Louise Eckersley
Louise Eckersley is a senior director and Black Letter Communications’ longest serving employee having been at the agency for over 10 years. Here the mum of two discusses how she enjoys using legal PR to get her clients’ messages across and her love of art and comedy.
When I started my legal PR career I was very focused on the media relations side of things, getting coverage for a client in the legal or national press and helping them build their brand recognition.
This is still a huge part of what an agency like Black Letter Communications does, and is fundamentally important for clients, but what I have learnt over the years is that helping legal services organisations communicate in different ways – whether that’s directly to a client audience, to their employees or potential recruits – is something I really enjoy.
That is, at its core, what we do for our legal clients – communicate across all channels and in all situations, whether this be internal messaging or navigating a crisis situation. It’s fair to say that no two days are ever the same.
In my first job out of university I worked in tech PR for a short time before the dotcom bubble burst and lost my job overnight. It was a bit of a shock but ultimately worked well for me as tech PR was not really my natural calling.
I found a job in legal PR with one of the first agencies offering this specialist type of service and found it really interesting. I learnt lots – it was a small agency and I got exposure to senior lawyers, a good grasp of PR strategy and the chance to pitch in legal stories to national, legal and sector press.
Like a lot of PRs starting out there was a fair bit of admin involved, but I soon got to the point where I was responsible for the day-to-day running of my own PR accounts. I enjoyed working in the legal sector – there was always something new to talk about and it was great getting the chance to speak to experts in their field about the latest legislation or court judgment. I decided that this was the area of PR I wanted to stay in.
After three years, I decided to go in-house with law firm Fieldfisher to gain more in-depth experience. The firm had a strong intellectual property and technology, media and telecoms practice – always one of my favourite areas of the law. I started out focused on securing press coverage targeted at a client audience and was able to make a real impact, really ramping up the firm’s media profile in the first couple of years I was there.
Over time I took on responsibility for the firm’s corporate profile, learning more about crisis and strategic communications and eventually taking on the firm’s internal communication capability as it grew into a European firm. I got a real insight into the importance of effective communication to an employee audience and why it is so vital to marry this up with external messaging.
I worked with the firm for eight years before I had my son Max. I was keen to do something different and ideally a role that allowed me to work part time. A friend was a client of Black Letter and recommended I meet up with co-founder Kerry Jack. I really liked Kerry’s approach to PR and the clients the agency worked for were right up my street.
The range of work we do at the agency is incredible, from representing some of the largest law firms to looking after victims at high profile inquiries like the Covid Inquiry. A personal highlight for me was working on the PR activity for The First 100 Years project celebrating a century of women in law. Working with Cherie Blair to publicise the milestone we secured a dedicated programme on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and extensive coverage. But what was most interesting was to see how much discrimination there still is and how women can be held back from progressing in the profession.
I enjoy working with clients on creating engaging content that demonstrates their expertise to a client audience, motivates and informs employees or in the case of CILEX Journal, the membership magazine I am responsible for – creates a sense of community as well as communicating the key aims and achievements of the organisation. Writing is a high point of the job, especially when I get to speak to experts in their field – most recently patent attorneys who were able to talk about cutting edge new technology. I always come away having learnt something that I didn’t know before.
If I had to describe myself I would say I’m quite a sociable person but shy at the same time. My friends say that I’m a good listener, which is nice to hear as I sometimes think I’m inclined to talk too much! I’m usually considered to be pretty steady and reliable, although that might sound somewhat boring.
I would have loved to do an art foundation course, I enjoy life drawing and did it regularly until I had kids, it would be good to find the time again. Apart from that, spending a few months travelling around Europe by train is on my bucket list.
In my spare time I like visiting art galleries and I’m a member of the Tate so go to a lot of their exhibitions. I love watching live comedy – I’m lucky to live somewhere where they put on Edinburgh warm up performances every year so it’s easy to go along. Live music is also a passion, although my music taste is stuck in the 90s and noughties so it tends to be bands like the Killers, Manic Street Preachers and Suede.
