Mid-Atlantic Region

Is Your Firm “Resigned” to a Lousy Media Plan?

The “Great Resignation” has certainly impacted law firm land. We see it on the consultant side of the B2B marketing and business development realm, as well. Attorneys, marketers, and other professionals have decamped for new/different opportunities. The reasons for these moves are many – money, work/life balance, room for advancement, and let’s add one more – media exposure and opportunity.

Media exposure and opportunity? Yup. Firms tend to develop relatively fixed benches of spokespeople who hoover up the high-end media opportunities. In addition, every organization – including law firms – has media plans that go stale, focused on yesterday’s business development opportunities at the cost of today’s, and often solidly stuck in unproductive ruts.

If you ask a lot of firms how their media campaigns are going, the honest answer often is, “Well, not great. I mean we have a plan, and our attorneys are very experienced. We just can’t break through.” Then, year-after-year, they lather, rinse, and repeat with little to show in terms of earned media results, industry penetration, or share of voice. In the background, associates and partners grumble that the attention is going to the wrong practices and spokespeople.

The ability to effectively grow one’s book of business depends in part on effective marketing and promotion. A great attorney will invariably grow tired and frustrated when consistently left out of the marketing starting lineup. If another team (read: firm) offers a starting spot (plus a nice salary and title), why not jump?

How do law firms diagnose and address moribund media plans?

1. You Can Be a Great Attorney… and a Terrible Commentator – There is a reflexive urge to take outstanding lawyers and assume that they make outstanding commentators. They often don’t. Mass communications skills are unique. They come naturally to some and take a little work with others. And of course, there is a group that are just never going to get it. These attorneys need to be lauded for what they do well and encouraged to do more of it, but move them out of the media mix.
   
   Every time an attorney fumbles a media opportunity (deadline missed, commentary cut due to length, excessive hedging, requests for corrections, etc.), the firm and its communicators lose credibility with the media gatekeepers – producers, editors, and reporters. Frustration abounds. An empowered marketing department can get a firm unstuck and find more fruitful marketing avenues to leverage the knowledge and experience of the less-media-savvy or media-shy partner – a win-win outcome.
   
   
2. Do I Have to? – A similar challenge is when a firm taps an attorney for some writing or speaking, and they just don’t want to do it. Generating exposure opportunities can be going stunningly well, while capitalizing on those opportunities for the lawyer and firm can, simultaneously, be going stunningly poorly. The attorney becomes irritated, and this leads to frustration for the marketing team. If this dynamic continues, it is not surprising that either side – or both – might want to quit.
   
   
3. No One Wants Your iPhone 4 – Times change. Media approaches and trending topics need to be refreshed constantly. Firms often do planning at the onset or conclusion of the calendar year. Then, six months later they are still technically working through these plans. Similarly, a lawyer may still be hip deep in a transaction that was trendy three months back but has cooled as a news trigger. World events have happened, attorneys have come and gone, legislation has passed, and the business world has moved on. The iPhone 4 was great, in 2010. We’re on the 13 now and the 14 soon. Media-savvy attorneys and marketers can easily sniff out stale approaches, and absent an update, they may just bolt to a place more in touch with the times.
   
   
4. The “I” in Your Firm DEI Pledge Is Just Empty Pixels – A firm should consider these questions:
   1. Are your firm media spokespeople overwhelmingly white and male?
   2. Do your media results evidence more inclusivity over the past few years?
   3. Are you losing diverse talent?

Ego, inertia, and lack of intention are making pledges to be inclusive – with respect to media and marketing – ring hollow. Firms then wonder why diverse talent leaves.

Here are three quick ideas to stem the Great Resignation flow driven by media exposure and opportunity frustration:

1. Empower Professional Communicators to Scout Talent – Through one-on-one conversations and media training, a firm’s communications professionals (internal or external) can generally tell you which attorneys have the “it” factor for working well with media and in alignment with current news cycles. Don’t just use BD success or the firm’s leadership org chart to determine who warrants PR attention.
   
   
2. Write Media Plans in Pencil – Have standing, landmark moments on the calendar where the media plan with be revised and, potentially, ripped up and redone. Remove ego from the equation by focusing on the news cycle and media gatekeepers. The firm generally does not drive the news cycle. It needs to be nimble and adapt to it. Continuing to try to jam round pegs into square holes doesn’t lead to success or lawyer/marketer happiness.
   
   
3. Put Intention Behind Media Inclusivity – Provided the firm is truly becoming more diverse in terms of its composition, its media visibility should be more inclusive too. Absent this honest introspection, progress will stall and a bridge will never be built from the senior-most leadership generation to the newer one. There are ample opportunities to confer authority from one professional generation to the next, but it must be thoughtful and intentional.

Media activity and engagement can be accelerants to business development success. They fuel recruitment efforts and help with talent retention. Aligning resources – getting the folks who want to write, comment, and speak activated and those who don’t focused elsewhere – is a tremendous efficiency, and it creates a virtuous cycle of increased business development and professional satisfaction. If a firm doesn’t want to lose its talent, it shouldn’t overlook its media strategy as a source of stickiness.