How to make the most of legal publishing opportunities

In a Law Firm Management column for the New York Law Journal, Steven Andersen provides some best practices to make the most of publishing opportunities while maximizing efficiency.

A few years back a law firm client came to me with a familiar request. “A couple of our lawyers have written an article,” my contact said. “Can you review it and get it published?”.

Of course. This, after all, is the sort of thing we do.

To protect the anonymity of the authors let’s say the title of the proposed article was: “Negotiation and Litigation Related to the Lease of Condominium Parking Spaces, with Special Considerations to Subletting Risk and Liability.” It was 17 pages long (24 with footnotes).

Also, to be clear, that title is not meant to be glib. There is no limit to how specialized or obscure a legal topic can be and still get published in a relevant journal. If there are enough clients out there to support a legal practice, somewhere, someone wants to read about it.

In the end we were able to get the article published—as a six-part-series, no less—in a prominent legal publication. But before it was ready for the press, it had to be almost entirely stripped down and reworked into digestible segments appropriate to the publication’s style guidelines. That process required an enormous investment of additional time on the part of the authors, their practice group and the firm’s internal and external communications teams.

It doesn’t have to be so difficult. In today’s business and legal media landscape, publishing opportunities abound as never before. These are valuable and effective ways to elevate the profile of an attorney, a practice area or an entire firm. Still, in law, time is money—quite literally, in six-minute increments. To make the most of publishing opportunities while maximizing efficiency, we recommend these best practices.

Continue reading on the New York Law Journal.