|
Hoffman successfully raises the profile of a Silicon Valley law firm
Fenwick & West’s client list reads like a roll call of Valley luminaries. The regional tech law firm represents stalwarts like Apple, Cisco and Google – and newer names like Facebook. Yet an initial survey of Fenwick’s presence in the business media in 2006 showed only a smattering of appearances – none in BusinessWeek and less than a handful in other prestigious targets. In spite of winning records, industry-leading attorneys and spotless ethics, the firm’s thought leadership was not keeping up with its work.
The Hoffman Agency considered Fenwick a gold mine of opportunities for thought leadership. Reporters and editors need a nearly constant flow of third-party experts and legal analysis to help explain the news of the day to their audiences. Why shouldn’t these experts come from Fenwick? We set about interviewing attorneys at the firm to find their areas of passion and expertise, and then seeded those names and topics with our existing business press contacts while creating new relationships as well. First stop: BusinessWeek.
Based on our efforts to place Fenwick attorneys as experts in BusinessWeek, members of the firm were interviewed eight times within the first eight months of 2007, resulting in four appearances in BusinessWeek.
Now the tap is starting to flow freely. In the month of November 2007, BusinessWeek writers have contacted us three times to ask to be connected with a Fenwick attorney.
In the recent BusinessWeek cover story “Wage Wars,” Fenwick attorney Daniel J. McCoy commented as an expert on overtime:
“The issue of when the workday begins can get complicated. Delivery truck drivers, utility workers, and service technicians, for example, now regularly download their route assignments or appointments from their homes by computer each morning. Should they be paid for this time? Should this be the start of their workday? The same questions arise for white-collar workers. Daniel J. McCoy, an attorney at Fenwick & West in Mountain View, Calif., says that 15 years ago he would have presumed that a person who checked her e-mail remotely or who telecommuted had the type of job that would not be eligible for overtime. ‘That’s less and less true today,’ he says. He gives the example of his own assistant, who sent McCoy an e-mail on a Sunday. McCoy said he promptly told his assistant that he didn’t need to be working on a weekend, but that if he was, he had to be sure to record his time, since he is covered by wage and hour laws.”
Full story 
|
