The firms and professionals that stand out are not necessarily the ones producing the most content or adopting every new technology first. They are the ones helping clients understand what matters, why it matters, and what to do next.
Robins Kaplan’s Kate Kasella offers up her biggest takeaways from LMA26. My favorite: Firms need to think more like newsrooms.
While Kate’s article focuses on firms, as she also says, professionals i.e., individual attorneys within a firm, need to have a newsroom mindset. These days, potential clients often don’t wait until they need a lawyer to start researching legal issues. They consume information continuously, and the attorneys that consistently provide useful, timely insights are more likely to earn trust before a legal need arises.
With a newsroom approach, lawyers don’t act like advertisers but like trusted industry reporters—providing timely, relevant information that helps current and potential clients understand what’s happening and how it affects them. Attorneys show expertise by regularly publishing analysis of legal developments, court decisions, regulatory changes and industry trends.
Unfortunately, a legal professional’s online identity is usually spread across places that don’t talk to each other—a firm bio or blog, a LinkedIn profile, directory listings, bar registries, old bylines. Each shows a piece of the attorney, yet nothing links them all. However, platforms like publish.law, Linktree and Beacons are now available to connect a scattered online presence and are structured so search engines and AI can tie every signal back to the individual author.
As AI tools increasingly summarize information for users, generic marketing content has become less and less valuable. Using a personal publishing site, one that connects an otherwise unorganized online presence, for orginal analysis, expert commentary and unique insights—the same qualities that make journalism valuable—is more likely to stand out.