Position: Vice President of Marketing - PE Backed PI Legal Service Organization
Reports To: Chief Operating Officer
Location: Fully Remote, US
Travel: Approximately one week per month to portfolio firm locations across the US and Canada
Compensation: Competitive base salary, bonus, and benefits.
Our client is a private-equity-backed legal services organization executing a buy-and-build strategy to consolidate leading plaintiff law firms across the United States and Canada. Currently operating across four partner firms with additional acquisitions underway, the platform is scaling toward a portfolio of 10–20 distinct brands and a $2B valuation target. The incoming Vice President of Marketing joins at a pivotal moment in the platform’s growth trajectory, with the opportunity to build the marketing function that will drive case acquisition performance across a rapidly expanding national portfolio. This is a newly created senior leadership role reporting directly to the Chief Operating Officer. This executive will own case acquisition performance across the entire portfolio, develop and execute distinct marketing strategies for each brand, and build the marketing infrastructure required to support a rapidly growing, multi-brand platform. This is a performance marketing role in a PE-governed, founder-navigated, high-growth environment.
Core Profile: alignment with the following is required to get you in the conversation
- Multi-Brand Portfolio Marketing Leadership: The successful candidate will have actively managed marketing across multiple distinct brands, service lines, or market contexts simultaneously — not a single large firm with an unconstrained budget. Personal injury legal services is a trust-based, single-event professional service: the consumer is navigating a high-stakes decision after a stressful, unexpected event and will choose the firm they know and trust at that moment. Marketing in this environment is fundamentally different from marketing a product or a brand with repeat purchase cycles, and candidates must carry that understanding into every strategic decision they make. Each portfolio firm requires a custom strategy, a distinct messaging approach, and budget calibrated against approximately 20% of revenue as the marketing envelope per firm. The mandate is to maximize case acquisition performance within that constraint — not to flood channels with unlimited spend. Equally essential is the ability to think market by market and community by community: building 6 to 7 distinct approaches to capture market share across consumer demographics ranging from digitally sophisticated metro audiences to community-anchored, referral-driven markets where a baseball jersey sponsorship and a toy drive outperform any paid campaign.
- Digital-First Foundation Including Generative Engine Optimization: The platform’s marketing strategy has evolved beyond traditional SEO, and this is a non-negotiable technical threshold. Candidates must demonstrate a current, working understanding of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and AI-overview indexing — how content is structured for AI-driven discovery, not 2015-style long-form search optimization. Paid search experience (Google Ads, LSAs, PPC), organic search, social media advertising, and website optimization are required from day one. Beyond digital, the VP of Marketing oversees the platform’s full marketing spectrum: out-of-home advertising (billboards, transit, bus wraps), television and broadcast, radio, community outreach, sponsorships, and referral programs. Candidates do not need to be a specialist in every channel — but must be capable of evaluating performance, directing agency partners, and determining the right channel blend for each brand and market context.
- Case Acquisition Performance and Consumer Acquisition Economics: Signed case acquisition performance is the primary deliverable of this role, and the economics of acquiring that case matter as much as the volume. Performance is tracked against a three-bucket model — leads, solid leads, and signed cases — with Customer Acquisition Cost as the overlay across all three. The incoming VP inherits a meaningful dependency on third-party lead providers and is expected to build toward a more balanced acquisition model over time, progressively shifting in-house digital acquisition capabilities while protecting existing pipelines. Understanding who the PI consumer is — typically a person navigating a stressful, unexpected event and making a high-stakes legal decision without deep market knowledge — and how to reach them effectively across different community and demographic contexts is core to building a sustainable, scalable acquisition engine. The VP builds the dashboards, attribution frameworks, and PE board reporting infrastructure that makes performance visible and defensible across the entire portfolio.
- Founder-Navigated Integration and Political Capital: Every acquired firm arrives with a founder, an existing agency roster, in-house marketing staff, and deeply held opinions about what drives cases. The VP joins due diligence early and arrives on Day 1 of close with a full marketing plan already aligned — capturing quick wins in the first 30 to 45 days, then addressing structural changes only after trust has been earned. Managing Partners are effectively customers of the LSO: they carry earn-outs tied to firm performance and must be approached as partners, not subordinates. The VP operates across the PE board, the Chief Growth Officer, and the Chief Operating Officer simultaneously — with the political awareness to lead through influence and demonstrated results rather than organizational authority. Change management here is a performance skill, not a soft skill.
- Execution-Oriented Operating Discipline: The Chief Growth Officer brings deep institutional marketing knowledge and creative direction developed over years building the Litco brand. The VP of Marketing’s role is to take that strategic vision and build the operational engine to execute it at scale across a rapidly growing portfolio. This is not a visionary CMO seat. It is a 60 to 70 percent strategic, 30 to 40 percent tactical role requiring the discipline to shift into execution mode when required and return to strategic oversight as issues resolve. Familiarity with structured business operating systems — Petra, EOS/Traction, or equivalent — is preferred; candidates who understand disciplined planning and execution cadences will acclimate significantly faster to the organization’s culture, planning rhythms, and management expectations.
Core Responsibilities:
Portfolio Brand Strategy
- Develop and maintain a distinct marketing strategy, messaging framework, channel mix, and budget allocation for each portfolio brand – calibrated against approximately 20% of revenue as the marketing envelope per firm – with full authority to reallocate across brands and channels based on performance data.
- Apply the house-of-brands architecture across the portfolio: each acquired firm retains its independent market identity, brand voice, and local strategy, with Litco Law (Canada) operating at materially different scale from newly acquired US firms. A single message pushed everywhere is a disqualifier.
- Build 6 to 7 distinct acquisition approaches for each portfolio market, from digitally sophisticated metro audiences to community-anchored, referral-driven markets where trust, local presence, and community investment outperform paid campaigns.
- Direct the platform’s external agencies and third-party partners to measurable performance outcomes – navigating existing vendor loyalties at acquired firms with care, building trust through results before restructuring legacy arrangements, and identifying opportunities to bring execution in-house where it creates clear economic advantage.
Case Acquisition and Performance Economics
- Own signed case acquisition performance across all portfolio brands as the primary deliverable of the role, directing the full marketing mix: paid search (Google Ads/LSAs), GEO and AI-overview indexing, SEO, social media, out-of-home, broadcast media, radio, community outreach, sponsorships, and referral programs.
- Track performance against the three-bucket KPI model – leads, solid leads, signed cases – with Customer Acquisition Cost as the overlay, driving continuous improvement in cost per signed case while maintaining or growing acquisition volume across the portfolio.
- Build multi-touch attribution frameworks and real-time dashboards that provide portfolio-wide performance visibility to the COO, CGO, executive team, and PE board; develop and present budget variance analysis framed in case economics – cost per lead, cost per solid lead, cost per signed case.
- Manage third-party lead provider relationships with a long-term view toward a more balanced acquisition model, progressively shifting the in-house to external ratio over time without disrupting existing pipelines, while partnering with firm intake teams to improve signed case conversion rates.
M&A Integration and Firm Onboarding
- Participate in due diligence to assess marketing infrastructure, agency relationships, channel performance, and brand positioning of prospective acquisition targets; arrive on Day 1 of close with a full marketing plan already aligned.
- Establish baseline KPIs within the first two weeks of onboarding each new firm – total leads, solid leads, signed cases, and CAC by channel – and complete a comprehensive marketing audit within 30 days covering website AI-indexing readiness, channel mix performance, agency ecosystem, and funnel conversion at each stage.
- Deliver a gap analysis and strategic marketing plan within 60 to 90 days to the COO and firm principals – including recommended budget reallocation, channel adjustments, measurable growth targets, and implementation timeline – framed in terms of projected case growth and cost per acquisition.
- Build trust with acquired firm owners and in-house marketing staff before redirecting strategy – presenting plans as proposals, leading with data, earning expanded authority through demonstrated results, and treating founders as partners with earn-outs tied to firm performance, not subordinates.
Leadership, Technology and Stakeholder Management
- Build and lead a lean marketing function, operating as both strategic leader and hands-on contributor – managing external agencies and embedded firm-level staff across the portfolio without requiring a large centralized internal team, at a 60 to 70 percent strategic, 30 to 40 percent tactical balance.
- Oversee the platform’s marketing technology stack – CRM, automation, analytics, and attribution tools – maintaining current fluency in GEO content strategy and AI-assisted search, and building reporting infrastructure that gives leadership and board stakeholders clear, credible visibility into performance and return on investment.
- Navigate the PE board, the CGO, the COO, and acquired firm founders simultaneously – leading through influence and demonstrated results rather than organizational authority, with the political awareness that change management in this environment is a performance skill, not a soft one.
- Represent marketing performance and strategy to the PE board, executive team, and firm owners with clarity, commercial awareness, and accountability – framing investment decisions in terms of case economics and firm revenue performance.
Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree required; MBA or advanced degree preferred.
- 10 or more years of marketing experience, with at least 5 years in a senior leadership role managing marketing across multiple brands, locations, or service lines simultaneously. Multi-brand portfolio experience is a must-have, not a preference.
- Demonstrated fluency in Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), AI-overview indexing, paid search, SEO, and social media advertising. Candidates must be current on the shift from legacy search optimization to AI-driven content and discovery.
- Experience managing a full marketing mix including digital channels, out-of-home advertising, broadcast media, community outreach, and referral programs.
- Consumer-facing (B2C) professional services marketing background required. Must understand what it means to market an intangible service — not a product, not inventory — and how consumers make high-stakes service decisions.
- Demonstrated consumer persona fluency: ability to segment markets by community type and develop distinct acquisition strategies for different consumer demographics, from digitally sophisticated urban audiences to community-anchored, word-of-mouth-driven markets.
- Experience managing marketing budgets of $3M USD or more across multiple brands or locations, with direct authority to allocate and reallocate spend based on performance data.
- Analytical and data-driven: proficient in CAC measurement, marketing attribution, lead funnel analysis (leads ? solid leads ? signed cases), and the development of performance reporting for executive and board-level audiences.
- Experience in private-equity-backed or acquisitive multi-brand environments preferred; demonstrated ability to present marketing performance and budget variance to PE board stakeholders.
- Proven ability to navigate complex stakeholder environments including founders, PE sponsors, and executive leadership, using influence and data rather than organizational authority to drive change.
- Familiarity with structured business operating systems (Petra, EOS/Traction, or equivalent) preferred; candidates who understand disciplined planning and execution cadences will integrate more effectively into the organization’s culture.
- Technology-adaptive: able to evaluate and work with available marketing technology platforms rather than requiring specific enterprise tools.
- Execution-oriented: skilled at taking a strategic vision and building the operational plan to deliver it — not required to generate the vision independently.
About Our Client
Our client is a first-of-its-kind legal support organization and the first private-equity-backed platform to execute a buy-and-build consolidation strategy in the North American plaintiff law firm sector. Structured to enable equity participation by lawyers, team members, investors, and finance partners in compliance with all applicable US and Canadian regulatory requirements, the platform provides its partner firms with a centralized shared services infrastructure spanning marketing, operations, technology, finance, HR, and administration. With three acquisitions completed and a fourth imminent, they are the recognized first mover in PI legal consolidation and is targeting a portfolio of 10–20 brands on a path to a $2B platform valuation.
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