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What's in a name?

Highlights

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Publications and pitches need the right content (see What clients want) and they need to be persuasively written (see Writing training).

But you need to get that content formatted and delivered. And that’s often a multi-stage headache – from author to a design/DTP, then back and forth a few times.

The right delivery formats and authoring tools will make a big difference. They will reduce the misery of document production, and make the finished product more interesting for clients. We help our clients with:
a) Word templates that let authors see final formatting as they’re writing
b) Delivery formats that clients find helpful – and interesting.

a) Word templates that automate formatting and other fiddly tasks

Producing and formatting content should be as easy and efficient as possible. Authors should be able to see final formatting as they’re writing – so that time isn’t wasted on a ‘design’ or DTP stage. And you shouldn’t have to lose time rummaging around for content when you’re putting a pitch document together.

Automated Word-templates let you style text according to brand guidelines, and assemble content (e.g compile one-off briefings into a newsletter, add the right CVs to a pitch document). These aren’t run-of-the-mill Word templates – they have extra (and rather clever) code that creates a bespoke toolbar that has both text-styling and ‘insert’ options.

The text-styling tool makes it easy for non-experts to format text as they go: the templates have pre-set styles that meet brand-guidelines. The finished Word document looks exactly as it will when it’s converted to PDF-format for web use, or for printing. You can print PDFs digitally or litho – never believe a printer who says they can’t print from a PDF.

The ‘insert’ options in the bespoke toolbar (see graphic above) make it easy to add perfectly formatted tables, charts and landscape pages – and even select and insert the right CVs and case histories.

And all of this can be done at your desk as you’re writing – no sending raw text to a design, desktop publishing, or business-development team.

b) Delivery formats that clients find helpful – and interesting

Effective formats don’t always mean gee-whiz formats with slinky bells and whistles (the law of shiny things is important, but it’s not everything). Effective formats should make it easy for clients to:
– find the content that they’re interested in;
– find the right person if they want to know more.

Examples of effective formats include interactive PDFs or iPDFs (PDFs with website-style navigation), HTML-emails (often called e-bulletins), audio and video clips, microsites, and blogs.

With some of these formats (e.g. PDFs and e-bulletins) it’s all about making the best use of the medium – a prominent ‘ask a question’ button on e-bulletins, or a briefing-headline that identifies the key implication for clients.

Other formats – like interactive PDFs, microsites, and blogs – give teams and practice groups a way to stand out from the crowd. (There’s a link to an example of an interactive PDF, or iPDF here.)

Blogs: misunderstood, but cheap and practical

Finally, there’s the blog – the most misunderstood and maligned of web formats. We’ve helped several firms to test the idea of blog sites. At the moment law firms lag behind accountants in their use of blogs, but we think that law firms will see that blogs are another – very practical – way to share content with clients.

Here’s a table of common objections to blogs. It sets out the reasons that lawyers usually give for not doing a blog, and the answers (and solutions) to these concerns.

You may notice that cost isn’t a concern. No, that’s not because lawyers have lavish digital budgets, but because blogs are so cheap to set up and run that cost-concerns just don’t come up…