I need to say this though: clients do want this stuff. I’m sorry they do. I work in a law firm and we get requests every week for more client newsletters / updates not less of them.

Yes, there are are professional publishers in their markets, but most clients are not spending money on periodicals covering legal developments – they expect their law firms to be providing updates, and doing so for free.

A group of large law firms created an online publications database – The BLT Portal – after a request from a collection of global financial institutions, wanting to get all the firms’ updates in one place. In this world, first to produce an update wins – not best (although it can be both). Open aggregator sites such as Lexology and Linex Legal often show the same. (These are interesting as many larger firms are not keen on their content being seen next to content from smaller firms, in case it gives the impression that the firm’s are the same ‘quality’ – make me smile personally, that one).

I would disagree with Jordan when he says:
“If you are going to publish content, create a Publishing Division within the firm, and mandate it to create publications that can legitimately be mentioned in the same breath as the leading client industry periodical and become a must-read information source for your clients, one that your competitors are pitting their mediocre content against.”

Publishing is not a core competency of law firms, and if it starts becoming one I would argue you should question the quaility and dedication to the practice of law of that law firm.

This is not to say that the quality of the content could not improve. The problem of course is that firms are often scared/warry of taking a position on things as they don’t want to risk alienating either existing or future clients, which is why many of these update are often so dry, and shirk away from taking a wider view which relates more closely to the clients interests and problems etc.

I wished more firms used blogs for much of this content – got a view out there asap and then be prepared to discuss it (short of providing free advice obviously). The problem is many clients are still not using rss/following blogs and are still tied to getting a ping in their email inbox (thankfully hard copy mailing of these publications is disappearing in most firms).

Anyway, that’s my two cents worth!

First, the solution may not necessarily be to hire in more, and more focused, resources. Another way would be to tweak the drab publication culture and help lawyers to see that clients are interested in what lawyers think and see, but not in low-comment ‘news’ — news they can get anywhere. In my conversations with lawyers I often find a concern that detailed comments on topical issues constitutes free advice (save me), and an instinct that the academic trumps the practical. Both are prevalent and wrong. In spades.

If lawyers got out of their miserable publication rut then they could really engage client attention — in my research I’ve found that clients yearn to know what lawyers are seeing at the frontline, and are always on the lookout for practical pointers.

Secondly, while publications are often a tragic waste of energy for the writer and the reader, they also represent real risk for the firm’s reputation, and for client relationships. The problem is as much that clients do read ‘em as that they don’t.

As part of a recent piece of my own independent research I asked senior in-house lawyers and heads of legal: “If you read a publication that doesn’t seem to offer an insight or grip the issue, does it affect your view of that practice group?”. The answer was a resounding “yes” — not that surprising if you think of your own experience, but a topic I’ve not seen covered elsewhere…

Reputation-and-relationship risk is another reason to consider turning of the publication-tap — to paraphrase mother’s advice, “If you can’t think of anything useful to publish, don’t publish at all”.

Simon Carter http://www.onethreefour.co.uk