Jana Schilder, co-founder of The Legal A Team™, has been a business development, branding, marketing, and public relations professional for more than 30 years. The Legal A Team has smaller firm focus and big firm experience. Jana has been working with law firms since 1993, when she was director of marketing and communication at McCarthy Tetrault.  

She understands the psyche of individual lawyers and law firms; more importantly, she knowns how to move both forward in lockstep. With her background in culture change and branding at Nortel, Canadian National Railway, and KPMG, she has done turnarounds at a number of Business-to-Consumer (B2C) law firms. She has created highly effective advocacy campaigns that resulted in marketing traction and media buzz.  

She knows what attracts the news media’s attention—she has a “nose for news.” Equally important, she understands how media coverage contributes to a law firm’s business success, helping to increase mindshare—or client share—and most importantly, profitable revenue. 

Jana is a high profile legal writer and legal columnist. Jana wrote the entire module “Public Relations for Lawyers” for Lexis Practice Advisor—some 12,000 words. She blogs for Los Angeles-based LegalInk Magazine, The Huffington Post in Canada, and Advocate Daily. Jana has spoken to audiences at Insight Conferences, The Canadian Institute, Amicus Attorney, and The Commons Institute.  

The Legal A Team works exclusively with lawyers and law firms on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border. Other members of The Legal A Team are Toronto-based legal public relations expert Brian Kilgore, videographer Robert Picard, law firm marketing specialist Neil Bruce, and Orlando-based Roberta Montafia, formerly the global chief marketing officer of Baker McKenzie.