Legal Media Relations v. Advertising: Knowing the Difference and Maximizing Your Reach

Richard Lavinthal on 02/08/2010

The legal recession has been killing off firms and lopping off partners, associates and support staff. Big law is cutting summer associate positions, delaying starts and, in at least one case; reneged on delayed starts for new associates by telling them they now have no jobs.

Now it’s time for solos, small and mid-size law firms to start thinking about their own “layoffs,” not of people but “laying off” of some advertising each year to be able to capitalize on the value of their big cases.

When marketing strategy is fine-tuned to permit shifting advertising dollars from ads (that are “hear today and gone tomorrow”) into media relations law firms can create long-term “news annuities.”

We know how ads end up in front of our eyes or in our ears. Advertisers pay to pat themselves on the back, hoping that a potential or existing client reads or hears the ad and picks up the phone. But how influential are advertisements? Today’s consumer is inundated with ads. Besides being cost-conscious consumers are a lot savvier today with ads, whether they’re on the back of the phone book, on cable TV, online or in the newspaper.

Ads, because they are ads, get tuned out. Compare a print, broadcast, Internet or billboard ad with the third-party authentication, authority and influence of being in the news. A law firm can pay to advertise itself by lauding its talents and practice areas. Compare advertising with the influence of a news article relating how a small firm won a substantial award or conducted an outstanding defense. Could this be a case similar to the legal challenge that a potential client is trying to solve? And after a couple of mentions an attorney could end up analyzing a case in which he/she is not involved for the local media.

While small to mid-size firms apparently are faring better today than their big law brothers how many are keeping an eye out for a chance to generate the authenticating value of a major-case news mention? This is legal media relations in its purest sense, actual news, not legal PR.

The definition of a major case depends on the size of the firm. A solo’s major case could be not-so-big to a midsize firm churning out large settlements. But to most firms major cases come along infrequently. So, whenever cases are or could be news law firms should be ready to leverage their media relations value to pay dividends that ads just can’t return.

Developing case-specific media relations for local or regional matters requires little out-of-pocket cost for a solo or small firm that wants to do it in-house. The attorney can create a professional news release (written like news and not like a brief) and distribute it.

The tactics and techniques of best-practice legal media relations are beyond the scope of this article. We’ll assume that a news release has been completed and sent out to the appropriate local or regional print, broadcast and Internet news organizations.

A law firm’s key to creating a news annuity is the Internet. Lawyers can score “hat tricks” when a news article is available in real time, indexed by major search engines so it’s retrievable free in the future, and also indexed as displayed on the law firm’s Web site. Even if the local editor “spikes” the news it still is on the firm’s Web site.

Internet search engines are omnipotent sources of information and the top four — Google, Live, Yahoo and Ask — handle nearly all U.S. searches.

Today prospective customers and clients “go WWW” when they want products or services, including attorneys. And search engines don’t deliver the print, radio or TV ads a law firm has run.

But search engines can list all the news that law firm has released when it's posted on the firm’s Web site and remains on news organizations' Web sites.

Advertising is a necessity but law firms that “lay off” some of their ad dollars for major case media relations can generate long-term marketing benefits no ad can approach.

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