The simple key to getting press coverage is to know your audience. Not the audience who will be ultimately reading the article, but the editors whose role is to determine what their readers should be reading.

In the legal publishing industry there are two kinds of publications, association publications (ABA practice section publications, for example), and "independent" publications such as Corporate Legal Times. Association publications frequently depend on its members to contribute content (which is why your firm management might have believed that publishers are clamoring for content).

The strategies outlined in this article are for “feature” writing, rather than news stories; and while the examples are in the context of the legal industry titles, many of the same rules apply for getting stories placed as features in broadly circulated magazines, industry trade publications, and newspapers.

Legal publishing is still a young industry with American Lawyer celebrating its 25th anniversary and Corporate Legal Times approaching its 15th. The difference between the not-for-profit association publication and trade publications is that by and large the trades maintain their own staffs of journalists and freelancers. Therefore, they rarely accept outside contributed stories unless they are Op-Ed pieces. The reason is fairly simple; journalists are independent, which increases their credibility and allows for a variety of sources yielding a well-balanced, journalistically sound piece.

Industry trades (life sciences, telecom, automotive, etc.) are other avenues where attorneys may have an opportunity to be sourced or submit articles. Knowing and understanding each of the different editorial policies of these titles will reveal how to approach their editors.

Some of the publications in the legal space that are not affiliated with an association do have regular sections where law firms and other service providers can purchase space to have their articles published, but pay-for-play titles are generally considered vanity publishing and discounted as something less than true journalism. Also, in the era of electronic delivery of client newsletters and briefings, the delivery of self –publishing is ubiquitous and further diminishes the value the pay-for-play universe.

So, how do you get the attention of writers and editors?

• Meet editors when they aren't on deadline and find out what kind of stories they are looking for;
  See if publications have editorial and sourcing guidelines that they will share;
• Arrange breakfast or lunch meetings where several of practice group leaders can talk about important issues.
• Use this opportunity to talk about trends and plant story ideas - be proactive in your PR efforts, not reactive to specific press queries;- Identify spokespeople who are responsive, articulate and accessible;
• Create a list of experts that editors can add to their list of sources, which include their areas of expertise.  Have this list readily available (i.e. on your website). And, keep the list regularly updated.

Journalists live and die by the quality of their contacts (not to mention their deadlines), so make sure that the journalists in your target publications know who can speak on which topics. More importantly, make sure you give journalists the names of contacts that will respond to editors and writers in a timely manner -some don't respond at all.

The danger of “no comment”

If you have a mandate in your firm that lawyers can't talk to the press,make sure that press queries to individual lawyers get sent to the appropriate firm spokesperson and the reporter gets a return call. It's horrible to see "XYZ did not return our calls after several attempts" in print. A simple call from the communications department or outside PR firm can avoid the appearance of something far worse than what resulted (whether intentional or not) by the silence.

Finally, talk to journalists "on background". Often, the issues that legal-industry journalists are challenged by is the very complexity of the work your lawyers are involved in and expert at. When your attorneys talk to a journalist and help them understand complex issues, they will remember you for it.