31/05/2018

Function of PR Office in Law Firm

Natalia Klein, Head of Business Development of Pavlova & Partners Law Firm told Zakon.ru on the function of PR Office in the legal business.

According to Bloomberg Law and the Legal Marketing Association survey, 41% of lawyers agreed that hiring of marketers and increasing their number has become one of the priority investments that help attract clients. A few years ago, lawyers did not seriously consider PR and marketing to increase sales. What new trends have emerged in the market, which ways are effective to promote law firms and whether it is worth to directly link PR and sales: these matters were discussed with legal PR experts.

Natalia Klein, Head of Business Development, Pavlova & Partners Law Firm

- What new trends have appeared in the legal PR for the last few years? 

- I think, that the main trend in legal PR is the gradual strengthening of understanding of the professional market that PR is an important function for the development of legal business.  A few years ago we did not observe such an active interest in this area in the legal environment. Today, the PR Office is an obligatory element of almost any company from full-services to a specialized boutique. This is an indispensable condition for strategic business development. Owners of law firms have become more aware of the importance of developing and promoting the company subject to tough competition and economically difficulties. Therefore, the importance of the PR specialist, function in legal business support, has significantly increased. In turn, the increasing competition in the PR specialists market undoubtedly positively influences the quality of services rendered in legal PR.

- What is more effective for a law firm: to have a staff PR specialist or work with a PR agency?

- In-house PR specialist for sure knows the subtleties of business much better than an outsource one, which provides with an advantage. Given that the legal business is also very conservative and often deals with such subtle matters as commercial secrets, business reputation or the private life of the client, the work of the in-house PR specialist is related to additional difficulties and often requires maximum immersion in the company's internal processes, which is beyond of an outsource capacities. From this point of view, it is very important to have a “man of your own” inside the company, who knows all these subtleties, able to operate with information that can and should be given to the public space.  On the other hand, an outsource experts can often have more “fresh” ideas on the progress of the legal firm, due to some “detachment” from the “in-house life” of the company.

- What are the ways to promote law firms today?

- One of the most effective tools for promoting law firms today, in my opinion, is participation in the ratings. The domestic ratings began to play a special role. We started noticing that participation in the Pravo-300 rating works not only for the general positioning of the company's specialization, but also for direct sales. Thus, the task of getting into the rating has acquired the value of not just a beautiful “award” on the site, but also a strategically important tool for promoting the company's services.

Additionally, among the interesting and quite effective tools for promoting the company emerged recently, I would highlight the legal tech line. This is indeed a very topical trend in the legal world, and we increasingly see how many firms are beginning to offer new services in the legal tech format.

- Is it worth linking PR and sales directly?

- This is an interesting and eternal question, and in my opinion the answer to it is yes and no. No, because PR by its nature should not directly perform such a function, it meets other tasks and should not be expected to initiate direct sales. On the other hand, the legal business sees occasional direct sales through PR. The client came for the service after hearing the speaker at the conference, finding him in the relevant practice in the rating or noting his expertise in the publication in the media.

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Ирина Кошечкина

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