Bringing in a PR agency or consultant is an investment for any law firm looking to enhance its visibility and reputation. However, success doesn’t come from simply handing over a brief and waiting for results. Here are some practical tips to ensure you get maximum value from your PR support.
1. Set clear goals and expectations
Effective PR starts with alignment. Your PR activities should directly support your firm’s commercial objectives, whether that’s increasing sector visibility, expanding your client base or attracting talent.
Begin by defining what success looks like. Consider setting specific targets for each practice area, perhaps two pieces of coverage per quarter. This approach creates accountability and helps measure return on investment.
Keep in mind that PR success often builds gradually over time. While quick wins are possible, the most valuable results typically come from consistent, regular engagement with your target titles.
2. Dedicate time to your PR agency
Your PR team can only promote what they understand.
Take time, especially early in the relationship, to explain your practice areas, your clients and the issues your lawyers are encountering in their day-to-day work. Moving forward, make sure your PR agency has regular access to your fee-earners. I would suggest monthly or six-weekly meetings with key spokespeople from the practice areas you are focusing on.
This is where collaboration really matters. One of the challenges for any PR adviser is identifying what genuinely differentiates their client. Sometimes the most useful conversations come from asking lawyers what they are seeing that others aren’t, where they disagree with the prevailing view or which recent articles they wish they had been quoted in.
The more your agency understands how your lawyers think, what they believe and where their strongest expertise lies, the better equipped they are to turn that expertise into stories journalists will actually want.
3. Prioritise media opportunities
When your agency presents a media opportunity, treat it as a priority.
Client work can often wait 20 minutes while you provide a comment on a breaking news story. These opportunities are like gold dust. Journalists work to tight deadlines and delaying your response typically means losing the opportunity entirely.
Lawyers who consistently make themselves available to journalists tend to build the strongest profiles. Think of lawyers such as Nick Freeman, widely known as ‘Mr Loophole’, or media law specialist, Mark Stephens. Your PR agency can open the door, but you need to make sure you walk through it.
4. Trust your agency
Remember that your PR agency is made up of experts. Listen to their advice, which should be grounded in years of experience of dealing with journalists and understanding what makes a story.
While they can advise on angles and approaches, they can’t work miracles. If they say that a particular deal isn’t going to make the FT, it probably won’t. But they should be able to advise you on where there is a realistic opportunity for coverage.
Equally, be prepared to discuss and refine ideas together. Sometimes a perfectly good idea simply needs a different angle, a stronger opinion or a more topical hook before it becomes something a journalist wants. Good PR really is a team effort.
5. Choose the right spokespeople
Not every lawyer enjoys PR and that’s okay.
Start by identifying partners and associates who are naturally communicative, have strong opinions about developments in their field and enjoy marketing and business development.
An enthusiastic associate who responds quickly and enjoys talking to journalists can often build a stronger media profile than a more senior lawyer who struggles to find time for PR.
6. Integrate PR into your broader marketing strategy
PR activity should never operate in isolation. Make sure it complements and amplifies your broader marketing strategy.
For example, press coverage can be shared on social media, included in pitches, referenced in legal directory submissions, added to your website and shared through internal communications.
An integrated approach will multiply the impact of each piece of coverage, helping to enhance your firm’s presence in its target markets.
7. Look beyond the headlines
While media coverage is the most visible outcome of PR efforts, consider how PR supports longer-term business development objectives.
Regular media exposure can enhance credibility in key practice areas, help lawyers become recognised as experts, open conversations with clients and potential clients and support the attraction and retention of talent.
These benefits can be difficult to quantify, but they often represent the true long-term value of effective PR.
Ultimately, appointing a PR agency is not the same as outsourcing PR entirely. The best results come when your agency and your lawyers work together, sharing ideas, responding to opportunities and gradually learning what resonates with journalists.
Give your PR adviser something to work with and, in return, they should turn your firm’s expertise into media opportunities that support your wider business objectives.
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