still have to prepare to push out communications immediately?when?the judgment is handed down. “The key is to have a system of jumping quickly into creative action -?website and?social media campaigns,?webinars?etc - once the judgment is deemed public, and this requires tight team working with the barristers”, she explains. Now we all know this can be tricky, given the disciplines of marketing and law are so different, the one dominated by creativity and the other by attention to detail. So often, the twains never meet! So how does she achieve this level of close working? ?

“As marketers we are not the legal brains. That’s our barristers. But we need to have a good enough knowledge of legal areas that we can be creative and suggest?strong?ideas, have?dialogue with members and work as a team. This is so important, it’s worth investing time in. I often attend our seminars and events with the specific purpose of developing this understanding and making sure my knowledge is up to date. It’s also good for me to see first hand what?Monckton’s?clients are interested in. Our?Golden Rule for marketing?is that whatever we do, it has to add value to our clients and be in line with our strategy in terms of where we want to go and the practice areas we want to push.”?

Hannah is one of a small number of marketers at the Bar who are truly leading the way. “But I do think chambers across the board are getting more creative.? This is especially so since Covid.? That experience moved everyone to rely more on digital communication, and with that came more visual and more creative content.? Generally speaking, all chambers are comfortable now with podcasts, webinars, social media posts, and the like.? Everyone’s raised their game, so we've had to raise ours even more to maintain our lead."?

Talking to Hannah about the last minute culture at the Bar reminds me of a law student event run by Legal Cheek a few years ago at the Google Campus.? I attended as the four panellists offering career wisdom to the roomful of students were all clients of mine at the time.? I'll never forget Gatehouse Chambers' PJ Kirkby KC and 11KBW’s Sean Jones KC, seemingly admonishing the youngsters, telling them "You need to seriously re-think your ambitions of a career in law if you're the sort of person who regularly leaves essay and dissertation writing to the last minute, going up to the wire every time and only completing assignments minutes before the deadline...."? The room fell silent and a few students shifted uncomfortably in their seats.? Then came the punchline: "...Forget being a solicitor, you're clearly better suited for a career at the Bar!"?

I love how Hannah embraces this culture, PRs it and turns it into a positive advantage.? No wonder she leads where others follow.?

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