Don't Let Lawyers Kill Your Marketing Efforts

J.P. Morgan said it best: ?I don?t want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do; I hire him to tell me how to do what I want to do.?

Because I serve the varied needs of some diverse and interesting clients, the marketing efforts I produce are reviewed by an equally interesting array of lawyers. Oh, for any downtown lawyers who may be reading this, you guys whose hourly rates are up there at the high end of the pay scale, you can substitute the word ?attorney? for ?lawyer.? It?s a more fitting, upscale name worthy of your fees, right?

But back to my story. With very few exceptions, the lawyers I?m told to work with ? whether paid staffers or third-parties who?ve been retained by my clients ? seem to share a single, frustrating point of view when reviewing sales and marketing copy. And it doesn?t seem to make much difference whether the words are mine or those of other copywriters. Lawyers seem determined to delete every word that?s even remotely liable to improve sales.

It?s not that there?s anything inherently wrong with words that get people to buy. It?s just an attitude common among lawyers when reviewing anything to do with sales or marketing.

As one lawyer described that attitude, ?I won?t approve anything that can even remotely come back and bite me in the ____.? Her fellow attorney added, somewhat defensively, ?Neither of us wants to lose our jobs because we approved a whacko idea dreamed up by some marketing guru.?

?Whacko? is probably not the appropriate word to describe even the most creative marketing effort. It?s also worth noting that most ?marketing gurus? ? whether we?re in-house or outside service-providers ? are paid to generate revenue, revenue that typically results from sales.

We ?gurus? are expected by our clients and employers to jump over, under, around or through whatever limitations we?re presented with ? including those imposed by lawyers. Our job is to transform the seemingly impossible into something that?s both doable and profitable.

However, and with all due respect, neither lawyers nor attorneys have ever been noted as the most imaginative people in the world. Most are quite content to live within ? and be confined by ? the limits of the laws they work with. Think about it. When was the last time you heard a lawyer ? or even an attorney ? encourage anyone to ?think outside the box.??

What prompted my most recent discussion with this ?dynamic duo? of the legal world was their mandate that I delete from the direct mail copy I?d written the two words that were the very essence of the motor club memberships my client was selling ? ?safety? and ?security.?

Their deletions were bad enough, but the air of finality with which these and most other lawyers hand down such mandates is rivaled only by the Almighty when He presented Moses with the 10 Commandments.

From a copywriter?s point of view, too many lawyers seem to fancy themselves the final authority on effective copy. And too many of us ?marketing gurus? ? along with the companies we work for ? allow them to get away with it, even though there are other options.

What kinds of options? These two have worked extremely well with my clients:

1. Share with management, those execs who hire the lawyers, what J. P. Morgan said he expected of a lawyer. Explain to management the benefits that result when the focus of their lawyers shifts from words they want to eliminate to words they consider defensible, words capable of being successfully defended in the unlikely event the matter ends up in court.

2. Ask management to insist that their marketing people, whether hired guns or in-house staffers, meet face to face with reviewing lawyers to discuss whatever changes those lawyers want made. Freedom to discuss is freedom to negotiate. Negotiate what? The substitution of words or phrases with meanings similar to the ones the lawyers want stricken, but words not as likely to be problematic. There are a great many very good words out there for both sides to agree on.

The role of the lawyer should not be to protect the company from every remotely conceivable contingency. It should be to advise management ? and the marketing staff ? whether or not the proposed marketing copy is reasonably defensible.

J.P. Morgan did quite well by letting his attorneys know up front what he expected of them: ??tell me how to do what I want to do.? There?s a lesson there for all to learn.

2006, Philip A. Grisolia, CBC

In addition to his skills as a marketing professional, Phil Grisolia is an accredited Certified Business Communicator (CBC), an author, educator, business coach, and an award-winning copywriter. To learn more about Phil and his professional skills, visit his website: http://PhilGrisolia.com