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Awards and Rankings

Awards/Rankings, Public Relations, Writing, Writing Advice

Managing the Editorial Nomination Process

Managing the incredible influx of nomination requests that any legal PR team receives weekly can be a thankless and daunting task. Last year, Julie Fei, global manager of communications at O’Melveny & Myers LLP, says she was responsible for completing 200 submissions — not including Chambers and Legal 500. Public Relations Manager Kristy Werness at Irell & Manella LLP developed and submitted 60. How do they manage to organize their submissions and deliver such exceptional results? This was the topic of the LMA Los Angeles panel on March 16. Both Julie and Kristy said they keep running calendars of all the nominations that are important to their firms. And, when other requests come to a lawyer at the firm from unknown outlets that require a payment to play, they tell the attorney to ignore them. Julie said she monitors cases/matters during the year to make sure that everything going on at…

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Awards/Rankings, Writing Advice

Essential Guide to Successful Editorial NominationsFeatured

When I started working for law firms in 2001, I never imagined that my typical day would be focused on anything other than media relations. But times have changed and so have the publications. Today, much of our work week can be devoted to responding to awards and rankings — thanks to the increasing number of requests from news editorial (legitimate lists) and pay-for-play lists and what I will call pop-up publications (not legitimate) that send out requests for submissions. We can all agree developing an editorial nomination takes time, skill and some finesse, from navigating the politics of which submissions to make to compiling the details and facts of each matter that tell a compelling story. This was highlighted throughout the Legal Marketing Association’s recent Los Angeles panel program that featured Greg Mitchell, editor-in-chief of The Recorder; Julie Fei, global communications manager at O’Melveny & Myers; and Kristy Werness,…

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Awards/Rankings, Public Relations

Winning Is Just One Thing

The legal industry bestows more honors than a kindergarten graduation: Practice Group of the Year, Litigation Department of the Year, Top Plaintiff Win,  Super Lawyers, top firms for client service, best, well, best, everything, and so on. As a consequence, law firm public relations professionals are inundated with lists, of which many have no real value nor do they tell the story that will accomplish the ultimate PR goal: getting the clients attention and making them interested in working with a lawyer or firm. The awards and recognition simply do not mean all that much. They certainly don’t mean as much as you might think from the breathless announcements in the trade press. Of course clients want to work with lawyers who are skilled, knowledgeable, empathetic, hard-working, business-oriented and the other accolades that are given to the “winning” attorneys. But those adjectives describe thousands of lawyers, not just those that…

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March 18, 2016
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Awards/Rankings

Congrats! You Are the Best Lawyer. Now What?

Congrats! You are have been chosen as one of the best lawyers in America. The best place to post this listing is your bio, the firm’s website, the news section under press releases. You can even send it out via social media channels. But, do not send it to a newspaper expecting it will make the cover of that publication or a feature story will be written about you. Especially if you are in big media markets like Los Angeles, New York or Chicago. I was at lunch today with a legal industry reporter who said she continues to get press releases from law firms announcing rankings by other news outlets. “I used respond with a note that we do not cover this type of news,” She said. “Now, there are too may news releases. It would take me all day to reply.” We can all agree there are too…

Read more
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Managing the Editorial Nomination Process
March 18, 2016
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March 17, 2016
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