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You are thinking about hiring an outside public relations or marketing firm (i.e., a communications firm) to help you with high-profile client matters and/or to help you build your law firm and its practice areas. You understand how such a firm can help you get better legal results for your clients and bring more clients in the door. And, just maybe, you have grown tired of watching those other lawyers and law firms—both in your local market and nationally—appear in news article after news article about their cases, their firms, and legal issues in the news.

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There is only one problem. You do not quite know where to begin. How do you know whether a communications firm deserves the opportunity to “pitch” you its business, let alone is worthy of being retained by you and your law firm? You do not want to waste your precious time (and thus, money) speaking with communications firms that are not qualified to serve you and your law firm.

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This guide is here to help. It reveals the first eight questions lawyers and law firm professionals must ask a communications firm to determine—quickly and decisively—whether the communications firm is qualified to provide its services to them and their law firms. These questions touch on considerations that are paramount to a communications firm's qualifications to serve lawyers and law firms. The questions address considerations such as previous experience working with lawyers and law firms, ethics compliance, defamation avoidance, attorney-client privilege issues, and fundamentally understanding both the substance and the business of the law.

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Armed with these eight questions and the underlying reasons for each question, you and your law firm should be able to cut through the clutter and self-promotion by communications firms that want your business so that you can find the communications firm that is truly worthy of your business.