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.

If you think your law firm is too small for getting national media coverage, or simply somehow disbarred because it is not in London.... think again!

Our webinar for lawyers this week looks at the ways that work for law firms looking to get more coverage in the national media, whether business magazines, professional journals and/or the nationals newspapers. We'll also be covering getting radio and TV interviews too.

Being known as an authority on important legal challenges and trends gives tremendous advantages when it comes to winning work. These include strong credibility, better recognition, more referrals and greater memorability. You can charge more too!

But many of the traditional signs of authority for law firms have been superseded.

Having a great offering, lots of credentials, smart offices, well-designed marketing materials and a professional website are not nearly enough to open the door with most senior-decision makers.

Webinar: Successful blogging for law firms

Posting interesting blogs regularly on important and topical legal issues is an effective and straight-forward way for law firms of all sizes to attract leads.

In fact the research shows that those businesses that blog regularly (say 8-12 times per month) get dramatically more website traffic and leads than those that do it infrequently or sporadically.

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.

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. 

The Kelso Consulting team has been joined by Katy Dowell, previously a senior journalist on the leading legal weekly magazine The Lawyer, as our Features Manager.

Katy is a highly experienced business journalist having previously worked on two of Britain’s top legal and insurance business magazines - The Lawyer and Insurance Times.

Katy first worked at The Lawyer as a senior reporter focused on litigation, then as news editor with overall responsibility for the scores of legal sector stories it publishes each week.

Here is what you really need to know (but most PR guides don't cover)!

You've heard about the power of media, maybe your competitors are getting great coverage or perhaps you have a partner with a big ego who wants lots of press coverage. Either way, you have been tasked with getting lots for your practice, but neither you nor the partners have done it before.

That's not a problem as everyone has to start somewhere. But many law firm partners and their marketing managers approach media relations

Many law firms have great relationships with their PR agencies.  Indeed some have PR advisors who they've stuck with not just for years, but in some cases for decades.

We also know from our discussions with numerous law firms that this sadly isn't always the case.  Sometimes there are faults on both sides, sometimes there are faults just on one side... and sometimes its nobody's fault - one party simply no longer matches the other.

In the later case, the best thing to do is to have an open discussion and move on. However, in the other circumstances, there's lots that can be done to nip such problems in the bud and restore the relationship.

Getting the most out of your law firm's Public Relations agency

I recently had an interesting and wide ranging discussion with Peter Scott (www.peterscottconsult.co.uk) who advises numerous law firms on strategy and management issues. Having previously run Eversheds for eight years as managing partner, he's certainly got great insights to share.

One of the questions I frequently get asked is "which is best, retainer or project when working with a PR agency?"

Both and neither! It all depends what you want the agency to do.  So, as Harry Hill used to say on his TV Burp! there's only one way to sort it out... fight!

Law firms' legal directory questions answered by former Chambers editor

As Christmas edges closer, many businesses will be winding down hoping for a merry end to the year. By contrast for many in law firms this is instead a stressful period as the deadline for legal directory submissions looms.

Some firms have mastered the process of legal submissions.  Their forms are filled out like clockwork, quickly and efficiently keeping their rankings, and nudging them up wherever possible. But for other law firms, it is a complex process where huge effort and angst is spent... often to little 

benefit.

Gauging marketing's Return on Investment is fundamental for law firm growth and management

Many of the law firms we meet struggle to know whether the amount of time and money they spend on marketing is producing an effective return.

It is a common problem, but it needn't be this way.

By contrast, many B2B businesses have good metrics and a clear idea of the effectiveness or otherwise of their marketing spend.

In a few weeks time I'll be on a panel at the Law Firm Marketing Summit, discussing how to measure the return of investment for Thought Leadership activities.

It sounds an esoteric subject and immediately begs some specific questions like:"What is Thought Leadership?"; "What resources are being invested and how do I cost such inputs as non-billable time?"; and "What actually is the return I am looking for and how will I know when I achieve it?".

It's easy to start over-complicating things, so the key question lawyers and their marketing teams involved in Thought Leadership projects should be asking are:

"Successful marketing is all about storytelling" is an idea who's time has come... or a bit of a fad, depending on your perspective. Certainly the amount of articles about it seems to have risen exponentially in recent months.

It wasn't always thus. I remember an occasion some 12 years or so ago when my colleague told the CEO of a tech company that standing out and being memorable "was all about stories"... well, the blank look he got back certainly told its own story.

At our recent webinar I shared a straight forward 6 step process for getting your legal business to the top of Google, which is a hugely valuable place for any business to be, including those professional practices selling high value services.

I have found there are two sorts of attitudes amongst lawyers to the value of appearing prominently on Google. 

There are those businesses that don't think it is worthwhile, do not spend much effort on it and, not surprisingly, this becomes a self fulfilling prophecy... with their website attracting little traffic and few relevant leads.

By contrast, there are those practitioners who consider it important, that invest a bit of time and effort,

Got a problem or need a supplier? The first thing most people do now is look on Google.  You probably do too.

And it is not just people looking for holidays and plumbers.... it is businesses looking for high-value suppliers and solutions for complex legal, financial and management challenges.

If your law firm does not appear prominently on search engines when executives and other potential clients are looking, you are missing out in one of the largest markets for your service - people searching online.

How much time does your firm spend on legal directory entries?  And how does it compare to others?
 
If your firm spends under three days per entry then you are one of the speedy firms as nearly a quarter of respondents to our recent survey said it typically took them at least a whopping 10 days per entry!
 
A snap poll of 26 law firm partners and marketers who attended our recent webinar with Chambers Editor, Jonathan Rubin, found that around a quarter managed to get heir entries done in under 3 days of time, 54% spent took between four and 10 days, and 23% spent an eye watering 10-or-more day per entry.

For further results and to take part in our poll, please click here. 

Improving your ranking in a legal directory can be really beneficial to partners and their firms, so it is certainly worth investing quality time getting the best possible ranking.

Is it better to have a shop on London's Oxford Street or down a dark back alley?

For most professional firms, including commercial and private client law firms, being at the top of Google is like being on Oxford Street as 1,000s of "shoppers" will see you.

Of course this is a rhetorical question.

We all know that it's easier to sell clothes where there are crowds of people shopping for them.  If only there was an Oxford Street where prospective clients go to buy legal services.

In fact there is!  Nowadays we all look to Google to help find the solutions to our problems. 

Leading exhibition organiser Prysm appoints PR agency Kelso Consulting

 Drip-drip marketing rarely delivers a flood of leads

We've just held a seminar looking at how to make professional businesses' sales pipelines work better.

Before it, our participants assisted with some research.  It showed that many of them were already doing a lot of marketing, such as events and some sort of regular technical update or newsletters.  They were for the most part pretty organised too.  

PR campaign to create national press coverage for professional negligence law specialists

Solicitors NeglectAssist, one of the UK’s leading specialists in negligence law, has appointed Kelso Consulting to help it secure prominent coverage in the national media – particularly their personal finance sections.

NeglectAssist, a trading name of Wixted & Co, one of the pioneers of “no win, now fee” arrangements in the professional negligence area, acts for people who have lost large sums of money through having been mis-sold investments– often costing them much or all of their life’s savings