We’ve heard endlessly (more than once from me) about the imminent death of newspapers, the collapse of a once-great industry and business model, etc. and the correspondent rise in the power of social media. No one will dispute that news organizations are having a very difficult time adjusting to the post-internet economy, and I’ve written here about the increasing significance of blogs, Twitter and other new platforms.

Nonetheless, law firms (like other corporate entities) still strive for just a mention of the firm or its lawyers in a “major newspaper” or “national magazine.” I spent ten years editing an actual “National magazine” at the Canadian Bar Association, and I was struck by how much lawyers and law firms wanted to appear in its pages. PR agencies would constantly propose lawyers as interview subjects, and large national firms would ask for PDFs of an article featuring their lawyers to post on their websites. They clearly perceived some value or prestige arising from a mention in the magazine — even more so, I’m sure, in the Globe & Mail or National Post. But is the perception accurate? I’m not sure enough law firms ask themselves this.

Media appearances have long been considered a self-evidently valuable marketing effort. But just like any other such effort, they still demand a degree of ROI examination. Most lawyers would say they want the value arising from the imprimatur of legitimacy and respect that a media outlet bestows — “we were quoted in The New York Times!” And don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of power still invested in these legacy media brands that can make them powerful players in this new landscape. But from law firms’ point of view, “major media mentions,” in isolation, can’t automatically be assumed to have an effect on a law firm’s brand and business development. They need to serve a purpose.

I was often tempted to ask the law firm marketing professionals seeking an appearance in National: “You do know that only other lawyers read this magazine, right?” Because it sometimes seemed to me they were investing a lot of time and effort in getting their lawyers in front of their competitors rather than their clients. They might have had good strategic reasons; for example, a firm’s repeated appearance in a nationwide legal periodical could translate into recruitment and lateral hiring advantages. But just as often, I suspect, a request to profile or interview a particular partner was driven by that partner’s combination of ego and influence.

All of which is to say: before setting out to get you or your firm into any kind of media outlet, be certain why you’re doing it and what you hope to get out of it. Brand management, profile enhancement, business development, referral generation, expertise demonstration — these are all valid reasons for pursuing media exposure, but most won’t apply in every situation. Be strategic in your choice of media placement, just as you should be with every other marketing choice. For example:

• If you run a small family law practice in New Brunswick, will you get more value from a mention in the Globe & Mail or in the Fredericton Gleaner? The answer depends on whether you want a prestige injection or a business development opportunity.
• If you run a civil litigation firm in Montreal, do you want to be profiled in Canadian Lawyer or in the Montreal Gazette? The answer depends on whether you want referrals from other lawyers or higher profile within your local business community.
• If you own a full-service firm in Edmonton with a smaller Calgary office, do you need attention from the Edmonton Journal or the Calgary Herald? The answer depends on whether you want to strengthen your headquarters or develop your satellite.

Before setting out on media placement efforts, lawyers and firms need to ask themselves: where do we want to show up, what do we want to be noted for, and why? Answering those questions correctly will greatly amplify the effectiveness of those efforts.

My newest law practice column has been published in The Lawyers Weekly, and this month’s topic has a media focus: how a lawyer can give a good interview without putting herself at risk. It was the result of twin streams of thought I’ve had lately: one, that many lawyer interviews are remarkably bland and produce eye-glazing copy in print, and two, that I’m seeing more instances of lawyers misquoted or misunderstood even in top-notch publications. The latter trend likely will only exacerbate the former one, as lawyers worried about being misinterpreted will be even more reticent with reporters and will stay well within the safety zone during interviews.

I like to think there’s a balance that lawyers can strike between careful and care-free, one that depends on setting expectations at the start and preparing in advance; that’s what the article explores in more detail. The whole issue really emphasizes the critical importance of trust between a lawyer and a journalist, and like in any relationship, that trust has to be earned over time. To paraphrase an old rule: verify until trust.

Today marks the final entry in a series of excerpts from a Q-and-A session on how law firm marketers and PR professionals can get the most from members of the legal media. My thanks again to Paramjit Mahli for conducting this interview. We wrap up with advice for the new PR professional.

Q. Say a new PR person was starting from scratch and a partner wanted immediate coverage. Are there any words of wisdom could impart to them?

That’s a tough assignment — impatient partners are brutal to work for at the best of times, and “starting from scratch” probably means very few contacts in the media. This will come as no surprise, but relationships matter a lot in the legal media business. Journalists and editors tend to rely heavily on the freelance writers and marketing professionals who help bring them good stories, and breaking into those circles is a real challenge.

I’d say the best thing to do is start cultivating relationships with the media before the partner ever gets on the phone. Meet a reporter for lunch or take an editor for coffee, and focus the conversation on what they do and what they need. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by how pleasantly surprised media folks are when a PR professional takes an interest in what they do, rather than immediately talking about themselves and everything they can offer. Journalists are used to being treated as means to an end, so treating them as ends in themselves will, after the initial shock and wariness fades, prove to be a very constructive approach.

If you don’t have time to plant those seeds and watch them grow — if you need results straight away — then you should start by narrowing your focus. What exactly does the partner want? Is she looking to appear in a mainstream media periodical, a legal trade magazine, or a client publication? What sort of coverage does she want: attention for her pro bono work, a spotlight on a recent court victory, general praise for being such an all-around amazing lawyer? Then figure out which periodicals offer the best chance of success with these criteria — don’t bother trying to sell a monthly magazine on a story about a decisive trial result, for instance (you’d be surprised how often PR people don’t pay attention to publishing frequency and production deadlines).

At that point, you can start pitching — but again, put the focus on what the publication’s needs are and how well your proffered content can serve that need. Treat the editor or journalist as a partner, take their perspective into consideration, and you’ll be remarkably successful.

Continuing excerpts from a Q-and-A session on the intersection between legal marketing & PR and the legal media. Today’s conversation centers on law firm size and cross-border issues.

Q. Did you only work with and quote BigLaw lawyers, or did you also talk with lawyers from smaller and mid-size firms? Did you speak just with Canadian firms, or were you open to quoting legal sources from the U.S.?

I wrote a blog post last October at Law21 about the difficulties small and mid-size firms experience in trying to get noticed by the media. The gist is that large firms can outgun their smaller rivals just by throwing a lot of money into the publicity machine and cranking it up, although there are cultural issues at work too. It’s kind of an institutional problem, and I wouldn’t expect the media to correct it independently: if a mid-size or smaller firm wants to get its rightful share of publicity, it needs to make media relations a disproportionate priority.

Luckily, there are cost-effective ways of doing this. Twitter is great, although nothing beats blogs. And in any event, a mid-size firm doesn’t need to out-publicize the Clifford Chances of the world — it just needs to shine in its specific market or in the industry areas it deems most significant to its business plan. Smart media relations are an underrated tool for mid-size firms looking for a competitive edge.

In terms of the nationality of firms the magazine interviewed, a lot depended on the story itself. Obviously, I had no interest in speaking with American firms about American law for a Canadian publication, but I was always interested in U.S. firms that were doing something interesting on the practice management or business-model side, because these are universal issues for lawyers. The same applied to U.K., Australian and other firms worldwide.

But even for all that, there were still important distinctions when you crossed the border. I remember receiving a fine article last fall written by lawyers at four different firms worldwide about surviving the recession. But since Canada escaped the worst of the recession, it didn’t make sense for National to run it. And you always needed to be alive to the potential for pushing nationalist buttons: lawyers in one country want to read about themselves, not lawyers in a foreign jurisdiction. It’s challenging to recognize and promote globalized ideas to readerships that are often more interested in home-grown fare.

More from a recent Q-and-A session about how to deal editors and reporters in the legal media. The Wednesday entry is on what law firm websites do and don’t get right from a media perspective.

Q. Are there any specific items on the media pages of law firm websites that you and your editorial team preferred?

There are very few good media pages on law firm websites, to be honest. Some sites squirrel away their media contacts on an obscure “Contact Us” page. Others create media pages, but fill them with old press releases — or worse again, lists of the latest publications to feature one of their lawyers. Put it this way: if I see that one of your lawyers has been interviewed by a competitor publication, why would I now want to interview that lawyer for my publication? That would make me look like I was scouring the competition seeking sources. Firms invariably place this information, which is nothing more than marketing bumpf, on their media pages  — which is kind of pointless, because the people least likely to be impressed that a lawyer was interviewed by a reporter are other reporters.

The firms that get it right are the ones with media pages that serve the media’s purposes, not the firm’s. These websites make it incredibly easy for a reporter or editor to find a complete list of media contacts, two clicks at most from the home page. These pages specify which personnel handle which sorts of matters, so that the reporter needing a quote for a deadline 30 minutes away doesn’t wind up in the voicemail of the person who handles reprint permissions. These sites also comprehensively index their lawyers’ written work according to subject area, so that reporters looking for experts don’t need to skim through individual lawyer pages hoping to find an article on a topic of interest. When designing your media page, remember that its purpose is to make it easy for reporters to get your lawyers into their publication on the right topics. It’s not there for the firm to brag about itself.

Also, and I wrote about this on Law21 a while back, one of my major annoyances was that many law firms fail to list their professional staff on their websites. If I wanted to talk to a firm’s marketing director or recruitment chair or IT supervisor for an article, many firm websites were useless — as far as the sites were concerned, these positions didn’t even exist. The only employees many firms list on their sites are lawyers, and the firm often adds insult to injury by giving this list the title “Professionals.” Or worse: “People,” which presumably means that the director of professional development is either vegetable or mineral.

All this week, I’m reproducing parts of a Q-and-A session with SCG Legal PR Network founder Paramjit Mahli about my former career in legal journalism and what legal marketers could learn from it. Today’s exchange: the phone pitch.

Q. What made you open and receptive to a telephone pitch? How did you prefer to be approached?

Telephone pitches are risky, for the same reason that telemarketer calls are risky – not many people like taking a call from a stranger who’s trying to sell them something. I’d advise a legal PR professional to start with a prior email identifying yourself, stating concisely what you’d like to talk about, and saying that you’ll be calling within the next 24 hours in hopes we can talk about it. Make the email professional yet friendly – you’re introducing yourself and laying the groundwork for a productive phone call.

In order for me to take a pitch over the phone even halfway seriously, I needed some prior knowledge of who the caller was, a sense of exactly what they intended to pitch, and confidence that they were specifically interested in my specific magazine. I hated wasting my time on the phone with someone who was just making the rounds of the legal periodicals with a one-size-fits-all pitch, or who didn’t understand what kinds of pieces appear in the magazine. If someone could prove to me, in a few words, that they knew the publication and could pinpoint exactly the right place where their piece could make it a better issue, I would pay attention. I have to say, though, that was an extremely rare occurrence.

I can’t count how many times I saw or heard the phrase “I thought you might be interested” in pitches. You can’t afford to “think” a journalist “might” be interested. You’ve got to know that what you have to offer is so well aligned with what that journalist needs that you’re certain this is a guaranteed winner for everyone. You have to be in the business of providing solutions to the media outlets with which you work, because while it might be the lawyer who pays your bills, it’s the journalist who has what you need.

Late last year, I had the pleasure of speaking with Paramjit Mahli, founder of the SCG Legal PR Network in New York City, about my experiences in legal journalism over the past dozen years. Our discussions led to an Q-and-A interview about how law firm communications and legal PR professionals should and should not interact with members of the legal media, which Paramjit has circulated to the members of her network. Today and throughout this week, I’m going to reproduce that interview in five short posts here at the Law Firm Strategy Blog, to give you some perspectives from the editor’s chair that could guide you in your future interactions with the media.

Today’s segment: what not to do when dealing with a journalist.

Q. What are the top three faux pas that legal media folks commit when approaching legal reporters?

1. You’re just conducting a mass email. I would get a pitch for, say, an article that discusses the ramifications of a Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals decision, which was really annoying because I edited a Canadian legal periodical that doesn’t report on U.S. case law. Same thing for proffered articles on the David Souter legacy or the Americans with Disabilities Act or what have you – I was clearly just on a mass-emailing list plucked from a directory somewhere. It was lazy and unprofessional, and all it did was get the sender added to a blacklist. Unsolicited and uncustomized emails from marketers lasted about five seconds in my inbox, if that.

2. You haven’t done any homework on the periodical. National rarely if ever published articles written by law firm lawyers on a new development in an area of law, and any marketing professional who’d even skimmed the last few issues would know that. So I got really tired of having to constantly write back to law firm marketing people to explain that we don’t publish those types of articles. It’s an example of the most common and most damaging aspect of legal PR: making pitches based on what the firm cares about, not what the periodical can use. Send journalists a message that you’ve read at least one issue of their magazine or have paid some attention to their editorial mandate. There’s no excuse for sending a pitch that’s not customized for the specific publication in question.

3. You’re addressing me by my first name and we’ve never met. This may be completely idiosyncratic, but it always bothered me no end to get a chirpy “Hi Jordan!” greeting from a complete stranger. Unearned familiarity is not the way to start a professional relationship. (This is worse for female journalists, by the way – John Smith may often be addressed “Dear Mr. Smith,” but Jane Smith will usually be addressed “Hi Jane”). In this, as in so many things, I take my cue from Ben Stone on Law & Order: “In polite society, sir, you don’t call a man by his first name unless he’s given you permission. I never did that.”

As polling samples go, 43 respondents to a survey is not exactly what you’d call statistically significant. So the fact that 43 journalists who cover legal issues gave lawyers poor marks when it comes to explaining the litigation process doesn’t prove a great deal. But as Bob Ambrogi at Legal Blog Watch accurately notes, the thrust of the report “rings true” to anyone who has stepped gingerly into the minefield that lies between reporters and lawyers. What’s more, not only do journalists apparently take a dim view of litigators, the reverse also holds true, judging from the comments to Bob’s post from lawyers engaging in a little media-bashing of their own.

At the heart of difficulties between lawyers and reporters is an absence of trust. I still recall the first time I ever covered an event as a staff writer for The Lawyers Weekly, many years ago. It was an environmental law CLE on a fairly innocuous topic, and I had worked with the presenter at a law firm the previous year. But when he realized I was attending in my new capacity as a journalist, he looked me square in the eye and said: “Don’t make me look bad.” And keep in mind, I was working for a respected legal trade publication, not the local paper or radio station.

This absence of trust reflects several aspects unique to lawyer-reporter interactions. One is simply ignorance about exactly what the other person does and the mistrust that accompanies it. Another is journalists’ inherent dislike of people in positions of influence, the tendency to want to topple pedestals and the elites who stand on them. A third is the lawyer’s primary duty to her client’s interests rather than to full disclosure of everything she might know or believe, which reporters often take as a sign of insincerity, evasiveness or flat-out lying. And a fourth might be that whenever reporters encounter a publication ban, a libel suit, or the removal of a “potentially litigious” line in a story, there’s usually a lawyer at the other end of the process.

But I think the single biggest problem between lawyers and the media is the lack of control that lawyers have over the reporting and publishing process. Lawyers, as you might have noticed, greatly dislike the absence of control. We don’t delegate well, we don’t like implicit arrangements, and we really don’t like it when someone else has final say over our words. The fear of being misquoted drives a lot of the reluctance that lawyers display when a reporter asks them for information or for a quote. I can’t tell you how many times over the past dozen years that a lawyer we interviewed asked to see a copy of the article before it was published. But I can tell you how many times we said yes: zero. Our policy was that a lawyer could see his or her quotes to check them for accuracy, but that the article itself was off-limits. Lawyers who prize own their professional independence should appreciate that journalistic independence hinges on the ability to write the article you want to write without interference.

Can the gap between these two professions be bridged? Of course — there are countless examples of successful lawyer-journalist collaboration that deliver value to all sides while respecting professional norms. The Legal Blog Watch piece and its comments include some useful tips on handling the press. Media organizations could use a list of do’s and don’ts as well, but for now, here are a few more ideas that should help lawyers overcome their concerns about dealing with the media.

1. Accept the loss of control. If you simply can’t deal with the fact that you won’t get final sign-off rights on the article, then you might as well step out of the process now. You might or might not even get to see your quotes before they’re published, depending on the periodical in question, though you can certainly ask. There’s risk involved in speaking with the media, and while you can minimize it, you can’t eliminate it.

2. Enact a media policy. If your organization doesn’t have a policy on who speaks to the press, when, on what subjects, and to what extent, then you need to get one in place. This is especially important for lawyers in public-sector and corporate-law departments, who in my experience are extremely reluctant to even return phone calls, let alone speak on the record. Create a policy and cite it when a journalist calls, if only as a simple matter of professional courtesy.

3. Consider recording the conversation. I actually find this approach a tad distasteful, but it’s standard procedure for many high-level political and corporate figures, and law firms should consider it. Tell the reporter you want to record the call (never, ever do it secretly) purely for the purposes of checking the accuracy of your published statements. This is neither necessary nor appropriate with a reporter with whom there’s a degree of familiarity, and it could go some way to easing lawyers’ fears and establishing trust. But make it the exception, not the rule.

4. Compile a media database. If your firm is large enough to have a marketing and communications department, these professionals should be informed of all interactions with reporters and should track their published outcomes. In smaller firms, a lawyer or staff person should be delegated to this task. The idea is to establish a list of media encounters, positive results, reliable reporters, and best practices for successful interviews. Think of it as Media Knowledge Management.

5. Start tracking ROI. Law firms do very few things that lend themselves to sensible return-on-investment analysis, so ROI results from media interactions can be a powerful tool for overcoming internal reluctance or opposition to deal with the media. Include “In the media” on the “How did you hear about us?” portion of your client-intake process. Ask selected current clients whether they saw the firm in the media and what they thought (providing them a PDF or a video clip can help). Bring your rainmakers into the media loop. Do all you can to portray your firm’s media relations not just as a positive thing, but also as a competitive advantage.

There’s a lot more to a successful media strategy than this, of course, but it’s hard to overestimate the importance of trust in your relations with the press. If you can earn it, internally and externally, you’re already way ahead of most lawyers who still prefer to view reporters as the unknown or as the the enemy.