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19 July 2007 / Elizabeth Davidson
Issue: 7282 / Categories: Features , Profession
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PR savvy?

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Barristers are waking up to the need for professional communications, says Elizabeth Davidson

Chambers are adopting more imaginative approaches to wooing clients, perhaps reflecting the changing landscape for the supply of legal services. Marketing tactics are changing to the extent that the Bar Standards Board recently issued a report, Entertainment of Solicitors and Others by the Bar, Gifts to Solicitors, into whether the increasingly lavish hospitality offered to solicitors and companies by barristers breaches ethical boundaries. Then there is PR.

The Bar has traditionally taken a tentative approach to PR, but this approach is changing. Chambers are either hiring PR consultants or, more commonly, appointing in-house marketing and business development professionals. What are the pros and cons of each approach? Does PR work? Is the use of PR as a business strategy a long-term trend?

According to Clare Rodway, managing director at Kysen PR, there has been a “cultural change” at the Bar. “Barristers are definitely recognising the need for professional communications, and those that have already used PR agencies are seeing the benefits. The

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