Business development rarely means the same thing twice from one law firm to the next. One firm puts BD professionals next to practice leaders. Another has them focus only on proposals and pitches. A third expects them to run client teams, study competitors, manage the CRM system, and coach attorneys on how to build relationships.
That kind of variation worked for years because firms could shape the job around their own culture and leadership style. AI now adds a tougher requirement on top of all that variation. RFPs, pitches, client research, reporting, and content programs all depend on people who can connect legal knowledge with data, software tools, and good judgment.
A new kind of hire has started filling that gap: the marketing technologist. The title itself still shifts from firm to firm, and the exact list of duties will likely keep changing too. Still, the skill set behind that title is getting harder to treat as optional. Firms that put off building this skill set now may find themselves scrambling later, especially as clients start asking sharper, more technical questions during the RFP process.
AI Exposes the BD Definition Gap
Traditional BD roles usually grew out of one of several starting points: sales support, marketing, client relations, proposals, or practice management. Each starting point led to a different job description. AI now pulls these separate jobs into one shared process. A study of a competitor can shape how a pitch gets written. That pitch then pulls from past project data, CRM records, pricing numbers, and client history. The final submission might also need to explain the firm's own rules around using AI.
Somebody has to understand that whole chain of work, start to finish. That person needs enough knowledge of the legal market to understand what a client is really asking for, along with enough comfort with technology to pick the right tools and use them well. They also need enough judgment to notice when the source material is missing something important.
The job market already places a value on this mix of skills. Relativity's 2026 forecast expects growing demand for people who understand legal reasoning, how data behaves, and how to design a workflow. Robert Half reports that 79 percent of legal leaders would pay a higher starting salary to candidates with in-demand skills. Their examples include legal technology, AI oversight, data analysis, and compliance work. That willingness to pay more says something on its own: the market is already pricing in this shift, even before most firms have written new job descriptions to match it.
The job title matters less than the mix of skills behind it. A firm might call the position marketing technologist, BD operations leader, innovation manager, or marketing technology manager. The real staffing question stays the same no matter what the title says: who owns the technology side of business development?
One Firm Has Already Made the Hire
A September 2026 Virginia Lawyers Weekly report gives a real example. MG+M The Law Firm hired a marketing technologist and looked closely at AI skills during the search. The job called for comfort using an Claude for coding-adjacent tasks, something the firm had never required in a marketing or BD hire before.
MG+M's day-to-day use of AI explains why they hired this way. Their team uses AI to summarize articles written by their lawyers, keep CRM data clean and current, build dashboards for attorneys, track BD commitments, create supporting materials, and connect all of that activity to results. These tasks cross several old boundaries at once. They touch content, data, finance, attorney work, technology systems, and reporting, all in a single job.
A second signal comes from the Legal Marketing Association Career Center. A job posting from Verrill for a Marketing and Business Development Manager combines CRM work, market research, competitor analysis, content creation, and client development into one role. The title is different from MG+M's. The mix of responsibilities points in a similar direction.
These two examples suggest a pattern, though a broader survey would show how common this response actually is. Technology responsibility is moving closer to the people who already understand lawyers, clients, and how firms make money.
RFP Work Now Requires Technical Fluency
RFP work makes this shift easy to see in practice. Proposal teams have long had to gather lawyer biographies, past case examples, pricing numbers, client references, and case descriptions, often under a tight deadline. AI can now help teams search through a firm's own knowledge, study past submissions, organize experience records, and speed up the writing process.
An American Bar Association analysis points to research showing that firms using AI in their proposal work cut 30 to 40 percent of the manual effort it normally takes to prepare a proposal. That kind of time savings changes how much work a team can take on. A team might chase more opportunities with the same number of people, as long as their processes, data, and tool access can support the extra work.
Clients are changing how they judge these proposals too. The same ABA article cites data from CLOC showing that 27 percent of legal departments now use dedicated software just for reviewing law firm RFPs. Forty-six percent run structured reviews of how well a law firm performs before hiring them again. Those numbers point to a buyer on the other side of the table who is more organized and more focused on data than in the past. A BD team facing that kind of scrutiny needs solid data behind every claim in a proposal, not just strong writing.
RFPs increasingly ask firms direct questions about their AI strategy, oversight rules, data protection, and measurable results, according to the ABA. A BD professional needs more than good writing skills to answer those questions well. The job now calls for real knowledge of which tools the firm has approved, what information controls exist, what review steps are required, and where the firm stands on using AI in the first place.
Studying competitors calls for a similar mix of skills. AI can pull together public information and compare firms, industries, or trends among clients. But useful analysis still depends on good source material, an understanding of that specific firm's situation, and a clear business question driving the research. Technical skill helps a BD professional set up that process correctly. Legal and business judgment decide whether the final output is solid enough to bring into a conversation with a partner.
Overloaded Teams Are Forcing Structural Choices
Many marketing and BD teams already juggle a long list of duties: RFPs, published articles, legal directory listings, CRM upkeep, events, social media, client teams, and reporting. Law.com reported in August 2026 that unclear goals and thin staffing were feeding tension and burnout inside Big Law marketing departments.
Adding new AI tools on top of that workload, without deciding who actually owns each process, can make the strain worse instead of better. Somebody still has to decide which AI uses are worth the time, where the source data lives, who checks the output before it goes out, how results get measured, and when a process needs fixing. Those decisions can end up scattered across marketing, BD, IT, an innovation team, knowledge management, and risk management, with no clear owner in charge.
The marketing technologist role gives those scattered decisions one possible home. The job might include mapping out workflows, keeping a library of prompts and processes, coordinating which AI tools are approved for use, cleaning up CRM data, building dashboards, and helping coworkers use AI the right way under firm policy.
A new job title rarely solves a weak process by itself. Success still depends on clear support from leadership, access to the firm's own knowledge and history, cooperation from IT and risk teams, and agreement on what counts as a good result. Without that groundwork, the new hire ends up facing the exact same confusion that led to the hire in the first place.
CMOs Need a Capability Model
A capability model can help a CMO judge this shift before deciding how to staff for it. Based on the real examples above and how RFP work has already changed, six areas deserve close attention:
- Applied AI skill for research, writing, analysis, and workflow design.
- Firm knowledge, including practice areas, past case experience, clients, and relationship history.
- Data judgment across CRM records, finance numbers, past project data, and market research.
- Knowledge of oversight rules covering approved tools, review steps, privacy, and security.
- Support for change, helping lawyers and BD coworkers adopt new processes without friction.
- Measurement tied to time saved, work produced, deals moving forward, and revenue.
A firm could build these skills through a dedicated new hire, an expanded version of an existing role, a team that pulls from several departments, or outside help. The right fit depends on the talent already on staff, the firm's current systems, its budget, and how far along its AI program already is. Running a small pilot around one specific process, like RFP intake or competitor research, can also expose gaps before a firm commits to a permanent structure.
For example, InnovAItion Partners offers AI training and advisory support built around real law firm marketing and BD work, often walking teams through actual proposal and pitch situations instead of generic exercises. That kind of focused, hands-on support can help a firm test new workflows and build real skill internally while leadership figures out where long-term ownership should sit.
Human judgment stays at the center of this whole model. The practitioners quoted in Virginia Lawyers Weekly place relationship-building, understanding a client's real needs, and direct client insight well beyond what an automated tool can replace. AI can free up time and improve access to information. Lawyers and BD professionals still have to carry the relationship itself.
The Role Will Keep Moving
Law firms may never agree on one single definition of a BD professional. Their markets, practice areas, cultures, and leadership styles differ too much for that to happen. AI does bring one common thread into all of that variety: a shared set of skills that includes comfort with technology, sound data judgment, knowledge of oversight rules, workflow design, and a deep understanding of the firm itself.
The marketing technologist title is one answer to that shared need. MG+M has already adopted it. Other firms are folding similar duties into broader marketing and BD job titles instead. More variations will likely show up as firms test dedicated hires, expanded roles, part-time outside support, and teams built from several departments.
For CMOs, the next step starts with mapping out these capabilities inside their own firm. Which processes eat up the most time right now? What data sources actually shape the strongest pitches? Where does ownership of a task quietly break down instead of holding together? Could current team members build the missing skills through focused training?
The answers will look different from firm to firm, the same way they always have. What seems more consistent is the direction itself: business development now depends on people who can connect client relationships and firm knowledge with the right technology, whatever title ends up printed on the business card.