Mary Beth Pratt

Mary Beth Pratt spent 20 years as a marketing director with four large, multi-practice, multioffice law firms. In 2006, she founded MBPrattConsulting and now assists professional services firms that want to improve marketing and business development effectiveness. She also is a founder of the Managing Partner Development Institute, LLC, an organization created to meet the needs of current and future managing partners of small to mid-size law firms.

Ms. Pratt was among the first in-house law firm marketing professionals in the United States. Her primary responsibilities included the development and management of marketing and practice development systems and processes to improve the growth and profitability of the firms.

In two firms, she established their first modern, professional marketing departments, and developed procedures that improved marketing support. Ms. Pratt built highly regarded marketing staffs and oversaw the creation of the first modern marketing materials for her firms, including brochures, newsletters and Web sites. She worked with firm and practice group leaders, as well as individual lawyers, to target marketing more effectively, including developing marketing training programs for lawyers.

Ms. Pratt is an adjunct faculty member at Temple University's Beasley School of Law. She teaches "Legal, Professional and Business Aspects of Law Practice," a course on law practice management that she helped develop for the law school.

Before working in legal services, Ms. Pratt was a member of the development staff at a large public broadcasting station and held executive positions in the child care and youth services fields. She speaks and writes about marketing, business development, client analysis and quality service.

Ms. Pratt is a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and member of its Board of Trustees. She is a member of the Steering Committee and a former president of the Delaware Valley Law Firm Marketing Group (formerly the Philadelphia Law Marketing Association). She is a member of the American Bar Association's Law Practice Management Section (LPMS) and formerly chaired its Education Board. She is a member and former vice president of the Legal Marketing Association and served as its liaison to LPMS.

Ms. Pratt received her bachelor of science from Rochester Institute of Technology. She serves on the Advisory Board of the Professional Women's Roundtable in Philadelphia. She is a former member of the Board of Trustees of Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church and chaired its Foundation Development Committee. She also served on an Associate Pastor Nominating Committee to fill the Church's newly created position of executive pastor, and on the Church's Envisioning Task Force.