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Office of the Hogan Lovells law company in Washington, D.C., August 30, 2020. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
(Reuters) - “Law firm podcasts are if not a dime a dozen, maybe 25 cents a dozen,” Hogan Lovells appellate practice head Cate Stetson said when asked about the firm’s latest offering, “Proof at Trial.”
She’s not wrong.
I wrote last year about the explosion of new law firm podcasts during the pandemic. The pace has slowed -- or at least I’m no longer being bombarded with breathless press releases about yet another launch.
But even in this already-crowded field, the new podcast hosted by Stetson stands out, as does a series by Cravath, Swaine & Moore partner Len Teti called “On Tax” that almost (but not quite) makes me want to be a tax lawyer.
The two podcasts are totally dissimilar, but each in its way strikes me as a great example of how firms can use the medium for brand awareness, business development and recruiting.
The first four episodes of “Proof in Trial” debuted this week. Each one focuses on a different case, following it from initial dispute to trial and outcome.
Unusual for a law firm, the podcasts feature not just Hogan Lovells lawyers but also the voices of clients, including a software developer in a trade secrets case, two wrongfully convicted brothers who spent decades on death row and a former politician swept up in a drug conspiracy case.
The firm used an outside production company to develop and produce the series, and it shows. The episodes sound thoroughly polished and professional, aided by what Stetson laughingly calls her “soothing public radio voice.” (Seriously, she could have a career at NPR.)
Stetson said there are “a lot of layers” to the intended audience, starting with other lawyers who are interested in the inside scoop on high-profile trials. “But we’re also appealing to a broader podcast audience,” Stetson said, including people outside the profession who have a general interest in legal matters.
Will they turn around and hire the firm as a result? Probably not. But for Hogan -- the 11th largest law firm in the world, per The American Lawyer – the exposure is a way to help raise brand awareness.
Plus, Stetson said, “It’s a lot of fun to make.”
In some ways, the most impressive episode to me is about an antitrust fight with the Federal Trade Commission over a hospital merger in Philadelphia.
The other featured cases, such as the episode about two Black teenage brothers in North Carolina who were wrongly convicted of raping and murdering a young girl before being exonerated by DNA evidence, are obviously compelling.
But a hospital merger fight? Sounds like a total yawn, right? It’s a testament to the storytelling skills of Stetson and the podcast producers that it wasn’t.
“The mechanisms of the merger fell into the background,” Stetson said. “Instead, it was the story of the struggle of a hospital trying to keep its head above water.”
For Cravath’s Teti, keeping the focus on people rather than the intricacies of tax law is the key to his “On Tax” podcast.
Both he and Stetson say the time commitment required to host their broadcasts, while not insignificant, has proven manageable. Stetson credits Hogan's marketing and business development staff for doing most of the heavy lifting in putting the episodes together. "I get to parachute in," she said.
And Teti told me that now that his series is up and running -- there are 12 episodes to date, and more in the can - it's gotten easier. "I try to record six (episodes) at a time over a week or two," he said, and then release them gradually.
I admit, I was skeptical when Cravath, in pitching his podcast, described tax as “a fascinating and dynamic area of practice.”
But after giving it a listen, I realized I’d given the tax bar and its practitioners short shrift.
Teti as the host has assembled an impressive list of guests, including top tax lawyers at Amazon, Johnson & Johnson, Goldman Sachs, IBM and Natura & Co, as well as interviewing his tax colleagues at Cravath.
But they really don’t talk about tax law per se. Instead, they chat about how and why they became tax lawyers, their professional development and what they enjoy about their work.
“It’s not really about technical tax stuff. That’s the secret,” Teti told me. “It’s not a podcast about tax. It’s a podcast about people.”
For anyone looking to hire tax counsel, the podcast provides a real sense of who these lawyers are and how they approach their jobs.
It’s also proving invaluable to aspiring tax lawyers, especially those interviewing with the firm. “The biggest surprise to me is that a large part of our audience is law students,” Teti said. “They find the podcast to be a useful gateway to understanding what it’s like to practice tax law at a big firm.”
At Cravath at least, it seems to be an uncommonly collegial group.
“I felt responsible for creating an atmosphere where people like each other,” Steve Gordon, who was head or co-head of the firm’s tax practice from 2000 to 2020, told Teti in the first episode of the podcast. “They like working with each other. They trust each other. No one is looking over their shoulder or behind their back to make sure that there’s not someone coming after them.”
Gordon recognized that tax lawyers have a certain, um, reputation “for talking in code, and code section numbers—like Section 358, blah, blah, blah.”
But he stressed that’s not what makes a great tax lawyer. “You need to be able to communicate to your client first," he said. "What the issues are, what the opportunities are, what the risks are, and in language that any reasonably well educated, reasonably bright person without a tax background can understand.”
The same thing applies to being a guest on Teti's podcast, and what makes listening to it such a pleasure.
Find Hogan’s podcast here.
Find Cravath’s podcast here.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Opinions expressed are those of the author. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.
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