Anyone who has trained for a long race, like a marathon, knows the feeling. You walk into a store, find a pair of running shoes that look great, maybe a pair that is trendy or that your friend swears by, and head out the door feeling ready. Two weeks later, your feet are blistered, your knees ache, and you’re wondering how something that looked so right could feel so wrong.
We hear a version of that story all the time from plaintiff firms that come to us after a bad experience with another agency. The firm looked polished and the pitch was impressive, but somewhere around month three, the partners realized it just wasn’t working.
The good news is that both mistakes are avoidable. The bad news is that both are costly when you get them wrong. Here’s why.
1. It’s Expensive
Good running shoes aren’t cheap, and buying the wrong pair means you pay twice: once for the shoes that didn’t work and again for the ones that do.
PR works the same way, except the numbers are bigger. A retainer with the wrong firm is money spent on press releases on the wire, pitches that go to the wrong reporters, and monthly reports full of “impressions” that never turn into calls or referrals. When you finally make a change, you’re paying a new team to do the work the last one should have done.
And the real cost is rarely just the invoice; it’s the verdict that didn’t get covered, the settlement announcement that only landed in a trade outlet when it also belonged in the mainstream news, and the referral that went to the firm down the street because their name was in the news and yours wasn’t.
2. It’s Painful
The wrong shoes don’t fail all at once. They wear on you. A hot spot turns into a blister. A slight ache turns into shin splints. You keep running because you’ve already committed, and it gets worse.
A PR firm that doesn’t understand the plaintiff bar creates the same kind of slow, compounding pain. You spend hours explaining what an MDL is. You rewrite their drafts because they don’t understand how a sensitive case should be framed for survivors or families. You find yourself managing the agency instead of the agency managing your communications.
Worse, the wrong firm can create problems you didn’t have before. A careless quote, a poorly timed release, or a message that reads wrong to a judge or opposing counsel can do real damage to a case. For plaintiff attorneys, communications mistakes don’t stay in the press. They can follow you into the courtroom.
3. It Takes Time to Correct the Wrong Choice
Once you realize your shoes are wrong, you can’t just fix it overnight. You have to rest the injury, find the right pair, and break them in. Meanwhile, your training plan is sitting on the shelf.
Switching PR firms is no different. There’s the contract you have to wind down, then the search for a new partner. Once you find a new partner, there’s onboarding: the new team has to learn your firm, your cases, your attorneys, and your goals before they can do anything meaningful with them.
That groundwork matters, because reporter relationships take time to build and messaging takes time to get right. A firm that does this well will spend its first weeks laying that foundation, which is exactly what should happen. But if you already burned six months or a year with the wrong agency, that’s six months or a year you don’t get back.
4. It Often Pushes You Behind the Start Line
This is the part most firms don’t see coming.
A runner who picks the wrong shoes doesn’t just start over at zero. They start the next training block injured, out of rhythm, and behind where they would have been if they’d never laced up the wrong pair in the first place.
The same thing happens in PR. A bad agency can leave behind a trail that the next team has to clean up: reporters who stopped opening emails from your firm because of irrelevant pitches, a website full of stale or off-message content, coverage that framed your work the wrong way, or a story that got out ahead of you because nobody had a plan when the case broke.
How to Get the Fit Right
The best running stores watch you move before they hand you a box. They ask about your goals, your history, and the race you’re training for.
That’s the right way to choose a PR firm, too. Ask whether they understand the plaintiff bar and the cases you actually handle. Ask who on their team will be doing the work. Ask what the first 90 days will look like, and be wary of anyone who promises front-page coverage in week one or placement guarantees that feel too good to be true (because they are).
The right fit won’t feel flashy. It’ll feel like a partner who already speaks your language, knows the reporters covering your practice area, and is ready when the moment comes.
At RebuttalPR, the plaintiff bar is the only community we serve. If you’re questioning whether your current approach is the right fit, or you’re about to hire a firm for the first time, we’re happy to talk it through.
