Sample issues
What would actually be in a law firm newsletter, page by page.
Nobody signs up for four pages a month until they can picture the four pages. This is the outline we would propose for a firm, with example headlines written out in full.
Every headline here is invented, and that is the point
What follows is a plan, not a back issue. No firm is named, no matter described here belongs to anyone, and nothing on this page is a published piece. The headlines were written to show the shape of an article — how long it runs, what it opens with, where it lands — because that is the part a business owner cannot picture from a pitch.
Real issues get built the other way round. We interview you, and the stories come out of your own month. But the structure below is the structure we would start from, and it holds for a family law practice, an estate planning firm or a plaintiff shop with only the subject matter swapped.
Sample only. Nothing on this page was published for a client, and no outcome, figure or testimonial appears anywhere in it.
Page one: the question three clients asked in a row
The front cover carries one story and nothing else — a headline, a photograph, roughly 450 to 550 words, and a line pointing inside. The story that earns that space is almost never firm news. It is the question you answered three times last month without noticing you were repeating yourself.
A worked example for a family law practice: “What happens to the house while the divorce is still running?” It opens with the situation rather than the law — two people, one mortgage, one of them already sleeping somewhere else. It walks through what generally has to be decided and in what order, names the two or three choices people actually face, and ends by saying that which one applies depends on facts nobody can guess from an article. No promise about how it turns out, because there is not one.
- Estate planning: “The three documents your bank will ask for, and the one it will not accept”
- Probate: “Why the house cannot be sold in the first month, and what to do instead”
- Personal injury: “What the adjuster is doing in the eleven days before they call you”
- Business: “The clause in your lease that decides whether you can move”
Page two: the column with your name and your face on it
Two hundred and fifty to three hundred words, signed, with a photograph that is not the headshot from the website. This is the page people say they read first, and it is the reason a newsletter beats a blog post — it sounds like one person rather than a firm.
It is not about law. A sample column runs under “I finally learned to say no to Sunday email” and it is four short paragraphs about drawing a line, why it took eleven years, and what the clients who call on Sunday are usually actually worried about. It ends on the practice without selling anything. We ghostwrite it from a phone call, in your phrasing, and you can rewrite any line of it before it prints.
Page three: a matter that closed well, told so nobody can be identified
Around 400 words, and this is the page that needs the most care. The point is not the result. The point is showing a reader what working with the firm looks like from the inside — what the first meeting covered, where the thing got complicated, what took three months that everyone assumed would take three weeks.
A sample runs as “A guardianship file that turned on a bank statement from 2019” and it is written with no names, no dates, no county, no dollar figures and no description specific enough that a neighbour could work out who it was. Details get changed or left out on purpose. If a matter cannot be told that way, it does not run — and where your own judgment says a story is too close, we replace it with the general version of the same lesson and nobody notices the difference.
Page four: the part that ends up on a refrigerator
The back page does three jobs at once, and it is the page most firms undervalue. Top third is firm news that makes you a real place — somebody passed the bar, somebody is coaching a team, the office moved suites. Middle is the keepsake. Bottom is how to reach you and the mailing panel.
The keepsake is the whole reason for print. A sample: “Bring these eight things to your first meeting” as a bordered card, or a one-page list of what to gather after a car accident, or the documents an executor needs before the first bank visit. It is useful enough to keep and it has your phone number on it. People keep those for years.
What changes every month, and what never moves
Half the issue is furniture. The column, the firm news block, the keepsake slot and the contact panel sit in the same place every month, which is why the issue is quick to produce and quick for a reader to navigate. Somebody who has had four issues knows where the column is.
- Changes monthly: the front page story, the column subject, the closed matter, the keepsake
- Fixed every issue: the layout, the column position, the firm news block, the contact panel, the mailing panel
- Changes twice a year at most: the masthead, the photography treatment, the paper stock
A twelve-month plan for a Florida firm
We build the calendar in the first week so nobody is ever staring at a blank page in week three. It moves when your practice moves, but this is the sort of year it maps to.
- January — the resolution issue: getting the estate documents actually signed
- February — what a prenup does and does not cover, before spring engagements
- March — spring break custody exchanges and travel consent letters
- April — after tax filing, what the return tells you about the business you own
- May — graduations, and why an eighteen-year-old needs a health care surrogate
- June — the mid-year file review: beneficiary forms nobody has looked at since a divorce
- July — hurricane season is running: where the documents live and who can reach them
- August — school year custody schedules and the paperwork the school will ask for
- September — the storm-damage claim article, written before anyone needs it
- October — snowbirds return: Florida residency, homestead and out-of-state wills
- November — the family conversation over the holidays that nobody wants to start
- December — year-end gifting deadlines and the January calendar for the office
Florida advertising rules shape this, and your firm has the last word
A newsletter with a law firm name on it is subject to the rules governing lawyer advertising in Florida, and those rules do real work here. It means no “best”, no “top”, no “expert”, no “specialist”, no “number one”, no “free consultation”, and nothing that reads as a promise about how a matter will turn out. It also means client confidences do not go in a newsletter, which is why the matter story runs the way it does. Communications aimed at people who are not already clients are treated differently from a mailing to your own list, and that distinction changes what a piece may say.
We write to those constraints by default because it is how we work with the firms we already produce for. We are a marketing company, not your ethics counsel: your firm reviews every issue and your firm has the final word on every line.
Your twenty minutes
One call a month, roughly twenty minutes, usually in a car. We ask what came up three times, what closed, what you would tell somebody at a dinner party. That call becomes the column and usually the front page too. Then you get a proof and mark it up.
Everything else is ours — writing, design, print, mailing, the digital flipbook edition and the email version. Print and postage are billed at cost with no markup. You are dealing with the same small team every month, Brandon included, not a queue.
Questions
The things people ask before they hire us.
Changing the name is not enough on its own, and we do not treat it as though it were. The matter page is written to remove the identifying facts entirely — no dates, no county, no amounts, nothing a reader could triangulate. Where a story is still too close, or where your own judgment says it needs consent, we run the general version of the same lesson instead.
Assume yes and handle it accordingly. We draft to the advertising constraints as a matter of course, and we build the schedule so whoever reviews advertising at your firm sees the issue with time to change it. What the rules require of your particular mailing is your firm’s call, not ours.
It works better than three thin ones. The front page rotates between practice areas across the year while the column and the back page stay constant, so an estate client still reads the issue that leads on a family law question. Most of what people remember is the column anyway.
Then they do not write. The column is ghostwritten from a phone call and returned in their own phrasing for approval. Most of the attorneys we produce for have never typed a word of theirs.
That is usually the better list. Former clients and referral sources are the two groups that send work and the two groups that forget you exist. How your firm may communicate with each group is a rules question your firm decides, and we build the list to match that decision.
Keep reading
Related pages
Tell us what you were asked three times last month.
That is usually the front page. Send us your practice areas and roughly who is on your list, and we will come back with a twelve-month outline written for your firm.
No pitch deck, no discovery-call gauntlet. One conversation, one straight answer.