There’s a term floating around the legal marketing world that needs to end: “Digital PR.”
You’ll hear it from SEO agencies, marketing consultants, and self-identified experts on podcasts. The pitch usually goes something like this: set up alerts on a source-request platform — HARO (Help a Reporter Out) and Quoted are the most common, where journalists post queries looking for expert sources — wait for relevant queries to come in, submit a canned expert quote with a headshot and bio, and repeat once a month. They call it a “monthly digital PR campaign.” That’s not PR. That’s just filling out forms.
We say this as a firm that actually reviews these platforms. We monitor HARO and similar services as part of our media relations work. In our experience, they’re useful twice a year at most. The vast majority of queries come from low-quality outlets that won’t move the needle for a law firm’s credibility. The ones that do come from reputable publications attract hundreds of responses, mostly from people trying to insert themselves into conversations they have no business being part of and certainly aren’t driving. The signal-to-noise ratio is not up to par, and building a PR strategy around it is like building a business plan around winning a raffle.
The “Digital” Qualifier Is a Tell
When someone puts “digital” in front of PR, they’re usually telling you they don’t actually understand what public relations is. They’ve taken one narrow tactic — responding to journalist source requests — and repackaged it as a discipline.
Real PR doesn’t distinguish between “digital” and “traditional.” A media placement in the National Law Journal holds authority whether someone reads it in print, finds it through a Google search, or sees it cited in a ChatGPT response. The medium is irrelevant. What matters is the quality of the placement, the credibility of the outlet, and whether it advances a strategic narrative for the firm.
The “digital PR” label exists because it makes link building sound like a communications strategy. It’s an SEO deliverable wearing a PR costume.
Reactive Doesn’t Work
On a recent podcast, a self-identified expert in the space recommended that law firms launch a “monthly digital PR campaign,” primarily by setting up alerts on source-request platforms and responding when journalists post queries.
Here’s the problem: that’s a reactive process. You’re waiting for someone else to decide what stories get told, then hoping your canned quote is better than the hundreds of other submissions flooding the same inbox. You have no control over the narrative, no relationship with the reporter, and no strategic framework guiding what you say or why.
It’s the PR equivalent of cold-applying to job postings and hoping for the best. It might work occasionally, but it’s not a strategy, and it’s certainly not something you’d build a firm’s reputation on.
Meaningful earned media requires proactive story development. That means identifying newsworthy angles in your firm’s active work by identifying trends in case filings, shifts in defendant behavior, regulatory changes that affect your practice area, and bringing those stories to reporters before they ask. It means building relationships with journalists who cover your space so that when they need a source, they call you. Not because you filled out a form, but because you’ve demonstrated expertise and reliability over time. That doesn’t happen on a monthly cadence, it happens continuously.
Link Building Is Not a Communications Strategy
The underlying motivation behind most “digital PR” advice is search engine optimization. The goal isn’t to shape public perception or build a firm’s credibility, it’s to acquire backlinks from authoritative domains.
There’s nothing wrong with backlinks, they matter for SEO, and earned media placements naturally generate them. However, when the entire purpose* of your PR effort is to get a link, the quality of the work suffers. You end up chasing any publication that will take a quote, regardless of whether the placement serves the firm’s broader positioning. You optimize for volume instead of relevance, and you produce generic commentary that adds nothing to the conversation.
Law firms, especially plaintiff firms, have stories worth telling. Cases that changed lives, legal theories that shifted the landscape, and clients who fought powerful institutions and won. Reducing that to a HARO response and a backlink is a waste.
What Actual PR Looks Like for a Law Firm
Strategic public relations for a law firm is a continuous effort that operates on multiple fronts:
- Proactive media relations: developing story angles from your firm’s work and pitching them to reporters who cover your practice area. Not waiting for a query, but going to them instead.
- Thought leadership: positioning attorneys as authorities on specific issues through op-eds, commentary on breaking legal news, and contributions to legal publications. This requires understanding the attorney’s expertise deeply enough to identify where their perspective adds value.
- Reputation building: earning recognition through awards, speaking engagements, and community involvement. Each of these creates compounding credibility that no single HARO quote can match.
- Narrative development: aligning all communications around a consistent story about who the firm is, what it stands for, and why it matters. This is the work that differentiates a firm from every other practice filing the same types of cases.
None of this is “digital” or “traditional.” It’s just PR done with intention, done continuously, and done with a strategic framework behind it.
The AI Angle Doesn’t Change the Fundamentals
Some of the “digital PR” advice now comes wrapped in AI urgency: the idea that you need to do these things so large language models will reference your firm. There’s a kernel of truth there: AI tools do surface earned media, and a firm with a strong media footprint will show up more than one without.
But the tactics that earn AI visibility are the same ones that have always built authority: get covered by credible outlets, maintain consistent information across platforms, and produce substantive content that demonstrates real expertise. You don’t need a special “AI optimization” playbook. You need to do PR well.
The firms that have invested in sustained, strategic earned media are already positioned for an AI-driven information landscape. The ones scrambling to submit HARO quotes once a month are not.
Stop Calling It “Digital PR”
If someone is pitching you on a “monthly digital PR campaign,” ask them what happens in the other 29 days. Ask them who the reporters are that they have relationships with in your practice area. Ask them what narrative they’re building for your firm and how a reactive source-request platform fits into it.
If the answer is that they’ll set up some alerts and submit some quotes, you’re not buying PR. You’re buying link building with a markup.
Your firm deserves better than that.
A Partner in Your Engagement
At RebuttalPR, we work with plaintiff-side law firms to turn conference appearances into brand-building opportunities. We secure speaking slots, pitch media, and align your presence with your firm’s goals. If you’re investing the time and money to be there, we’ll make sure it pays off.
Contact us to learn more about how RebuttalPR can help take your firm to the next level.
