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It’s always been the Big Apple. But with the increased globalization of legal practice, New York has become an ever more urgently important market for major law firms. Like London, more and more domestic and foreign law firms, from Hartford and San Francisco have tried to penetrate New York.
For Connecticut firms, the challenge is especially daunting. To loosely paraphrase what Pierre Trudeau said about the United States, “When you’re lying in bed next to an elephant, any inadvertent little turn can crush you utterly.”
For Connecticut lawyers, the bad news is that they are obviously overshadowed by Manhattan firms. Even with some local clients, and particularly their higher-growth clients, these “regional” firms are typically on the defensive. They’re marketing themselves as kinder, gentler alternatives (i.e., “we return phone calls”) to Sam Huff and the New York Giants. Often, they’re just reaching for reasons why clients in Stamford don’t really need to call another law firm that has a 212 area code.
At the same time, not a single Connecticut firm has established a dynamic presence in New York, which is hardly surprising since global and national firms have been hard pressed to do so. Only a few, like Morrison & Foerster and Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, have achieved undeniable success.
Among Connecticut firms, Day, Berry & Howard has a New York office, but its regional strategy really drew it northward to Boston. Among New Jersey firms, McCarter & English has been particularly trying to underscore its presence in New York with limited success.
OK, enough bad news. Here’s a bit of encouragement that may surprise firms in the Tri-State area. There is, right now, a tangible opportunity, supported by empirical data, for Connecticut firms to use media to expand their reputations in New York and, by doing so, impress not only New Yorkers but the folks back in Milford as well.
We recently measured the media prominence of the AmLaw 200 by totaling every searchable print media appearance by those firms. Allowing for bad press (you’ve just been sued) as well as indifferent press (your partner’s son had a Bar Mitzvah), we were able to assess the media strengths of every one of those firms, collated by size and by region.
We uncovered some surprising news. On average, Texas and Pennsylvania law firms get as many or more annual media “hits” as New York firms do. Whatever else this data may suggest, it does certainly say that, in the world’s largest media market, there is a lot of room for more law firm media.
Of the 39 New York-based firms, 19 were in the media nationwide fewer than 500 times in 2002. Seven of these firms were in the media fewer than 200 times. By contrast, Bill Rochelle of Fulbright & Jaworski, one of the nation’s leading bankruptcy attorneys, was in the media 200 times himself.
Regional Opportunity
We included Day Berry, the only Connecticut law firm on the AmLaw 200 list, in a catchall chart for Northeastern firms. It scored just over 600 media placements —not bad at all, particularly compared to many New York firms, and certainly much better than the two AmLaw 200 New Jersey firms. (Rhode Island’s Edwards & Angell tops the chart but that firm’s media mentions include many indifferent listings in bond publications.)
For smaller Connecticut firms, we find that 80-90 was a typical media total in 2002, but, remove The Connecticut Law Tribune and the Hartford Courant, and they’re not in the press at all except for one or two mentions in the National Law Journal.
Yet even such smaller firms have a chance to seize media opportunities in New York, if they think strategically about what reporters want. True, reporters are duly impressed by great and famous names like Skadden and Simpson Thacher. But if they want commentary from a trusts-and-estates expert— and Connecticut is full of those—the firm itself is less important than the expertise, especially when it’s delivered via practicable sound bytes in publications read by prospective clients.
Moreover, specific practice niches are still open media territory; T&E is just one example.
Some niches are clearly filled—e.g., billion- dollar M&A work by Skadden, bankruptcy by Weil, Gotshal, etc.—but few positions are “owned,” and most New York law firms have not moved to fill them in the minds of clients and prospects.
Richard S. Levick, Esq., is president of Levick Strategic Communications.
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