Welcome to the Law Firm Disrupted, a briefing from Law.com reporter Dan Packel that surveys new competitive pressures on law firms and how their managers are coping, plus insights on the tactics and tech employed by would-be disruptors. Have an opinion? Email me here. Want to be alerted to this dispatch in your inbox every Thursday? Sign up here.
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As a reporter and editor, I get the sense that most law firm managers would prefer to live in a world where they don't have to deal with the media. Just do good work for clients, let the marketing team guide attorneys on pitches and new business opportunities, and ignore all requests from my ilk for comment.
But wisely, they recognize that they don't operate in that world. If it ever existed, it's gone now. Hence, the proliferation of internal media-facing roles and external PR consultants who are a constant presence in how my colleagues and I do our jobs.
And the pressure to have a public voice is only growing. As Janet Stanton, a partner at legal consulting firm Adam Smith Esq., told my colleagues Justin Henry and Patrick Smith, “Before 2016, most business leaders stayed out of politics and social issues. But there has been a sea change, and now leaders feel a moral obligation to speak out.”
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