How To Use Press And Media Get The Word Out About Your Legal Tech Or Service

How to use media to effectively market and get press for your legal service, tech enabled or otherwise.

lawyer-technology-legal-tech-300x207 (1)Everyday, I’m approached by more lawyers and entrepreneurs who are building new technology and services for the legal industry. Many of the companies who get in touch with me, both big and small, do it quite effectively — others, less effectively.

But, folks, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Now, usually, I publish most of my conversations right here on Above the Law, but yesterday in Chicago at Relativity Fest (Full disclosure: I was a guest of kCura, and the company covered my travel and hotel costs.), I participated in an in-person panel conversation on this very topic: how to use media to effectively market and get press for your legal service, tech enabled or otherwise. Other participants on the panel were Sean Doherty, Ian Lopez and John Carpenter. There were a number of helpful takeaways and I wanted to mention them here in hope that it will help companies of all sizes make their messaging more effective.

First, it’s important to recognize that not all legal tech and start-up writers are the same. Once upon a time, information was provided by journalists, but that is no longer the case. The panel itself was a good illustration of this point: Sean is an analyst, John and Ian are reporters and I am an entrepreneur who doubles as a writer. Joe Borstein is one of my favorite writers here on ATL, but I don’t think of him as a reporter. The other thing to keep in mind is that not all websites are the same, even if they both publish content about the shifting legal tech market. Different websites have different audience demographics plus someone who reads an article on ATL is probably looking for a different experience than someone who clicks on a link to Legaltech News. If you’re going to take the time to write to reporters, bloggers or social influencers, it’s worth your time to craft different emails, tailored for each one — especially since the emails themselves don’t need to be long. Which leads me to my second point…

Email pitches to writers should be short, to the point, and highlight why your service is new or different.

I cannot tell you how many long and overwhelming press releases I get that I don’t bother to read through (I get so many I don’t even feel guilty anymore). Ian Lopez added that too many of these press releases use needless buzz language. Look, I’m as big a fan of end-to-end seamless integrations that are revolutionizing the way services are delivered to clients at maximum speed and efficiency as the next guy, but let the writer make that evaluation for themselves. This is doubly true because not all writers will even demo your “seamless solutions.” I know that Sam Glover over at Lawyerist demos ton of products, as does Mary Redzic, but I’m not particularly interested in product demos. I feel like I can tell a lot more about the viability of a company by listening to their pitch and hearing about their traction.

On the topic of press releases, only Sean indicated that he prefers to see a press release. I actually think email should basically be three sentences that read as follows:

Sponsored

Hey Zach,

I’m building Miserab.ly,  a new app that lets Lawfirms measure the morale of their junior and midlevel associates. In fact, we’re already piloting our software with your old firm. We’re launching publicly next week, would you like to see a press release?

During the panel, I gave the real life example of LawFlex. When cofounders Jackie Donner and Zohar Fisher first got in touch with me, their email was simple and to the point. LawFlex was a new legal staffing firm, but they differentiated themselves because their lawyers, most of whom went to top law schools and worked at top firms, have all moved from Western countries to Israel.

No press release, no jargon, simple and to the point.

This was just enough information to make me want to learn more. But then again, this goes back to my point about how not all writers like to be approached in the same way. LawFlex’s email might not have worked on someone like Sean.

Finally, there was a good deal of conversation about how marketers should think about sponsored content. Where we all seemed to agree is that sponsored content needs to find ways to be more than simple puff pieces that are directly about why your service is awesome. If it sounds too sponsored, people will tune out. And since we were on the topic of sponsored, I, of course, didn’t miss a chance to plug ReplyAll and explain why certain formats like conversations with dynamic back and forth made up of multiple voices are simply a more compelling form of sponsored content. See what I did there?

Sponsored

I have a lot more thoughts about Relativity Fest that I will share later this week and next, so stay tuned.


Zach Abramowitz is a former Biglaw associate and currently CEO and co-founder of ReplyAll. You can follow Zach on Twitter (@zachabramowitz) or reach him by email at zach@replyall.me.