The fastest way to get featured in Law360 is to stop pitching your firm and start pitching your analysis of something that happened in the last 90 days. Law360’s guest article program, called Expert Analysis, publishes practitioners who explain what a new ruling, rule, or regulatory action means for the people who have to act on it. It rejects, by its own published rules, anything that promotes the author’s firm, the author’s wins, or a case the author is working on.
That single rule filters out most of what law firm marketing teams send. It also tells you exactly what gets through. Here is how the outlet works, how its two doors differ, and the pitch format that matches what its editors have said they want.
What Law360 is, and who reads it
Law360 is a legal news service owned by LexisNexis, which bought its parent company, Portfolio Media, in 2012. It publishes all day across dozens of practice-area sections, from securities and IP to employment, bankruptcy, insurance, and tax, plus state and regional feeds. Subscribers pick the sections they want and get them as daily newsletters.
That subscription model shapes everything. The reader is a partner, an associate tracking a practice, a general counsel, or a legal operations lead whose firm or department pays for access. Nobody reads Law360 by accident. When your name appears there, it appears in front of the people who refer work, hire laterals, and pick outside counsel.
The newsroom moves fast. Reporters watch court dockets and agency releases and often publish on a new complaint or ruling the same day it lands. Coverage of lateral partner moves, firm leadership changes, and the business of law runs through Law360 Pulse, a separate product focused on how firms operate.
So there are two doors into the publication, and they work differently. One is the newsroom, where you get quoted or covered. The other is Expert Analysis, where you write.
Door one: Expert Analysis, the byline route
Law360 published a guide for would-be guest authors titled “So You Want To Write A Guest Article?” The rules in it are specific enough to plan around.
Articles typically run 1,000 to 2,000 words. They need what the editors call a clear news reason, and that news should be from the last 90 days, with more recent being better. The development should have an anticipated effect on law or practice. The news summary should be short, and most of the piece should be the author’s analysis or opinion.
Pitches go by email to ExpertAnalysis@law360.com and should include four things: a brief summary covering both the news element and the commentary angle, the author names (no more than three) with bio links, a disclosure of any involvement with the parties or matters discussed, and either the draft as an unformatted Word document or a realistic completion date.
The rejection list is just as clear. Pieces with unsupported, overly broad, or rudimentary arguments get turned down. So do pieces with disparaging language about people or organizations. And so does anything that focuses on an ongoing case the author is involved in, highlights the author’s legal successes, or discusses the benefits of the author’s firm’s services, even when the piece is vendor neutral.
Law360 says it reviews submissions and gives feedback within 24 hours, and once a piece is accepted and a publishing agreement is signed, it generally runs within a week. That speed is rare among legal publications and it is the reason Expert Analysis rewards lawyers who can write fast after a development breaks.
The 90-Day Peg Test
Before you pitch, put your idea through what I call the 90-Day Peg Test. It has three parts, and each one maps to a reason Expert Analysis pitches fail.
First, the peg. Name the specific development and its date. A circuit court decision, a final rule, an agency guidance document, an enforcement action, a new state statute. If you can’t point to a date inside the last 90 days, you don’t have a peg. “Trends in noncompete enforcement” is a topic. “What the Fifth Circuit’s ruling on [date] means for employers drafting noncompetes in Texas” is a peg.
Second, the consequence. Write one sentence on what a reader has to do differently because of the development. Revise a contract clause, change a filing strategy, update a compliance program, reassess a pending deal. If the answer is “nothing yet,” the piece is probably too early, or it is an academic note that belongs in a law review.
Third, the distance. Confirm you and your co-authors have no role in the matter. Then check whether your firm does. Law360 asks you to disclose involvement, and an editor will find it if you don’t.
A pitch that clears all three can be written in five sentences. That brevity is a feature. An editor reading dozens of pitches a day wants to see the peg and the consequence before the end of the first paragraph.
What does a pitch that gets accepted look like?
Here is the structure, written out so you can adapt it.
Subject line: “Expert Analysis pitch: [Development] and what it means for [audience].” The opening paragraph names the development and date in one sentence and the practical consequence in the second. The second paragraph lays out the three or four points the article will make, each one stated as an argument rather than a heading. The third paragraph lists the authors with one-line credentials and bio links, then states plainly that no author is involved in the matter discussed. Close with the draft attached or a completion date within a few days.
Notice what is missing. There is no firm description, no list of the practice group’s accomplishments, and no line about how the firm helps clients with this exact issue. All of that belongs in the author bio Law360 runs at the bottom, and nowhere else.
The argument paragraph does the heavy lifting. “We will discuss the implications of the ruling” is a rudimentary argument by Law360’s own definition. “The ruling makes the standard indemnification carve-out in most SaaS agreements unenforceable in two states, and drafters should replace it with a capped mutual indemnity” is an argument an editor can evaluate.
Door two: getting quoted and covered
The newsroom side runs on speed and access. Reporters writing on a new filing or decision want a practitioner who can explain the significance in plain English within a few hours. They can’t quote counsel of record on most stories without it becoming a different kind of story, so they look for informed outsiders.
To become one, pick the narrow area where you know the case law cold. Follow the reporters who cover it, which you can find by reading bylines in that section for a few weeks. When a significant ruling drops, send a short email within an hour or two: two sentences of reaction, one sentence on why it matters to clients, and your direct phone number. Do it three or four times with useful takes and you will start getting calls before you send anything.
Law360 also runs recognition programs, including annual MVP awards and Rising Stars lists that honor lawyers by practice area. Firms submit nominations through the publication. These lists get read closely inside the profession, and a well-documented submission that ties the nominee to specific matters and outcomes is the strongest version.
For firm news, such as a lateral hire, a new office, or a leadership change, Law360 Pulse is the target. Send it with the specifics a legal business reporter needs: where the lawyer came from, the size of the book or team if you can share it, and why the firm made the move.
How should you write the article itself?
Once a pitch is accepted, the article has to deliver what the pitch promised. A few habits separate the pieces that run cleanly from the ones that bounce back for heavy edits.
Lead with the development and the takeaway in the first two paragraphs. A reader skimming the Law360 newsletter decides in seconds whether to keep going. If your first paragraph is a history of the statute, they won’t.
Keep the news summary short. Law360’s own guidance says most of the piece should be analysis or opinion. A good rule is that the facts of the development should take no more than a fifth of the article. Readers can get the facts elsewhere. They came for what the facts mean.
Use subheadings that state arguments. “Background” and “Analysis” tell the reader nothing. “The ruling narrows the safe harbor for small issuers” tells them what they will learn in that section.
Cite primary sources. Link to the opinion, the rule, the agency release, or the statute. Practitioners will check, and editors expect it.
Write for a smart lawyer outside your specialty. A securities litigator reading your piece on a tax ruling should be able to follow it. Define terms of art the first time you use them, and cut the ones you don’t need.
End with what to do. The last section should tell readers what to change, watch, or prepare for, in concrete terms. That is the part they will forward to clients and colleagues, and it is the part that turns a byline into a reason to call you.
Mistakes that get pitches rejected
The most common is the advertorial in disguise. An article that walks through a new regulation and ends with three paragraphs on “how counsel can help” will be rejected under the firm-promotion rule. Cut every sentence that refers to what your firm does.
The second is the stale peg. A ruling from five months ago is outside the 90-day window. If you missed it, wait for the next development in the same area, such as an appeal, a follow-on decision, or a regulator’s response, and peg the piece to that.
The third is the author pileup. Law360 caps bylines at three. Firms that want to credit an entire practice group need to pick.
The fourth is the overview. A piece that summarizes a new statute without taking a position is a client alert. Client alerts are useful, but they belong on your firm’s website. Expert Analysis wants an argument a reader could disagree with.
The fifth is ignoring the downstream reach. A Law360 byline sits behind a paywall, but its headline, summary, and author bio are visible to search engines and AI assistants. That is part of why a byline there helps build the kind of authority we cover in our guide to answer engine optimization for law firms. Make sure your firm bio links to it and uses the same name format.
The window is always open
Because Law360 wants news from the last 90 days, there is never a bad week to start. Every ruling, rule, and enforcement action in your practice area resets the clock, and the editors have told you exactly what they will publish when it does.
The lawyers who own a practice area in Law360 two years from now will be the ones who treat each new development as a deadline instead of a headline.