Berbay's Blog: Marketing for law firms, engineers, CPAs, architects and other professional services

Sharon Berman and I recently attended a media training boot camp organized by Tom Jordan, a news anchor and reporter in San Diego whose company is solely devoted to teaching professionals how to make the most out of any news interview.  Since Berbay is always looking for better ways for our clients to communicate with the media, we attended the four-hour session and learned the essentials of communicating your most important messages, and effective tactics for handling the media.  We’ve summarized some take-aways below:

• Media Basics – Sometimes we need a reminder that publicity molds public opinion and, according to Opinion Research Corporation, news carries more weight than ads.  The range for worth of a neutral or positive news item varies from three to ten times the value of an ad.  As Tom states, “This doesn’t mean advertising should be ignored.  Not everything a company does is news.”




• Off-the-record – We’ve said it before, and we will say it again: Nothing is off the record! Even if you tell the reporter it’s off-the-record, or if a reporter says it’s off-the-record, it’s not.  Also, be careful of what you say in ear shot of reporters.  Oftentimes, reporters are trained to listen-in on “small talk” before or after an interview.  And speaking of “small talk” – never small talk with a reporter about anything you wouldn’t want to see in print.  It is good to establish a rapport with a reporter or news anchor, but you must always be cautious about what you say to them.




• Quoting out of context – Being quoted out of context is avoidable.  Many times, a reporter asks a question and the interviewee’s answer to the question is far too long.  This requires the reporter or news anchor to use 5 to 10 seconds, out of your 1 to 2 minute response.  To avoid this, your response should always be 20 seconds or less for a print interview, and 10 seconds or less for a TV interview.  As Tom mentioned, there are three answers to every question:

1. “Here’s the answer to the question” – in 10 or 20 seconds.
2. “I don’t know but I will find out” – make sure you do find out and let the reporter know as soon as possible.
3. “I know but I can’t say because…”  Replying with “no comment” implies guilt and can tarnish a reputation.

Other important points we were glad to hear from a seasoned news man:

• There’s value to getting into smaller news outlets because larger outlets keep their eyes on smaller ones for story ideas.
• Preparation, as with anything, is key.
• Learn how to bridge from the question to the story you want to tell, e.g., “Sam, that’s still unclear, but what I do know is…”

These are just a few of the tips from Tom Jordan’s media boot camp that can ensure a smooth interview and result in a final product that you are proud of.  Do you have more tips you’d like to add?  Let us know!

It may not be a good time to be a white-collar criminal—but it’s a great time to be a securities lawyer.

Congress’ 2010 passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, a sweeping financial regulatory reform bill, marked the beginning of a sea of change in securities enforcement that is making it harder than ever to get away with securities fraud. (Consider this pithy stat: The last big piece of financial regulatory reform legislation, 2002′s Sarbanes-Oxley Act, was 33 pages long. Dodd-Frank? 2,300 pages.) That’s good news, not only for American investors, but also for securities lawyers, whose services providing legal defense to those accused of securities fraud will certainly be in growing demand in the coming years.

That was one of the takeaways from a Los Angeles County Bar Association-organized panel discussion last month on recent developments in securities enforcement. At the event, the panel members—David Greene, director of FINRA’s Southern California district; John F. Hartigan, of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP; Beong-Soo Kim, assistant U.S. attorney and chief of the Justice Department’s major frauds section; Michele Layne, associate director of enforcement for the SEC’s Pacific Region; and Robert C. Rosen, from the law firm Rosen and Associates—talked about a variety of ways Dodd-Frank has increased financial-regulation enforcement. Astute securities lawyers will see that with this stepped-up enforcement comes stepped-up opportunity.

Take, for example, one topic the panelists discussed: Wells notices. These are letters that financial regulatory agencies send to companies to notify them that they are considering opening an investigation and to give the companies a chance to justify themselves. More scrutiny from regulators means more Wells notices, which in turn means more need for securities attorneys to respond to the notices and attempt to obviate an investigation.

The panelists also pointed out that because corporate wrongdoing is often brought to light by whistle-blowers, and because companies often retaliate against whistle-blowers, white-collar crime cases frequently involve both securities and employment lawyers. For lawyers in those fields, tighter regulation means more cases.

The bottom line here (unlike in some financials) is clear: If you’re a securities lawyer (or an employment lawyer) in this new regulatory framework, there’s work to be had.

After more than 30 years, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) has refreshed its definition of public relations to reflect what it is that public relations professionals do in the 21st century. The modern definition came by way of a vote of PR professionals.

The new definition:

“Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”

The old definition:

“Public relations helps an organization and its public adapt mutually to each other.”

How do you think public relations will be defined 30 years from now?

What would you guess is the most visited section of any law firm website?  Well, according to a recent Legal Marketing Association (LMA) panel, “Content Makeover,” the answer is biography pages.  Potential clients, business partners and investors are interested in the people behind the company.

Professional bio pages are an often underutilized device for delivering a company’s message.  Here are the top tips from the LMA panelists for making your bio page stand out:

Website visitors have short attention spans. In this age of instant information, readers tend to gravitate towards the beginning and end – or the “top and tail” – of the page, skipping everything in between.  To combat this, the panelists recommend paying special attention to the opening paragraph of your bio.  Instead of blandly restating your name and title, try conveying to the reader who you are and how you would interact with them as a client.  This might be the only thing a potential client will ever read about you, so catch their attention and tell them why they should hire you.

Focus on recent accomplishments. You might have closed a huge deal in 1984, but that may not do much good for a potential client today.  Although it may be helpful to list past accomplishments as an indication of your expertise, be sure to highlight your recent successes.  According to the panelists, dragging readers into the past slows them down and can cause them to lose interest.

Be specific. Sometimes casting a wider net doesn’t catch more clients.  Generalized copy written with the goal of catching the eye of more people may actually come off as too vague.  “Hyper-specific” content, however, can engage readers and has a much longer lifespan.  Show off your hard-earned industry knowledge.

Use your bio page as a marketing tool. The panelists encourage professionals to think of bio pages as multi-dimensional, something Berbay has encouraged in a recent blog positing titled, “The Transformation of Attorney Biography Pages.” Try including links to other relevant sections of your company’s website, such as to articles you’ve published, a description of your business division or your contact information.

Because it experiences such high traffic, it’s important to develop your bio page into an effective marketing tool.  Put these tips into play on your own biography page.

Judith Weigle is a professional mediator at Extreme Mediation and performs attorney-client fee mediations for the Los Angeles County Bar Association. Having seen more than her share of attorney-client disputes, Judith has some ideas about how lawyers can avoid conflicts with their clients by changing their client communication and servicing them as other professional service businesses.  Picking Judith’s brain about this recently, it’s clear her recommendations can not only prevent disputes—they make for good attorney marketing strategy, too.  Here are Judith’s thoughts:

Many attorney-client disputes have to do with the amount of work estimated in the initial consultation compared with the actual amount of work, and the way in which the clients are billed: The client believes his attorney wasn’t up-front about fees and that he was overbilled. There are many reasons for this:

• The attorney painted too rosy a picture about the outcome, and the length of time needed to handle the case.
• The attorney didn’t ascertain the client’s budget, or didn’t accept the client’s budgetary parameters.
• Clients were unaware of everything that they could be charged for, such as depositions, expert witnesses, listening or reading to client’s communications–the lion’s share of the communication process.
• The attorney didn’t regularly invoice, resulting in a larger invoice covering several months.

Judith says that as an attorney, being transparent regarding your fees and your process at the inception of a client relationship goes a long way toward avoiding an uncomfortable misunderstanding later.  Furthermore, it demonstrates to potential clients (who are also potential referral sources) that you are trustworthy and client-oriented.

Transparency in fees begins with declining to “ballpark” your costs.  Ballparking often fails.  An attorney might say, “I really don’t know how much it’s going to cost. I’ve seen divorces go as high as x; I’ve seen divorces be as low as y.”  Judith suggests that lawyers address budgets openly and early, and discuss what you can control and what the wild cards are. An attorney could say, “Let’s talk about your budget and our game plan. Here’s what I can and can’t control.”

Judith also recommends that attorneys provide clients a basic outline of the work they’re planning to do for them, saying that even when one is preparing for a mediation, “you receive an outline for the steps in a litigated case.” She says, “Let the buying public be privy to the process of their case.”

Clients aren’t aware that, in many instances, the lawyer is legally and ethically obligated to continue providing services, and that there are hoops a lawyer needs to jump through if he wants to stop working with a client for financial reasons.  Too often, the client in a fee dispute claims that the attorney kept working when the client told them to stop – and the invoices kept coming – yet the client kept engaging in the relationship.  The client’s rationale becomes, “Well, I told them to stop.  Since they kept working I didn’t think they were going to charge me or charge me as much.”

Judith suggests that at the onset of the relationship, when they legally can, attorneys should consider attaching the Substitution of Attorney form to their contract and explaining to the client that at any time the client feels that the attorney isn’t properly representing them, or because of financial hardship, the client can proactively dissolve the relationship with this form. The attorney would be making the client responsible for ending the representation.  This would eliminate the argument in a fee dispute that the client told the attorney that funds were dwindling; the attorney didn’t listen, kept working, thereby making the attorney responsible for the money owed instead of the client.  “No good business person allows a client to run up their bills to the extent that I’ve seen attorney bills mount.  Clients without legal backgrounds aren’t of the same mindset as attorneys; they don’t see attorneys as people who continue representation out of duty to a greater good.  They look at attorneys as salespeople of legal services.”