Will your audience really find your information valuable if you lead with the fact that it's old?
A lot of things bug me about law firm news alerts. I realized this when I sat down to write a quick blog post on the topic and ended up with a long list of pet peeves. Hopefully, I’ll put that list to good use in another format.
I’ve worked as both in-house and outside marketing counsel to law firms for more than a decade. In that time, I’ve hit SEND on my share of legal alerts, client alerts, email bulletins, whatever you want to call them. The purpose of sending these emails is to inform clients and contacts about a change in the law, an important court ruling or some other piece of timely, valuable news. You want each recipient to think “Hey, this law firm is really on top of the latest legal developments, and they care enough about me to share their knowledge via this pretty, branded email. Maybe I should give them a call and hire them to represent me in a similar matter?” At least that’s the fantasy.
The reality is that most legal alerts are a waste of time for both sender and recipient. And the reason why, in my humble opinion, is that they’re not timely or valuable to the reader. They’re usually a few days or even a month old by the time the message hits the inbox. How do I know this? Because the law firms tell me so.
If I had a dollar for every time I read a legal alert that started with a date, I’d be a wealthy woman. Here are some real-life examples that I plucked from a few random firm websites:
On April 27, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court held in AT&T Mobility, LLC v. Concepcion that …
On April 27, 2011, the United States Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision…
On April 26, the Multistate Tax Commission (MTC) Income & Franchise Tax Uniformity Subcommittee (Subcommittee) held the first of three scheduled meetings…
These are all introductory sentences pulled from law firm news alerts. I understand that it takes a while to thoroughly read and analyze these court opinions. You have to have one or two partners review and approve the text, and then if you’re lucky enough to work for a large firm with marketing resources, you have to collaborate with those professionals to prepare and send the final copy. You need to get it right and that might take a few days. But when you lead with the date that the Supreme Court or subcommittee did something, you immediately tell your audience “This is old news. Move on. Delete me now please.” All of your work was for naught.
This drives me batty! Why? Because I worked in newsrooms where I learned the worst thing you could do in your writing was date your copy. You always want your audience to believe that you’re delivering the freshest, most relevant news. I mean, they call it news because it’s supposedly “new.”
Photo courtesy of TheeErin on Flickr
Does that mean you have to lie to cover up the fact that you weren’t ready to Paul Revere the message the minute the Supreme Court delivered its landmark decision? No, never. But don’t waste the first three words of your message telling people that you’re late getting to them. It’s like a comedian saying “Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.”
My advice? Remove as many date references as possible from your legal alerts. Sprinkle in the date of the decision later in the alert if you want people to know the date that the law became effective. If there’s a future deadline that people need to know about, put it up closer to the top to give your message a sense of urgency and your readers an important to-do. Unless you are writing the Emancipation Proclamation or a script for The History Channel, never begin the first sentence or your legal alert or news story with a date.
