Is this legit?
A scam?
Should I reply?
Anyone who works in legal marketing receives many emails like this from lawyers seeking to know whether an approach from a legal directory is worthwhile or not.
The more established, credible ones are waved through.
And the outright scams are rejected – they’re usually easy to spot.
But what about those in the middle – those in the semi-respectable gray area?
To provide guidance, some firms have drawn up internal policy documents that categorize publications into different engagement levels.
Third parties have weighed in, such as Igor’s Spammy List – an open document which crowdsources opinions from the legal marketing community.
Now Law Firm Media Professionals, a membership association for legal communications executives, has produced a handy infographic to help assess the merits of an unknown legal publication.
In their words – “it’s a big picture take on how to explain to lawyers what submissions make sense to do, and which don’t.”
Arielle Lapiano at the law firm Paul Hastings in New York, who leads the LFMP’s committee on surveys and recognitions, came up with the idea for the infographic, working with designer Brandie Knox of Knox Design Strategy.
Arielle said:
“It’s raining submission requests at law firms, which at most firms means that legal communicators and marketers are spending more time on submissions as opposed to other valuable opportunities.
We learned through our discussions with professionals at firms big and small, that there is no silver bullet, as submission preferences vary by firm, practice or lawyer.
So we identified the areas of prioritization to help firms decide which ones to pursue.
Our hope is that the infographic can be a tool to help explain to lawyers why it’s important to prioritize submissions and sometimes pass on that next submission flirting with their ego.”
Click for a full-size PDF of the infographic.
[…] a handy guide for law firm […]