“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” Warren Buffett Some media stories have a really, really long tail. Often, because they are so unusual or improbable that they sound made-up. In our modern-day, post-truth world where fake news abounds, the Gerald Ratner story would give many of us pause for thought. But did you know that April 2026 marked 35 years since his comments? Perhaps I live in a weird world of my own, but I still think this particular story has so much to teach us about what a person can do to a reputation in just a few words. If you know the story, there’s a decent chance you’re still cringing. If you’re my age or younger (mid-forties) and not familiar with the facts, read on. Who is Gerald Ratner? Why is he of interest from a reputational perspective? A bit of context… In 1991, Ratners was the UK’s largest lower-cost or budget jewellery chain. With over 2,000 stores and 25,000 employees, London Stock Exchange-listed Ratners was a *big deal*. On 23rd April 1991, in his role as CEO, Gerald Ratner gave a speech at a prestigious Institute of Directors event at The Royal Albert Hall in London to 6,000 audience members – telling his two now infamous jokes about Ratners: “We do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say: ‘How can you sell this for such a low price?’ I say: ‘Because it’s total crap.’” And this charmer… “We sold a pair of earrings for under £1, which is cheaper than a shrimp sandwich from Marks and Spencer, but probably wouldn’t last as long.” What happened next? Perhaps Mr Ratner would have got away with these jokes, had they not been reported the following day by The Daily Mirror, which led on the front page with the headline “You 22-carat mugs.” Widespread negative coverage followed elsewhere. Perhaps ironically, this wasn’t the first time that Ratner had made these jokes publicly, and he had, until that point, ‘got away with it’. What was different was that, this time, he said it to an audience that included journalists writing for the mainstream press, whose work was read by many of the people who often shopped at Ratners. The comments were so disdainful of Ratners’ customers and snobbish about their taste and spending power. The journalists instinctively knew that the story had legs and would (and did) cause a furore. If you think about how lower-cost consumer goods are often positioned in the marketplace, there’s usually a sympathetic, ‘in it together’ seam of messaging, which acts as reassurance that the consumers buying at this price point are not alone (supermarkets provide a great example of this). This approach effectively negates any shame or discomfort in buying cheaper goods. Of course, Ratner’s comments did exactly the opposite. Suddenly, a 99p ‘bargain’ set of earrings feels less like a treat, and more like a scam when compared to a sandwich by the man ultimately pocketing the profits of the sale. A Guardian article from 22nd August 1992 outlined what happened to the business over the following months. It plunged into £122.3m debt, closed 330 stores at a cost of £100m, share values plummeted, reducing the business’s value from £840m at its peak to £33.7m, and Ratner resigned. Was this all caused by Gerald Ratner’s comments? Thirty years down the line, it’s impossible to say with certainty. But on the balance of probabilities, I’d say yes. Received wisdom also seems to suggest that, broadly speaking, yes, his comments did in fact sink the business. But how is this story relevant to law firms? Great question! The Gerald Ratner story provides lessons for law firm leaders on so many different fronts that I’ve split them into themes (some lessons are relevant across multiple themes). PR and Marketing Understanding your market. Ensuring any media-facing staff are media-trained. Where you have a ‘marmite’ member of staff, understanding and balancing the risks vs benefits their personal brand brings to your business. Understanding the impact of humour and why it needs to be carefully deployed in your marketing outputs (if deployed at all). Knowing and sticking to your key messages with a consistent cadence. Protecting the brand, recognising and promoting the quality of your services. Being clear about where you sit in a market and being proud of your position. Ensuring you are on your clients’ side at all times and that you are perceived as being so. How important a business’s reputation is to its success, and how easily and quickly reputations can be destroyed. The importance of your relationships with your clients and what you say about them when they aren’t in the room. Operations and management Understanding your market. Ensuring you are on your clients’ side at all times and that you are perceived as being so. The importance of your relationships with your clients and what you say about them when they aren’t in the room. Responsibility for the brand and protecting it. Who gets to decide appropriate spokespeople for your brand? Governance and risk management – how did this come to happen in a listed company? Culture Understanding your market. The importance of respecting your clients. The power of external forces in building or destroying your reputation. The importance of your relationships with your clients and what you say about them when they aren’t in the room. Appropriate and inappropriate behaviours and attitudes in a corporate setting. In essence, this story is an absolute masterclass on the importance and value of your firm’s reputation, and it shines a helpful light on all of the different aspects of running a firm that interplay with reputation management and protection. What are the actions that law firm leaders can take to avoid ‘doing a Ratner’? 1. Assess your firm’s reputation To start this
A Guide to the Key Components of PR Projects and PR Retainers for Lawyers It’s worth saying from the outset that there is, categorically, no right or wrong way for a law firm or legal business to work with a PR agency. In the same way that every law firm is different, they should also all have different strategies and goals in place, and it’s these that should drive the relationship with the agency. We often work with boutique law firms, and they are typically very good at driving business organically. Our role will often be to deliver against retainers that see our work sit right at the top of the sales funnel. We help them to be even more successful at driving new business, helping them to convert clients quickly and cost-effectively. Because these are growing firms and they are already good at converting clients, they invariably don’t have a marketing function or team, the lawyers are the rainmakers, and we act as their outsourced PR and marketing team. This work typically involves a lot of media relations, brand work, social media, content and perhaps also legal directories and awards. At the other end of the scale, we undertake very high-level PR projects with law firms that have a strong and effective in-house marketing function. This work might look like campaign media relations to support a particular case or client campaign and will often be built around litigation PR outputs in the media. Spanning firms of all sizes and specialisms, our legal directories work can range from one or two legal directories submissions for a specialist firm, to 15 reviews and some training for a regional heavyweight. The above examples come from real-life, and they represented the right approaches for each law firm client based upon what they wanted to achieve via their PR strategies. How to decide whether a PR retainer or project will work best? The first thing that we will always consider with a client asking about PR services is their strategy – i.e. what are they trying to achieve? The next step is often to book them onto our PR Mapping and Strategy service, because whilst they often know what they are trying to achieve in their firm, they don’t always have a PR strategy in place to support this. Some firms have identified relatively short-term goals, and the PR work required to hit these may naturally sit in a project wrapper. Longer term, more complex goals may require a longer-term commitment with a number of moving parts and tactics working together. This can look like either a longer-term project or a retainer arrangement. Typical or ideal project work will tend to deliver a specific, measurable outcome or be tied to an event, deadline or upcoming change. For example, the following will typically work well on a project basis: Short- or immediate-term PR & marketing projects PR Mapping and Strategy work which results in a new or updated PR strategy for the firm. Crisis communications response work where we manage the internal and external communications in a looming or ongoing PR crisis. Design and build a crisis communications strategy and pack for a firm. Litigation PR for a specific dispute where we manage all media relations and perhaps social media and content aspects. Legal directory submissions. Legal directories reviews. Award submissions. Events where we manage the event and any pre- and post- event marketing and PR. All of the above can be relatively easily scoped, with a strategy and deliverable tactics agreed upfront. The end point of the project can usually be easily agreed – the legal directory submissions or award submission goes in on deadline, the training completes, the event happens or judgment is handed down in a litigation, or the crisis passes or dies down. Longer-term projects will typically be a little more complex but can often still follow the above format. Longer-term PR and brand projects Law firm launch to market where we do all pre-, during and post-launch PR work. New team or practice area launch to market (as above). M&A PR where we work closely with both teams to deliver both firms through the merger project, managing all aspects of both internal and external communications. Rebranding where we guide the firm through the rebrand process, managing all aspects of the branding, marketing and PR to internal and external audiences. Slow burn or proactive crisis communications matters. You can hopefully see why the above are still appropriate for project work – whilst they might not have such an obvious end-point, they are still clearly finite in their requirements and again can be relatively easily scoped as such. PR Retainers Retainers can really hold their own in a number of circumstances, for example: New firm launch with an appetite for PR and no marketing function. The firm doesn’t quite have the budget for an employed marketer or PR manager and wants to utilise agency skills to support the growth journey in the medium term (minimum 1 year typically often up to 5 years). The firm has decided against funding an employed marketing and / or PR position as it recognises the value that external, specialist support can provide. The firm has never ‘done’ PR before. The firm that has decided to outsource PR, having previously had somebody in-house. The firm has a junior marketer who is great at tactics but doesn’t yet have strategic marketing and PR skills. The firm has identified a gap in its marketing function’s skillset and wants to take advantage of a particular area of agency expertise – often media relations. The firm has a particular strategic focus that needs attention – perhaps it’s struggling with recruitment, has had negative press over recent years, needs a rebrand and is ready to be reintroduced to the market. The firm has a tired brand. The firm has recently been through a number of mergers and needs to consolidate / market its new messaging and positioning to both internal and
Having been around the block once or twice now in this Legal PR gig, I’m quite good at trend-spotting, but also BS-identifying. I hope this makes me well-placed to write a blog covering the trends that I think will dominate Legal PR and marketing during 2026. I’m writing this in mid-March as we approach the new tax year, so you might think this blog is a bit late, but 2026 / 2027 Tax Year Legal PR and Marketing Trends doesn’t quite have the same ring, does it?! There’s no surprise that AI continues to top the list, not as a new trend but simply due to the pace of change and evolution of AI tools, and it’s driving other trends too, in SEO vs. GEO and PR through to brand authenticity and the types of content people are reaching for. Read on to find out more. AI usage in the legal sector It is literally fairly impossible to move at the moment without AI popping up across every single conversation around law firm management, growth, delivery, marketing, compliance and literally everything else. I think there’s a fairly good chance we have all gone AI-mad. Do I think AI is a bad thing? No. Do I think there are huge opportunities for businesses that embrace AI? Yes. Do I think that AI can be used for everything? No. And do I think that AI is a magic bullet that will solve existing and deep-rooted problems within some law firms? No, no and no again. *Spoiler alert* Like many of us, I’m in my early days of learning about AI’s capabilities, and I’ve been trying to work out how we can use it at LexRex, whilst also being mindful of protecting our high IP value content and data from scraping. Please be reassured that none of our client data or information is being fed anywhere and that won’t change any time soon. I’m also conscious of AI’s ability and sometimes tendency to ‘hallucinate’ or invent things when it doesn’t know the answer. We also continue to write all of our own content when it matters (and I think it always matters). I want to ensure that my writing continues to sound like me. And that the content we create for our clients continues to sound like them. I also hate the idea that content becomes generic, because it is written by AI and therefore, everything created by AI sounds like everything that’s already been created by humans in the past. I’m also sure that at some point we’ll experience a backlash against AI-derived content and start to seek or relearn slower forms of communication. In fact, I suspect this is already happening, it’s just not yet hit the mainstream. AI slop, beware! How are law firm marketers using AI at the moment and where is this going? 1. Content research. AI can be really helpful for marketers to research what ‘the market’ is saying about certain practice areas. You can also use this data to reverse engineer what isn’t being said and hopefully spot and utilise some gaps that you can use creatively. 2. Content ideation and planning AI can also be used to create powerful content ideas, particularly for areas of law that may be perceived as ‘dry’ or boring. Do remember, though that if you rely upon these ideas, you’re basically rehashing conversations and content that have already been covered in depth by your competitors. If your approach is ‘let’s just write some content on XXX’ that’s all well and good, but a more nuanced approach, along with some good old human creativity, will be required if you want to stand out from the competition. BTW, I’m very happy to die on the hill that says original, nuanced content that takes its cues from a goal-driven strategy will knock open AI-derived, generic content out of the park every single time when it comes to effectiveness and cut-through. But yes, it costs more. 3. Social and other content writing and imagery We’ve all seen the cartoon images and videos on LinkedIn haven’t we, and having spoken to lots of lawyers and marketers, I know that lots of you are using AI to create written and visual content for your social media channels. There’s nothing wrong with this, and I completely understand the reasoning behind it. My personal advice though is twofold – one, ensure that the content you post does actually sound like something you’d say, and two, try and mix the AI generated content with some content that you have written. I just think this helps to ensure that you sound ‘like you’ and it also helps to ensure you are sharing original ideas and content, not just regurgitating stuff that has already been covered to death elsewhere. And in case you’ve forgotten – a quick reminder that social channels are about engaging with humans, not algorithms. Another hill that I’m happy to die upon is my strongly held belief that it’s way better to have a smaller, engaged audience of potential buyers than a gigantic audience of fans who, nonetheless, will never buy from you. Remember as well that the more ‘randos’ you connect with, the harder (and longer) you’ll have to search on your channels for content that actually interests you. 4. Competitor analysis. Again, AI can very quickly undertake basic competitor analysis and does this so much faster than can ever be achieved through desk research carried out via Search. Be mindful of the hallucination point earlier and remember to apply not only your common sense to the results, but also your own data points and knowledge of the market. AI can’t replace human insight (yet), but I think it can help us to identify blind spots and, where data sets are available, can help us to interrogate our thinking and assumptions. 5. Writing award submissions and legal directories content. Tricky one, this. I can definitely understand why you might be tempted to do this from
We have recently been working on a number of pitches for PR retainers for law firms. Seeing how different firms have approached the process has been really interesting. The pitch system isn’t without its pitfalls, and I remain to be convinced that it’s the best or indeed only way to select an agency. We relatively rarely pitch for work, mainly because our relationships within the sector mean most of our clients come to us, but also because pitching is an expensive process with no guarantee of success. Also, we are quite fussy about who we work with. However, for the right firm, we will pitch. And when we do, we go hard! Now that the process has finished, and we’re waiting to hear whether we were successful, I started thinking about the lessons I could share agency-side for other law firms looking to find a great PR partner. What does a great PR brief contain? Clear, measurable goals: One of the features of a great PR brief is a clear outline of what the firm is trying to achieve by bringing in a PR partner. The more honest about this you can be, the easier it will be for the pitching agencies to create a proposal that helps you to reach this goal on time and on budget. Introduction to the firm: Don’t make us Google you (too much). Tell us about the firm – what you do, who you do it for, which sectors you work in and set out your key partners and heads of department. Key trends, stories, legislation, reported cases: What’s going on for your clients. What’s keeping them up at night, what are the challenges or opportunities they face? What are your colleagues working on, how are they helping your key clients? What are you doing now and what you have done in the past? Do you have an incumbent agency? Have you worked with an agency before? What kind of marketing (if any) have you done before, what are you working on now? Tell us who we’ll be pitching to: Will it be the management team, marketing and BD team, both or neither? Let us know so that we can ensure that our pitch is appropriate for the audience – a PR pitch for a marketer will be quite different to one for a bunch of lawyers. Involve your marketing team: I’m sure you all do this, but if you don’t, please start. These are the people at the coal face of working with your lawyers, so they know what will and won’t work, and they will be able to be very clear about what they want your PR agency to bring to the table. Ideally let your marketing team write the brief and manage the process. Let us know your budget: Please do this as it allows us to create a bespoke package that aligns with your goals. Also, it’s only fair to let us know how much is available on a monthly or annual basis, so that we pitch something that matches your budget. I won’t pitch without a budget, and we absolutely have a minimum monthly spend. Tell us if you want to see anything specific: The following provides some sensible examples: Previous law firm experience How do you measure success Example outputs Levels of activity Who will be on the team?* Budget required How will you plan activity on our account? Will we get reports? Do you work with other law firms, and how will you manage working with competing clients or conflicts?** Budget and disbursements Be clear on the post-pitch process and know when you’ll be able to appoint: Please don’t drag out the process any longer than you need to. Ideally, get the post-pitch meetings into the diary before you hear the presentations and then make a quick choice. Let us know if we were successful, and if not, please do give feedback. Once you’ve appointed your agency, make sure you have everything ready to enable them to crack on. Then stand back and let them impress you! If you enjoyed this content, sign up to our monthly newsletter for more content like this, straight into your inbox every month. And if you’d like to chat about any of our PR services, book a call with Victoria. *Not a problem for us, the team that pitches is the team you get. **Also, not a problem for us, we don’t work in conflict. Victoria Moffatt is the founder and managing director of LexRex. A non-practising solicitor she has been supporting law firms with their PR for over a decade. Get in touch with Victoria to discuss your law firm’s PR needs.
On Tuesday 17th June, I was up and out relatively bright and early to make my way over to The Royal College of Physicians for the start of the Law Firm Ambition conference 2025. Competing effectively in the legal sector I was lucky enough to have been invited to speak on a panel all about how law firms can differentiate themselves from the competition and get more work as a result. It won’t surprise you to learn that my advice was all about reputation and specifically, how law firms can utilise PR to monetise it. Panel session insights: Competing with others for new business As part of the panel session, I spoke about two frameworks that we use at LexRex to effectively deploy PR strategies that help law firms to grow. One is the step-by-step framework we use to create effective PR strategies – and you can access that framework by downloading the Law Firm Leader’s Reputation Playbook. It provides deep insights into what makes an effective reputation, along with step-by-step exercises to help law firm leaders audit their reputation and start to utilise it to best effect. I also talked about the PESO framework, which we use to ensure that we consider four key aspects of PR when creating a strategy. They are Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned. Again, the Law Firm Leaders’ Reputation Playbook defines and explains this framework, giving actionable insights and advice on how you can use it to better leverage your reputation. I gave my top tips on how to create effective legal directories submissions (we went from very strategic to very tactical during the panel, I was asked to provide specifically actionable advice, which I think I did!) All of the legal directories advice and insights that I provided can be found in the Legal Directories Resource Hub, which you can access completely free of charge by becoming a member here. My top three takeaways for attendees were: Be strategic Remember that PR is a long game. Share your firm’s strategy with the people creating and delivering your PR strategy. However, the day wasn’t just about my insights. In fact, I played a tiny part in what was a hugely insightful and interesting set of presentations and breakout sessions. Here’s a brief insight into some of the speakers and sessions that took place on the main stage of the conference. Ben Hunt-Davies, Rower, gold-medal-winning Olympian and founder of Will It Make the Boat Go Faster? I’m fairly sure I’ve seen Ben speak in the past; his presentation is entertaining and gives plenty to think about. His hot take is essentially that we shouldn’t do anything in business unless it metaphorically ‘makes the boat go faster’. He talked at length about all the things that the eight-man rowing team did and concentrated on in their campaign to win gold at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 (spoiler – they won). Ben also talked about the difference between results and performance, and he recommended that we always concentrate on performance, because sometimes results can happen despite performance. I think this is a good lesson. Andrew Hedley, Hedley Consulting – The changing competitive landscape Andrew’s talk was all about strategy (a subject very close to my own heart at all times!) He was particularly keen to ask us to consider the fact that we can’t do everything all of the time, and that we need to be careful about how we allocate our scarce resources to achieve a competitive advantage. He also suggested we undertake horizon scanning for challenges, including: The firms we compete with today. New firms entering the market. The fact that clients want better, faster and cheaper (no change there!). The things that are costing us more. The things that will take away the need for us. And consider – how much we are prepared to change? I quite liked his definitions of between tactics = running faster, and strategy = running a different race. Managing Partner Secrets I can understand why this panel returns each year; the speakers were all very open, frank and funny with their insights. The panellists were Chris Allen (Blacks Solicitors), Victoria Davey (Gordons LLP) and Duncan Jackson (Buckles Solicitors LLP). The session was ably hosted by Chair, Alex Holt (Cashroom), with topics ranging from whether you should monitor your competition (Victoria said no, focus on what you are doing, Duncan said no, compete in your own locations and Chris said, yes absolutely, we are OBSESSED with the competition). Other topics included advice on CRM systems, how to get more work from your existing clients, why recruitment is so hard (and how to get better at it), AI, what ‘winning’ looks like, and how to get people back into the office. Being honest, this was probably my favourite session of the day. I really appreciated the time and honesty provided by the panellists. The latter sessions included a talk by Bernard Savage, who talked about how to be unique. His focus was on niches and how important it is not to have too many. He also suggested that firms avoid worrying about the competition. The day closed with a session by Dan Warburton. He suggested that firms need bold leadership for big results. Those in leadership positions need to lead by taking note of and dealing with ineffective behaviours by getting compassionate instead of angry, and finally by collaborating, not manipulating. He finished with the message that “the standard you walk past is the standard you accept.” Sensible advice. In all, the Law Firm Ambition Conference was a really enjoyable event and is one I’d recommend to law firm leaders. This was the fourth iteration, and what I think is particularly effective is that each conference is themed. This should help the organisers to avoid the content becoming stale and will hopefully ensure a rotating roster of new speakers each year. The attendees from law firms were mainly at the senior end (perhaps due to the ticket price, which
Marginal gains – the hidden levers of growth This year there’s an absolutely fascinating focus by LexisNexis’ Bellwether Report 2025 on marginal gains within law firms. Or as Olympic gold-medal winning rower Ben Hunt-Davis would ask, ‘does it make the boat go faster?’ In fact, Hunt-Davis recently spoke on this exact topic at this year’s Law Firm Ambition conference in London. Another law firm consultant who knows his stuff, Simon McCrum also references the quote in his latest book, The Perfect Partner. Incidentally I will be reviewing that book soon, and you can read my review of his second book The Perfect Legal Business here. LexisNexis Bellwether Report 2025: A review Focussing upon small tweaks with big impact is an interesting topic, and the Report delivers great insights as ever. Read on for my overview and you can also read the Report here. Also, kudos to LexisNexis for avoiding building a report entirely focussed upon the AI chat that is dominating every single piece of law firm consultancy or advisory content that I see currently. Is AI important and potentially game changing for law firms? Yes. Should it be the sole focus for law firm leaders? Absolutely not. Is it included in the report? Yes, but proportionately. The Bellwether research methodology and participants I always like to start any review with a look into the methodology applied to the research, and I’m always particularly interested to see how many respondents replied, their seniority and the spread of the response between firms of different sizes. I think it’s really important to understand these figures, especially when it can be so easy to take headline percentages at face value. It is particularly important to be diligent where a) response numbers are low and b) where junior lawyers are disproportionately represented. There’s nothing wrong with including responses from those at the start of their career, but it’s true to say that most, if not all, of them will have no real idea of the pressures and challenges faced by those running the firm that employs them. Unfortunately, information about seniority isn’t included in the below, so again remember to take all of the figures with a pinch of salt and do try to apply your own judgement and experience to the findings and supporting comments. Here’s the methodology: “The Bellwether 2025 survey, conducted in April 2025, gathered responses from 308 legal professionals across England and Wales. Firms of all sizes were represented, with 26% from practices with five or fewer fee earners, 23% from firms with six to ten, 29% from those with 11 to 20, and the remaining 22% from firms with over 20 fee earners.” M&A down, organic growth up Six in ten or 48% (148) respondents confirmed that their firm has grown over the past 12 months, an increase from 28% on last year. M&A focus declined from 10% in 2024 to 5% this year, with 72% of respondents aiming for organic growth. There are a couple of different respondent comments on the reasons for this drop which include the cost of M&A (mergers tend to be cash hungry – requiring legal, financial, HR, compliance and reputational advice). Remember also that managing and completing a deal is massively time-consuming, leaving little or no time for those leading to concentrate on anything else. There’s also a comment that organic rather than M&A growth ensures that law firms retain full control of all aspects of the business, along with a suggestion that cultural cohesion may play a part in choosing to grow with what you’ve already got. Spending now, spending later Spending priorities reveal some interesting insights. Hiring has become more of a priority, with 23% having already undertaken this step with 39% planning to in 2025. 17% have already spent on technology investment and 43% intend to this year. 16% of respondents increased spend on marketing, and 33% plan to increase that spend this year. 11% increased spend on business development, with an even bigger planned increase to 36% in 2025. I think this is a slightly slippery set of figures as I’m almost certain that if you asked even two lawyers in the same team to define marketing and business development, they’d both almost certainly come up with different answers. It will be so interesting to see whether these proposed spending increases come to pass as, in my experience, they tend indicate an increase in confidence in the market. When confidence is low, marketing and associated cost tends to be one of the first to be cut. Interestingly, the report authors come to a slightly different conclusion with regards to the above statistics stating that “Some firms have already increased their spend in these areas, but instead of acting in the moment, the majority are planning for the future.” This suggests less confidence than I’m predicting. Clients just want more Unsurprisingly enough, since we see it in every single sector report, pesky clients still want more, for less, as quickly as possible. “80% of respondents saying clients now expect faster communication and quicker answers. While that figure has dipped slightly from 83% in 2024, the message is the same: responsiveness isn’t just appreciated, it’s assumed.” There’s still a real focus upon pricing, with 50% of respondents explaining that clients want clearer, more upfront fee structures, up from 44% last year. This trend reflects broader economic pressures.” I’m not sure I agree with the final sentence, I think it has ever been thus. Interestingly, one respondent, an associate at a small firm said, “Clients always should come first, then cost and outcome second.” There’s a lot to unpick with this comment. Yes – client service should of course be prioritised, but I’m not sure that a) the client would be happy for you to automatically put service before cost (you’d have to ask them obviously) and b) I’m fairly sure that many, if not most, wouldn’t prioritise service above outcome. On a separate note, and again with regards to the
The power of a great PR campaign… And how law firms can use these lessons to achieve growth. Today I’m writing about blood. Don’t worry, you’re not entering a romantasy novel (although all power to you if you enjoy the vampire trope, I am not here to judge lol. Everybody else – as you were). No, this blog is taking a look into some of the more tactical considerations and tools at the PR’s disposal, and today the focus is upon media relations. As ever, my advice is aimed at law firms. If you read the first blog in this series about PR tactics, you already know how important crisis comms are when it comes to reputation management. If not, you can read that post here. I’ll also be writing about other tactics available to PR and marketing specialists over the next few weeks. If you run a law firm and there’s anything you’d like to see discussed – do get in touch and let me know. But back to blood. Unless you live under a stone, you’ll have seen that the NHS is desperately short of blood. In the UK blood is donated by volunteers and is called upon for all manner of medical procedures, in emergencies and, I imagine, to support ongoing treatment for a range of medical conditions. By what do blood shortages, the NHS and law firms have in common, I hear you ask? (it must be my vampire hearing– SORRY not sorry lol). Blood services are managed by an organisation called NHS Blood and Transplant and they have a PR team. It’s clear that at some point recently, blood bank levels were dropping to a lower level than anybody was comfortable with, and the PR team was called in to help. I had initially assumed this was a crisis brief, but having dug deeper, I suspect things have been planned with a slightly longer timescale in mind. Whatever has happened behind closed doors, the planning and delivery of this campaign is a masterclass in effective, strategic and measurable PR. Now, it’s worthwhile noting that I don’t work for this organisation, so I’m having to take a bit of a stab (lol) with regards to their terms of reference and goals etc. However, it is clear that their immediate goal was to increase blood donations and looking at the press coverage – the aim is for 1 million people to donate blood. Incidentally it happens to land around (but definitely not randomly), the 9th – 15th June, which is National Blood Week. I suspect this awareness week was also created by NHS Blood and Transport’s PR team as a great vehicle and news hook for building awareness and engagement over a number of years. Turning to the strategic approach for this particular campaign, we can see that: There was a clear Goal – achieve 1 million donations. Strategy – this was probably something along the lines of ‘utilise an existing awareness event (National Blood Week) and effective media relations in order to reach the goal of 1 million donations / 1 million people donating blood within x period’. Another point to note is the brand that NHS Blood and Transport use for their B2C audiences. You probably haven’t heard of NHS Blood and Transport (me neither), but you definitely know ‘Give Blood’. Clever eh? Tactics NHS Blood and Transport are active on social media – check them out on Instagram: givebloodNHS Media relations – this campaign has achieved wall-to-wall media coverage across broadcast, broadsheet, tabloid and online channels. Content – the Give Blood website contains not only content about the campaign but provides clarity around the particular types of blood sought and gives a live feed of the centres with donation appointments available today. With regards to target audiences my view is that the obvious primary target audience is people in the UK who are eligible to give blood. However, looking again at the outputs, I suspect that the following were also identified as key audiences: People in the UK who are eligible to give blood and are type O negative, B negative and A negative – as these types of blood are currently critically low. The key messages are probably essentially: Make an appointment today to give blood Register today to give blood in the future Measurement should also always be a component of every campaign, and in this case either 1 million people will give blood, or they won’t. Either way, the campaign is measurable. The above is the CIPR-approved strategic approach to effective PR, and you can see how easily this campaign fits the model. At its heart, this is an excellent campaign that ticks all of the boxes for a really effective approach, that delivers against the goals and nails the brief. The good news for law firms, is that strategic PR can be used very effectively to support your firm’s growth strategy. Whilst you’re less likely to achieve the levels of coverage this campaign has generated, it’s perfectly possible to generate opportunities to be seen by your target audiences in your key media. Often, all it takes is a little planning. If you are interested in leveraging your reputation in order to support your law firm’s growth – you should definitely register for our latest guide. The Law Firm Leaders’ Reputation Playbook has been created to give managing partners and owners of law firms a toolkit to start to understand, develop and utilise their reputations in order to achieve growth. Download your copy here. Victoria Moffatt is the founder and managing director of LexRex. A non-practising solicitor she has been supporting law firms with their PR for over a decade. Get in touch with Victoria to discuss your law firm’s PR needs. Connect with Victoria on LinkedIn.
I recently posted a poll on LinkedIn to ask lawyers and law firm owners if they had ever had to deal with the reputational fallout from a crisis. At the time of writing, the results indicated that fewer than a third of respondents have had to deal with this particularly thorny problem. I do wonder, though, if some of my lurkers and indeed more active connections are worried about responding to the poll on the basis that they don’t want to be associated with the fallout of a crisis leading to reputational challenges. Either way, a crisis communications skillset is one of the most important tools available to a PR, particularly in the heavily regulated and often politicised field of legal practice. I have written previously about best practice in managing a PR crisis, and you can read about that topic here. On a related note, unless you live in a cave, you will have seen that UK retail stalwart M&S has been having a bit of a tricky time recently as a result of a cyber incident. This has seen hackers steal personal data, forcing the retailer to suspend online shopping for almost a month at the time of writing, resulting in lost sales of £43m weekly. I am an occasional M&S customer, usually for school uniform (they do a smashing 20% off deal in early summer), and as an account holder, I recently received an email from their operations director, Jayne Wall. Jayne didn’t email me personally, but the mailer – which I presume was sent to all online customers – is an absolute masterclass in engaging with your customers during a crisis. I felt so compelled to write about the strength of the email that I’ve written a blog about it for the Chartered Institute of PR magazine, Influence. You can read that here. Alternatively, and if you prefer a TLDR version, you can read the LinkedIn post that inspired the blog here. Why should law firms care about crisis comms and reputation? But how are a beleaguered retailer and law firms related, I hear you ask? There are numerous reasons that lawyers should be concerned about crisis comms, and more particularly protecting, developing and leveraging their reputation. The reason that M&S did so well with their customer service email is that they clearly put a lot of time and effort into getting it right and ensuring that it resonated well with their customers. I’m sure that they have deep enough pockets to ensure that they always have a detailed crisis communications plan ready to go, but their PR team also very clearly understands the importance of protecting, or where necessary, repairing M&S’ reputation. They also have a deep understanding of their customer, along with their customers’ expectations as to how M&S does things. Because of all of this, the letter felt natural, felt right, and felt very ‘M&S’ in its delivery. Do read the blog it’s insightful and republishes the letter in its entirety. From a reputational perspective, there are two questions that I think law firm leaders need to ask themselves: The strategic one: what do we need to do to maximise our reputation, and The tactical one: how do we prepare for a crisis? As a rule, I always start with strategy. When you know what you are trying to achieve and you understand what success looks like, everything else should relatively easily fall into place. Add into the mix an understanding of your target audiences, formulate some key messages, draft a top-level strategy and a plan for tactics, and you’re pretty much good to go. It’s worth noting that this approach doesn’t only apply to your reputation, it’s a pretty decent plan for any PR and marketing project. Every law firm has a reputation, and what you do with that reputation is up to you. If you do nothing, that’s absolutely fine. But it’s also a wasted opportunity to fail to shape and hone something that can make you more money. I talk a lot about law firm reputation and how and why law firm leaders need to consider how their PR and marketing activities, culture, staff behaviours, delivery of legal services and risk appetite and management all feed into reputation. Why is this stuff important? It’s important because reputation is the difference between good things said about your firm and your staff behind your backs (by the people that matter) and bad things said about your firm and your staff behind your backs (by the people that matter). When you decide to proactively take steps to manage your reputation, you proactively take steps to move the dial on the way your firm is perceived (by the people that matter).* *When I talk about the people that matter, I mean the people that matter – they may be clients, probably are staff, are likely to be referrers or other key contacts, and may be potential future or former staff. They might not be the competitors around the corner – although again they may be, particularly if you’re on the acquisition trail or seeking a merger or you need to bring in a new team with expertise you currently lack. Because I think that reputation is poorly understood and reputational management even more poorly executed in law firms, I’ve written something called The Law Firm Leaders’ Reputational Playbook. This guide is undergoing its final iteration at the moment, and I’m planning to launch it in time for my speaking opportunity at this year’s Law Firm Ambition conference, the theme for which is Competing Effectively in the Legal Sector. You can get tickets to that event here. It promises to be an insightful, interesting day, with plenty of experts sharing their knowledge. The Playbook provides insights and information about the strategic elements of law firm reputation management and provides practical guidance on how you can leverage the strength of your reputation, to grow your law firm and make more money. If you like the
Did you know…? When you work with LexRex, you can do so on a project as opposed to a retained basis. We work with many of our clients on a project-to-project basis. Our support ranges from the relatively simple: Legal directories announcements and supporting social media graphics. Press releases including new appointments, partner appointments, promotions and financial results. Copywriting and content creation – technical, brand-led and marketing focussed. To the incredibly complex and confidential: Sensitive internal and external communications to support operational and strategic projects. Crisis communications reactive PR covering both internal and external communications, strategy creation and longer-term planning and brand / reputational repair and enhancement work. Positioning and promotional strategy and delivery for firms undertaking structural, long-term changes in direction or repositioning in the market. And not forgetting the necessary and strategic: Brand mapping and strategy creation. End-to-end event management and supporting communications and follow-up. Legal directories consultancy and drafting. Awards consultancy and drafting. In terms of how we work, the more complex and specialist projects tend to be undertaken by our MD and founder, former solicitor, Victoria Moffatt, with support from the broader specialist LexRex team. This work tends to come directly from law firm owners, MD’s, MP’s and CEOs. Other projects are overseen by Victoria and allocated to the expert with the most appropriate experience and skillset to deliver. We are a small team, and we are all fully briefed and up to date on each others’ workload at any point. There are no silos at LexRex. We are also often instructed by marketing directors and managers who recognise the value that our specialist PR expertise can bring, complementing their own skills to get projects over the line. If you have any interesting projects that would benefit from our expertise, do drop me a line and let’s have a chat. We’d be delighted to help. “I instructed Victoria at LexRex to support a confidential, sensitive project which required strategic assistance in respect of both internal and external communications. “Because she is both a non-practising solicitor and a PR, Victoria immediately got to grips with the key issues. She developed a strategic framework to support the delivery of the PR aspects of the project, whilst identifying the leadership, employment law and administrative aspects which she also incorporated effectively. “An unexpected challenge part-way through significantly accelerated the delivery timeframes, but Victoria was able to meet the shorter deadlines and project manage the working group effectively in order to ensure that everything crossed the line on time. “I would have no hesitation in recommending Victoria for her strategic PR expertise within the legal sector and her understanding of the particular nuances that arise when managing projects within law firms.” James Geary, Managing Partner, EMW Law
How to win a law firm award? LexRex MD and founder Victoria Moffatt’s top tips for winning legal awards Awards season is very much upon us and if you have ‘win an award’ on your to do list, but you’re not quite sure what to do next, read on for our top tips for bagging a gong. Only enter ethical and fairly-judged awards This is a bit of a crusade for me – I actively dislike awards that are either pay-to-play or that boil down to popularity contests. They give properly judged and considered awards a bad name and are, quite simply, a bad idea. If you genuinely think your work is good enough to be celebrated, do it the courtesy of entering it into a proper set of awards. Don’t fall in with a bad awards crowd – in my opinion, if you enter this type of award, you undermine the quality of what you do and put your reputation at risk. People are not daft and they can work out that this type of award is poor quality at best and a scam at worst. Research the categories and check out the previous winners. This is an obvious step but one that is often over-looked. It’s likely that you will be eligible for several different categories – firm-wide (Firm of the Year), team or specialism (Employment Team of the Year) or on a personal basis (Partner of the Year). But which are you most likely to be shortlisted for or win? The best way to try and gauge this is by looking at two things initially; the criteria for each submission and the previous winners. If the categories have previously been won by firms, teams or individuals that have some similarities with your practice, team or you individually (in terms of experience, profile and achievements – for example), then you may stand a good chance. However, if they are nothing like you and their achievements are greater than yours, perhaps consider a different category. Consider your achievements against those of other potential entrants. This is a bit tricky, but if you know that your competitors always submit AND they have had a particularly strong year – for example, high profile litigation, merger, very strong financials; then again just stop to consider how your own achievements measure up. Read and understand the requirements for each submission. This is an obvious one and it always feels a bit like I’m advising students to read the exam question. However, experience has taught me that it’s sensible to have this conversation early in the process. Ensure that you meet the requirements for the submission you are considering preparing, and that you can meet the deadline. Check in advance the format required for the submission – is it a written submission, do you need to complete an online form, is there a registration process and / or is there a cost for which you will need prior sign-off? Also consider additional steps you may need to take – does the submission requires onerous supporting information, a video or client testimonials? And are these things that you can easily supply, and if so, will they be of a good enough quality? “If you genuinely think your work is good enough to be celebrated, do it the courtesy of entering it into a proper set of awards. Don’t fall in with a bad awards crowd.” Mark up the criteria and ensure you meet 80% of them. Another simple piece of advice and again one that feels a little bit like exam advice. In addition to checking that the entrant meets most of the criteria, I go a step further and print them, then handwrite in bullets the key supporting information I want to include for each criterion heading. Doing this helps to focus the mind on the previous year’s successes, but also helps to ensure that judges can literally tick the answers off against their criteria list. Stick to the word count. Again, this sounds likely noddy advice, but experience shows that it’s still good advice. Word counts are typically limited to 750 – 1000 per submission, so don’t waste your words. Ensure that anything you mention is relevant to the criteria and nothing else. A strong submission is a clear and focussed one. Provide what you’re asked to provide. Submission calls for testimonials? Include them. A video? Record one. ‘Up to 3 pages of supporting evidence’, for example, can be more tricky – but again refer back to the individual criteria and ask yourself what evidence you can provide to meet these whilst also tying in with what you’ve written. Treat a shortlisting like a win. Being shortlisted is a huge achievement, and we always advise clients to celebrate as though they have won. This goes for any PR activity as well – don’t waste the opportunity to shout about being shortlisted, because if you don’t win – that chance can never be recouped. Further, a shortlisting is a win, and by that point, you’ve done absolutely everything you can. So you may as well bask in the glory. And if you do win, shout even more loudly! What do we mean by ‘shouting loudly’? Get your socials in order – great imagery, quotes from judges if any are available, video content. These are just a few examples of content you could create. You can also tag your fellow shortlisted firms / teams / individuals / the organisers in order to start to generate likes, comments and shares. Blog and newsletter content – share the good news internally and externally. Email signatures – use the official logos (review the usage policy first to see what you’re permitted to do) Consider whether you can use the result in signage – perhaps as decals in a prominent window or door. Celebrate internally – print and display posters or create something a bit daft in celebration, or even something as simple as celebratory cakes. Whatever
