In my time as a legal reporter and news editor at The Lawyer I interviewed thousands of lawyers, barristers and legal service suppliers. Of course, we never had the time to speak to everyone who wanted to be quoted. My job was to get the right people on the record as quickly as possible.

As such, here are some of the things I looked for from spokespeople and expert commentators.

The rules

There were a few simple rules I had for my sources:

• Be available and willing to comment at speed
• Be confident enough to make a point
• Speak in a language that everyone can understand

If you weren't able to get back quickly, I wouldn't quote

The day after The Lawyer Awards, 2012, the editorial team were invited to an event with a team of lawyers from an international law firm. The very same day The Lawyer issued a newsletter to more than 60,000 followers packed with sexual innuendo in reference to a former senior partner from that very same firm.

The former partner, well-known in the City, had been cautioned by police in a London hotel after a drug-fuelled sadomasochistic sex session in an exclusive London hotel.

The editorial decision not to name the partner was taken on the basis that this was a personal matter and the partner was no longer at the firm or practising law. No doubt it would have been a most-read story had we decided to run it.

I cannot help but think now that this was a mistake for a journalist, and a minor PR coup for the firm who could rightly claim to have silenced the most-read legal titles.

One of my favourite and most memorable interviewees while working as the litigation reporter on The Lawyer news desk was Dinah Rose QC of Blackstone Chambers. Here was a woman, mum of two at the time, breaking through glass ceilings to be regarded as one of the best public law barristers in the country. Yet, despite securing pupillage at a set with two female silks, when Dinah first arrived in Chambers in the early 1980s, she told me, her senior male peers asked her to “play mother” and “make the teas”.

Historical sexism in the legal profession means that women have long been under-represented at the top of the industry.

More women than men are now entering the profession, yet in 2018 women made up just 19 percent of equity partners in British law firms, according to PwC, while a McKinsey study from 2017 showed the same figure.

As the final court of appeal in the UK for civil cases, the Supreme Court is a powerful institution. Positioning yourself as a Supreme Court commentator will build and enhance your reputation with peers, clients and the media as someone who understands the most important legal disputes.

In 2009 I was a litigation reporter at The Lawyer responsible for covering the opening of the Supreme Court. Previously the UK’s top justices sat as the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords. The move from the House of Lords into a purpose-built court on Parliament Square was intended to emphasize the independence of the judiciary, increasing the transparency between Parliament and the Supreme Court.

While working on The Lawyer newsdesk it was not uncommon for partners to complain to me that the press release they had spent weeks perfecting was not featured in the news. Getting noticed by the legal press is a challenge, so how do you stand out from the crowd?

But calling a journalist to complain is not going to help your cause. I have worked with many reporters who, after receiving an aggressive call from a lawyer demanding that their release be published, simply stopped looking at any future news from the firm whether it merited attention or not.

Instead, it is worthwhile looking at how you might do things differently and better the next time round.

After the 2008 economic crash, London became a hotspot for wealthy international litigants attracted by its world-class legal profession. The litigation boom powered forward London as a disputes centre.

Why 2020 will be a pivotal year for lawtech companies with legal trade press

The coming year will present an opportunity for legal tech companies to build their profile and credibility through the legal trade press and awards,  particularly now as mot law firms have firmly realised they need to keep investing in making technology work for the profession.

As we discussed on the recent Kelso webinar for lawtech firms (click here to register for the next one), private practice firms are under pressure from clients to invest in technology

There is no doubt winning one of the credible legal industry awards can be wonderful for boosting staff morale while also raising your law firm’s reputation.

While larger firms gain armfuls of them each year, for smaller and regional firms, as well as suppliers to law firms, they are a huge credibility statement too – demonstrating that the work they do is every bit as notable as their larger counterparts.

As well as awards for private practice and in-house legal departments, there are gongs for legal suppliers and support ranging from legal tech companies to HR managers.

While legal technology developments would once have been dismissed as ‘boring’ by the legal press, it is now starting to gain traction as firms start embracing new technologies. For legal PRs this is a challenging situation: a story that might have been rejected because there wasn’t enough interest is now rejected because there is too much such news!

How do you ensure your legal technology news is making your firm stand out from the crowd and delivering the right message to the right audience? 

It’s results season in the legal profession, that time of year when firms make it clear just how well (or not) they have performed over the last twelve months. Across the profession, lawyers will be watching to see how their competitors have fared in comparison with their own firms.

For many in law firm management, however, headline figures are a part of a broader story that they are wanting to tell. The challenge is how to communicate that story and give an accurate picture of the firm’s wider development without giving away trade secrets.

Dealing with the legal press needn’t be difficult: just have something interesting to say

It is no exaggeration to say that in my time on The Lawyer news desk I dealt with hundreds of PRs and many thousands of press releases. Filtering the good, the bad and the ugly was a daily chore.  Only the chosen few would succeed in grabbing my attention and, just perhaps, end up being published as a story on TheLawyer.com. 

Over the years I developed strong relations with PRs and the firms they represented. Yet there were times that dealing with a press team could be frustrating. 
Answering 15 calls on the same irrelevant subject in the space of two hours was tedious, my ears would become deaf to it.