Turning the Technical into Engaging Content
In-depth, researched articles on technical topics meant to educate, entertain & engage an expert audience, build brand authority & entice business development via content marketing.
For 140 years, the IEEE has been the professional home and trusted voice for the engineering and technology community worldwide. To celebrate their milestone anniversary, the organization commissioned a hardcover 150-page book highlighting 34 major breakthroughs – combining technical research & storytelling to satisfy experts and general audiences.
Beyond Legal: Writing for Law Firms
Many lawyers are excellent writers – their legal briefs win cases, and their scholarly articles win academic awards. But in terms of reaching clients (not just judges and professors), many of whom are not lawyers, the writing they’ve been trained to do their entire lives falls short of the goal. Law firms need all kinds of writing & editing – industry insights, pro bono articles, year-end reports, comprehensive guides, practice descriptions, magazine-style articles, and personal profiles of their attorneys — all in service to promote the firm, its practices, and its people.
Being a lawyer trained as a journalist allowed me to write and produce the types of stories that really lead to business – from the technical to the personal and everything in between.
Improved Engagement with Digital Media
CHALLENGE: Law firms wanted a new way to promote their practices, individual attorneys, and thought-leadership beyond the usual (sometimes dry) articles. They needed to grab their audiences attention in just a few seconds, while promoting their expertise. Also needed to save time – lawyers may spend hours writing a 5-page article that few people read.
SOLUTION: Implement & execute new digital media format for practice descriptions, insights and audiocasts. These 1-2 minute digital shorts are created in-house (low cost) and are used on social media, website and conferences.
IMPACT: Immediate increase in amount of thought-leadership produced since text is minimal. Increased engagement on social media and direct outreach from clients. Also subtly showcased forward-thinking embrace of tech and new media.
Digital Transformation of Report Content
CHALLENGE: Law firms love paper. They had been producing beautiful printed reports for years to promote individual practices and/or as ‘annual reports’ highlighting Pro Bono and DEI initiatives. While a joy to look at, these publications were time-consuming to produce, let alone the cost of printing and mailing to various offices and clients.
SOLUTION: Oversee strategy, design & content for new interactive digital report platform. Allows for images & graphs to ‘come to live’ and encourage engagement with clients and media. Easy and fun to share with clients and contacts – no need to physically mail anything (and particularly post-pandemic with many people working at home or hybrid).
IMPACT: Increased brand awareness of firms practices and community initiatives. Increased internal morale. Also template now created to make future reports even easier to product.
Please click on each image to see full interactive report.
Internal, Executive & Award Communications
Coming out of the pandemic, many organization – including law firms – found themselves struggling to increase employee morale and build a culture of connection with employees who had not worked in the same office for years, or many not have even known each other.
For an AmLaw 100 firm, helped develop a new intranet system & communications strategy to include ‘newspaper’ like features + podcast options
For a boutique healthcare law firm, developed & executed an internal comms strategy around raising the profile of associates for partners as part of a professional development push.
For the GC’s office of a major global organization, developed & executed a quarterly, beautifully designed newsletter to improved employee connectedness and also promote the great work of the GC’s office to the larger organization.
EXECUTIVE
Prepared executive remarks and speeches for law firm leadership and attorneys for a variety of events & presentations.
AWARDS
Write winning submissions for Chambers (multiple practices), Legal500 (multiple practices), Law360 (Law Firm of the Year, Practice Group of the Year, Rising Star), Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement, and others for Dentons, Shearman & Sterling, Baker Botts and boutique firms.
Social Media for Companies & Individuals
Social media is where we all — including your clients — live, and any company or individual who is not using these platforms is leaving money on the table. Law firms and professional services are generally more reticent embrace the full power of social media, which makes their eventual adoption even sweeter.
I ran the social media strategy and execution for three AmLaw 100 firms, increasing external engagement, employee advocacy and bringing dollars in the door. I also work with individuals who want to improve their social media presence and build their personals brands as experts to improve business development for themselves and their larger organizations.
By developing targeted content for each channels, encouraging employee advocacy with tools to make it easy, and relentlessly promoting the benefits of social media for business development, the firms saw increased numbers to their website and social engagements:
Boosted web traffic to strategic practice areas
Increased LinkedIn metrics at AmLaw 100 firm
Increased social media engagement across all channels for AmLaw 100 firm
Amount of earned media value through social media for AmLaw 100 firm