As Chief Marketing Officer for K&L Gates, Jeff Berardi leads a global team of marketing, business development and client-facing sales professionals who collectively support the firm’s nearly 50 offices located on five continents. His primary responsibilities include client development, strategic planning, regional and practice-based business development, PR/media relations, creative direction, and digital marketing communications. Since joining the firm in 2004, Mr. Berardi has been involved in numerous initiatives to strengthen and grow key relationships with existing as well as potential clients.
K&L Gates has been recognized as one of the top law firm brands, ranking in recent years among the top 20 global brands in the Acritas Global Elite Brand Index and among the top 10 brands in the Acritas US Law Firm Brand Index. The firm has also been ranked 11th out of 650 firms included in the “BTI Brand Elite," a prestigious list of top firms noted as having a “substantially better brand than all other law firms.” The newsletter Marketing the Law Firm, an ALM publication, has publicly recognized the efforts of the K&L Gates marketing department, with the firm earning a first-place ranking in the “MLF 50,” an annual listing of the top law firms for marketing and business development. K&L Gates was ranked #2 in the 2012 “MLF 50,” the final year of the survey, marking the fifth consecutive year that K&L Gates was ranked among the top five law firms and the eighth consecutive year that K&L Gates was included among the top 20 law firms.
Mr. Berardi was personally recognized as the 2011 international Marketing Professional of the Year during the “Excellence in Legal Marketing” Awards, presented during the Hildebrandt Institute’s 18th Annual Marketing Partner Forum. This award celebrates the most innovative marketing professionals, with entrants judged on such criteria as innovation, effectiveness, creativity, leadership, proven results, and marketing excellence. A regular speaker at industry conferences, Mr. Berardi currently serves as a Seven Generations Board Member for the international nonprofit organization City Year and as a member of the Thomson Reuters Marketing Leadership Council, and he has previously served as a member of the Global Editorial Advisory board for Managing Partner Magazine and as a Governing Body member of the CMO Collective (NY Chapter). He has written for or been quoted in numerous publications and he has contributed chapters in the “Inside The Minds” series published by Thomson Reuters. In addition, Mr. Berardi was one of only five law firm “innovators” featured in Law Firm Inc. magazine’s cover story “Innovators of 2008.”