Morrison & Foerster

Our work in the legal industry extends all the way back to 1986, when Gordon Wright got a job as the Business Manager at the San Francisco Daily Journal. Since then, we have always kept a hand in the legal market, representing such firms as Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe and Long & Levit.

But it is our work for Morrison & Foerster that best exemplifies two defining characteristics of the firm: chutzpa and inspired thinking. We thought that MoFo would be an excellent client to have, and cold-called their marketing director Peter Horowitz, who would later become the worldwide director of communications for Price Waterhouse. Mildly amused, Peter allowed us a meeting and tossed us a bone: a tiny practice group had recently been added to the firm and he wanted to see what we could do with it.

With nothing to lose, we pitched the Wall Street Journal and very much to our surprise, were rewarded with a small feature on the practice group. Peter, now very much amused, continued to unleash our services whenever he felt the need. One particular problem of his was an ambitious senior associate, a former staff attorney with the United States Trade Office, who had written a synopsis of the new, unwieldy and hotly controversial trade agreement known as "NAFTA".

Peter wanted us to "do something with it", and, short of using it as a doorstop, we could not figure out much either. But one day, with the "synopsis" taking up roughly four linear feet of bookshelf in front of us, we began reading USA Today. Now, in most PR firms, lounging around reading the paper is called "slacking": here it is called research.

We noticed that at the tippy-top of the Business section there was a blaring box called, "Today's Tip-Off" that carried varied business blurbs. Just eight days later, the "Tip-Off" offered readers a free synopsis of NAFTA. Morrison & Foerster received well over 2,000 responses, including inquiries from 42 Fortune 500 companies.

[back]