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Filling a position that's been open since the beginning of the year, Danielle Wuschke Paige joined Nixon Peabody last week as the firm's new chief marketing and growth officer.

Paige, based in Boston, was most recently chief operating officer of MSLGroup, a French public relations company. She also had stints at FleishmanHillard and Keane.

The hire fills the CMO vacancy at Nixon Peabody, but the Boston-based firm is just one of more than a dozen large Am Law 200 firms that have been making do in recent months without a chief marketer—some of them for more than a year.

According to law firm marketing and business development experts, some delay is normal when there's executive turnover in a firm's marketing ranks. But some long vacancies can  cause problems.

The American Lawyer contacted 14 large firms recently about extended CMO vacancies. All that responded said they were looking to fill the role, and two have made hires.

Some of those firms have had the position open for as much as 18 months—such as Wilson Elser—but most fall between six and 17 months, such as Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, which took nine months to bring in Gillian Ward last month, or Debevoise & Plimpton, which took 12 months to hire Margaret Nicholls in June.

Jennifer Johnson Scalzi, a legal marketing consultant at Calibrate Legal, said that although individual situations vary, filling a C-level role like CMO can usually be accomplished in around six months.

While allowing for that variance, she also said that a protracted search, whether the law firm is doing its best to move quickly or not, can have a negative effect.

"It projects into the market that the firm doesn't value marketing as a business necessity by allowing the position to go unfilled for so long," Johnson Scalzi said.

Kathleen Flynn, a consultant with The Ackert Advisory, has more than 30 years of marketing and business development experience at firms including Bryan Cave and (now defunct) Sedgwick. "When I arrived at Sedgwick, they had been without a CMO for about a year," Flynn said. "The team was really uptight, they didn't know who was coming in and if that person was going to clean house."

She said CMO vacancies can also throw off a firm's larger marketing efforts.

"If you have some marketing momentum and then the CMO leaves, there is no one to lead the charge," she said. "The efforts can stagnate."

Flynn also agreed that a longstanding CMO opening at a firm can be a potential red flag for senior marketing executives who are looking for consistency.

"There are firms that I wouldn't touch," she said. "Because there was a revolving door."

Nixon Peabody's Paige, on the other hand, was making her first move into a law firm marketing executive position, and her predecessor at the firm, Jose Cunningham, had been there for four years.

"I took a step back and thought about what I wanted next," she said. "I have worked with professional services from the agency side before and thought this would be a good step."

Paige said she will focus on brand management, business transformation and automation, client engagement and developing strong relationships. She will manage a global staff of about 40 marketing and growth professionals.

When asked about the 10 month process to bring in a new CMO, the firm said that it was looking to bring in the right fit, regardless of time frame.

"Danielle has an innovative, technology-focused approach that nicely complements our existing efforts," Andrew Glincher, CEO and managing partner of Nixon Peabody, said in a statement.

Glincher also said that the days of law firms getting business solely on word of mouth are gone.

"People used to use marketing in a silo," he said. "But to create value for our clients we need to be predictive and proactive."

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