Think Big Picture for Firm Pitches

One day when I was covering federal courts for The Boston Globe, a lawyer phoned to tell me he had won a judgment in a civil case that had not garnered any public attention.

“It would be really good for me if your newspaper published a story about my case,” the lawyer said.

“Yes,” I replied. “I know.”

Was it a significant judgment in terms of its dollar value or the type of case? Was there anything about the case that had broader legal or practical implications? Were the parties well known? Did the decision signal or buck a trend? He didn't have answers. He just repeated that it would help him if I covered his case.

This unabashed appeal was memorable because it was so direct and undeveloped. Back then ' before reporters had to feed the dotcom ' I had no time to determine whether there was a newsworthy angle to his case. So all I could offer was congratulations.

Successful Pitches: The Essentials

At a time of great debate on traditional versus social media and the best means of contacting prospective clients, it is worth examining the essentials of successfully pitching a reporter on your law firm's news. It seems quaint to remember my days of trolling courthouse hallways asking lawyers what they were working on. Gone are the days of courthouse press offices full of competing reporters. Easily lost in the dismissal of traditional media in an age of downsizing, however, is the fact that there are still plenty of reporters interested in good stories.

You just have to get their attention.

And no matter how much you embrace social media, the ideal is to retweet a New York Times article quoting one of your law partners. Social media is here to stay, and it absolutely has a place in your arsenal. But between blogs and tweets, you can still maximize your efforts with traditional media.

When Pitches Don't Work

The primary reason why a pitch stumbles out of the gate is because of its failure to address the fundamental question: Who cares? Why should it matter to the readership of a particular outlet?

In the old days, it was okay to publicize the essentials of the decision, settlement or verdict to reporters who had all day or all week to figure out the five “w's” and “h” as well as the context. Now, you leave it up to the reporter to figure out the significance of rulings, especially long dense ones that they don't already know about, at your peril.

On the time-starved landscape of a 24/7 news cycle, reporters are required to blog, Facebook and Twitter as well as shoot pictures and video, and file separate stories oriented to the readership of a sister publication or station. There is scant capacity for analysis, much less research.

How to Help

Help a reporter and increase the probability of your news story running if you provide these news elements:

• Freshness;
• Magnitude;
• Conflict;
• Counterintuitive;
• Impact; and
• Relevance.

Reporters need your help because they have to sell the story to their editors and must make a tight case for why it is relevant to their audience. Every outlet, from newspapers to magazines to blogs, knows its target audience, including the demographics of income, education level, and age, where members live and their ethnic background. Journalists don't think in terms of sales like advertisers. But they do think of their readers and what will resonate with them. Speak their language ' trumpet how a story will be relevant to their readers ' and you will make a more compelling case than someone with just his hand out.

Analyzing the impact and significance is just the beginning. Your chances of success will increase greatly if you figure out the best media home for your story and are ready to offer the reporter the expert from your firm who can explain why the story matters.

Every case is not worthy of, or best placed in, The Wall Street Journal or the The New York Times. And, while it is important to aim high first because of the risk that your first choice won't accept seconds, sometimes pragmatism is best. Getting the story mentioned in a smaller outlet can sometimes draw attention from bigger players and bloggers who fuel a sense of buzz, prompting a larger outlet to pick it up.

Maxmize Your Results

Once the pitch is made, you will continue to maximize results if you:

• Are willing to provide background on an area of law or a process to the reporter.
• Help facilitate coverage by providing court papers. Reporters need the actual documents, and getting to the courthouse within business hours and locating the file in pending matters is often challenging. There are ways to do this without flouting court rules.
• Remain accessible and return phone calls and e-mails promptly, even after normal business hours.
• Remain reasonable in your expectations of coverage. Do not ask a reporter to read back an entire story or to show it to you pre-publication. Legitimate outlets will read back quotes.
• Apprise the reporter of legislative, regulatory or other developments that could affect the story and its timing.

Tips for Success

As the journalistic landscape changes, it is increasingly rare to find reporters with vast experience covering the legal system. Even in the good old days, there were plenty of reporters with long experience on major publications who had never set foot in a courthouse. Editors at the highest levels of top-notch journalistic organizations even then were often unaware that it was not possible to dial up a judge and ask for comment on a pending case or to gather grand jury material. So imagine the challenges of finding court-savvy reporters and editors today.

What this means is that you cannot afford to presume that the reporter you are pitching knows how the court system works. It is especially important for the sake of accuracy and your firm's reputation to spend time covering some basics.

But don't lose sight of the difference between explaining why a matter should be covered with commenting publicly on it. You can make clear to the reporter that you are speaking on background when describing the significance of the case for his or her benefit, and set separate ground rules for any quotes from law firm spokespeople or the lawyers themselves.

The brain drain from journalistic organizations has removed some old court hands and the declining pay has discouraged law school graduates from pursuing journalism careers. To be sure, the availability of material on the Internet for fact checking and background material is a significant counterweight. But there are also fewer editors and they have more work than ever. They have less time to vet and clean up drafts of stories prior to publication.

These are all good reasons for speaking with the reporter rather than opting for e-mail communications. Only by talking with the reporter can you gain a sense of whether he understands what he is writing and perhaps where he is headed with the story.

This is also a way to build positive relationships with reporters ' being accessible on deadline for last-minute or “stupid” questions. That doesn't mean you have to answer every impertinent question, it just keeps the lines of communication open and increases vastly the chances that a mistake of nuance or fact will be caught pre-publication. And the possible payoff for that accessibility is a foundation of trust and accountability for the future.

This article first appeared in Marketing the Law Firm, a sister publication of this newsletter.

Judy Rakowsky, a former reporter and editor for The Boston Globe, is the principal of Rakowsky Communications, a Boston firm that focuses on litigation PR. She may be reached at 617-625-9674 or [email protected].

One day when I was covering federal courts for The Boston Globe, a lawyer phoned to tell me he had won a judgment in a civil case that had not garnered any public attention.

“It would be really good for me if your newspaper published a story about my case,” the lawyer said.

“Yes,” I replied. “I know.”

Was it a significant judgment in terms of its dollar value or the type of case? Was there anything about the case that had broader legal or practical implications? Were the parties well known? Did the decision signal or buck a trend? He didn't have answers. He just repeated that it would help him if I covered his case.

This unabashed appeal was memorable because it was so direct and undeveloped. Back then ' before reporters had to feed the dotcom ' I had no time to determine whether there was a newsworthy angle to his case. So all I could offer was congratulations.

Successful Pitches: The Essentials

At a time of great debate on traditional versus social media and the best means of contacting prospective clients, it is worth examining the essentials of successfully pitching a reporter on your law firm's news. It seems quaint to remember my days of trolling courthouse hallways asking lawyers what they were working on. Gone are the days of courthouse press offices full of competing reporters. Easily lost in the dismissal of traditional media in an age of downsizing, however, is the fact that there are still plenty of reporters interested in good stories.

You just have to get their attention.

And no matter how much you embrace social media, the ideal is to retweet a New York Times article quoting one of your law partners. Social media is here to stay, and it absolutely has a place in your arsenal. But between blogs and tweets, you can still maximize your efforts with traditional media.

When Pitches Don't Work

The primary reason why a pitch stumbles out of the gate is because of its failure to address the fundamental question: Who cares? Why should it matter to the readership of a particular outlet?

In the old days, it was okay to publicize the essentials of the decision, settlement or verdict to reporters who had all day or all week to figure out the five “w's” and “h” as well as the context. Now, you leave it up to the reporter to figure out the significance of rulings, especially long dense ones that they don't already know about, at your peril.

On the time-starved landscape of a 24/7 news cycle, reporters are required to blog, Facebook and Twitter as well as shoot pictures and video, and file separate stories oriented to the readership of a sister publication or station. There is scant capacity for analysis, much less research.

How to Help

Help a reporter and increase the probability of your news story running if you provide these news elements:

• Freshness;
• Magnitude;
• Conflict;
• Counterintuitive;
• Impact; and
• Relevance.

Reporters need your help because they have to sell the story to their editors and must make a tight case for why it is relevant to their audience. Every outlet, from newspapers to magazines to blogs, knows its target audience, including the demographics of income, education level, and age, where members live and their ethnic background. Journalists don't think in terms of sales like advertisers. But they do think of their readers and what will resonate with them. Speak their language ' trumpet how a story will be relevant to their readers ' and you will make a more compelling case than someone with just his hand out.

Analyzing the impact and significance is just the beginning. Your chances of success will increase greatly if you figure out the best media home for your story and are ready to offer the reporter the expert from your firm who can explain why the story matters.

Every case is not worthy of, or best placed in, The Wall Street Journal or the The New York Times. And, while it is important to aim high first because of the risk that your first choice won't accept seconds, sometimes pragmatism is best. Getting the story mentioned in a smaller outlet can sometimes draw attention from bigger players and bloggers who fuel a sense of buzz, prompting a larger outlet to pick it up.

Maxmize Your Results

Once the pitch is made, you will continue to maximize results if you:

• Are willing to provide background on an area of law or a process to the reporter.
• Help facilitate coverage by providing court papers. Reporters need the actual documents, and getting to the courthouse within business hours and locating the file in pending matters is often challenging. There are ways to do this without flouting court rules.
• Remain accessible and return phone calls and e-mails promptly, even after normal business hours.
• Remain reasonable in your expectations of coverage. Do not ask a reporter to read back an entire story or to show it to you pre-publication. Legitimate outlets will read back quotes.
• Apprise the reporter of legislative, regulatory or other developments that could affect the story and its timing.

Tips for Success

As the journalistic landscape changes, it is increasingly rare to find reporters with vast experience covering the legal system. Even in the good old days, there were plenty of reporters with long experience on major publications who had never set foot in a courthouse. Editors at the highest levels of top-notch journalistic organizations even then were often unaware that it was not possible to dial up a judge and ask for comment on a pending case or to gather grand jury material. So imagine the challenges of finding court-savvy reporters and editors today.

What this means is that you cannot afford to presume that the reporter you are pitching knows how the court system works. It is especially important for the sake of accuracy and your firm's reputation to spend time covering some basics.

But don't lose sight of the difference between explaining why a matter should be covered with commenting publicly on it. You can make clear to the reporter that you are speaking on background when describing the significance of the case for his or her benefit, and set separate ground rules for any quotes from law firm spokespeople or the lawyers themselves.

The brain drain from journalistic organizations has removed some old court hands and the declining pay has discouraged law school graduates from pursuing journalism careers. To be sure, the availability of material on the Internet for fact checking and background material is a significant counterweight. But there are also fewer editors and they have more work than ever. They have less time to vet and clean up drafts of stories prior to publication.

These are all good reasons for speaking with the reporter rather than opting for e-mail communications. Only by talking with the reporter can you gain a sense of whether he understands what he is writing and perhaps where he is headed with the story.

This is also a way to build positive relationships with reporters ' being accessible on deadline for last-minute or “stupid” questions. That doesn't mean you have to answer every impertinent question, it just keeps the lines of communication open and increases vastly the chances that a mistake of nuance or fact will be caught pre-publication. And the possible payoff for that accessibility is a foundation of trust and accountability for the future.

This article first appeared in Marketing the Law Firm, a sister publication of this newsletter.

Judy Rakowsky, a former reporter and editor for The Boston Globe, is the principal of Rakowsky Communications, a Boston firm that focuses on litigation PR. She may be reached at 617-625-9674 or [email protected].