I’ve recently become aware of a disturbing trend in law firm marketing; the purchase of articles to use in firm newsletters. This is apparently a short-cut that some firms and marketers are taking because their lawyers can’t find the time to write articles themselves. This is, simply put, a bad idea.
I’m all for newsletters. Done well, they’re a great way to provide good business intelligence to clients. Like anything else, you only get out what you put in. And if what you put in is a check written to another company to write your newsletter articles for you, I think what you’ll get out of it is trouble.
Details of my contrarian philosophy:
First: I’m not talking about PR, ads, collateral or any of that. Although the partners of a firm should be involved with the creation of those types of marketing material, it is well understood that they are primarily written by marketing people, either on staff or at an agency.
Authorship of your firm’s newsletter articles, though, should rest with your attorneys. Again, there is a place for marketing people. If a lawyer is too busy to write, schedule a half-hour interview, take copious notes and get back with a rough draft for him/her to correct. Have an associate do an early draft and get it "blessed" by a partner. But, in the end, it should be an article that everyone is comfortable ascribing to the talents of one or more of your lawyers. The ideas should have originated in one of your lawyer’s brains.
Next: having an outside agency write your newsletters provides you with a difficult choice. Do you put them out there as having been written by someone in your firm? Or do you correctly ascribe authorship to the writer at the agency? Either answer is problematic. The first may be an ethical violation, and is certainly "iffy" even if not strictly unethical. If a client or potential client reads an article he/she assumes to come from the mentioned lawyer, and makes a decision about hiring that lawyer or firm, and the article wasn’t originally written by anyone at that firm… I would put that under "false advertising" and avoid it like the plague.
If, however, you correctly give authorship as having been with XYZ writer at ABC writing service, you leave a big question in your readers’ minds: "Why the heck should I read this?"
The whole point of newsletter articles is to showcase the knowledge, understanding, wisdom and abilities of your lawyers. To "farm that out" basically acknowledges that they are unable to do so themselves. If the firm really believes that newsletters are a waste of time, then hiring an outside agency to write them is simply a waste of money instead. And may be ethically weird, to boot.
Let’s be real here — good marketing is harder to do than bad. Same holds true in every profession on earth. If you state any issue from the point of view of your clients, most marketing questions become easier to answer. Instead of finding a way around the work, simply ask your partners this (from the point of view of a client):
"Do you have anything important and/or interesting to say to me regarding the health, management, future and relevance of my company and industry?"
If your lawyers can honestly answer that question, "No," then it’s time to start referring your clients to a firm that actually cares about its customers, rather than one simply content to "turn the legal crank" and churn out bills like sausages.