A trial has rules. A judge decides what may be said. Evidence appears in an order. Each side gets its turn. Then there is the other trial - the one conducted in headlines, search results, television chyrons and the group chat. It begins without permission, admits hearsay and rarely adjourns for the weekend. Furia Rubel Communications built a business for that second proceeding.
The company sits in Perkasie, Pennsylvania, but “sits” is not quite right. Its core team is virtual, and its international faculty stretches from North America to Europe and Australia. The niche is more precise than ordinary public relations: law firms, legaltech companies and professional-services organizations that need to explain something important without creating a new problem in the explanation.
The founding observation
A courtroom skill, moved one room over
Gina F. Rubel is a third-generation attorney and a former Philadelphia trial lawyer. She founded the agency in 2002 after recognizing a family resemblance between law and communications. Both disciplines begin with an audience, proceed through a message and aim for a response. Communications offered something litigation often did not: the chance to move early.
“This is like the practice of law except I can be more proactive and creative.”Gina F. Rubel, founder, CEO and general counsel
That legal inheritance is the agency's cleanest distinction. A generalist publicist can find a hook. A legal communicator also has to see privilege, professional-conduct rules, the discovery risk in an adjective and the difference between winning today's clip and damaging tomorrow's motion. Furia Rubel staffs for both views: attorneys and former litigators alongside former reporters, digital strategists and people who have worked inside major law firms.
The product, in other words, is judgment with deliverables attached. Those deliverables include crisis plans, media training, message development, press outreach, thought leadership, brand strategy, websites, business-development coaching and integrated campaigns. Clients can retain the agency for a defined launch or use it as an agency of record. Its public rates are not posted. This is bespoke professional service, sold by engagement rather than by clicking “add to cart.”
What the work looks like
The case of the poisoned family and the ringing phone
Consider a Delaware family poisoned by an illegally applied pesticide while vacationing in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Their injuries drew reporters from around the world. The family's law firm, Maron Marvel, had two jobs: pursue justice and answer a flood of media requests. It hired Furia Rubel to take the second job.
The agency managed incoming questions and outgoing outreach, monitored social media, worked on positioning and kept the message coherent for more than a year. This sounds like publicity until one notices the operational point: every inquiry absorbed by the communications team returned time and concentration to the attorneys. The service was not simply getting coverage. It was preventing coverage from taking over the legal practice.
The figures are the agency's reported case-study metrics, and impressions are not the same as persuasion. Yet the scale explains the problem. At one billion potential views, an unanswered inbox is not an administrative nuisance. It is a second case file.
The useful surprise
Research changed the bank's story
The more copyable lesson comes from a quieter assignment. When First Federal of Bucks County and First Savings Bank of Perkasie combined to become Penn Community Bank, the obvious story was a merger. Research uncovered the dangerous story: customers distrusted corporate banks and might read consolidation as a retreat from local accountability.
So the campaign did not celebrate size. It emphasized independence, local control and community continuity. Internal communication came first, then community relations, media work, a new identity and marketing. The message changed because the audience's fear was more informative than the organization's announcement.
The bank launch, reduced to a reusable sequence
The reported scorecard was 258 print articles, 18.1 million print impressions, $884,229 in advertising value equivalency and a return on investment near 400 percent, alongside customer retention and acquisition. The campaign also won a PRSA Philadelphia Pepperpot Award. The most interesting number, however, may be zero: the distance between what worried customers and what the campaign chose to discuss.
Do not begin with the sentence you want to publish. Begin with the decision, fear or misunderstanding that stands between the audience and the outcome. Then make the message answer that obstacle. A press release is an output. Research is the steering wheel.
A market built on discretion
Small enough for the principal, broad enough for the problem
Furia Rubel competes with specialist firms such as Greentarget, Infinite Global and Hellerman Communications, with larger crisis consultancies, and with its clients' own marketing departments. Its pitch is not scale. It is the combination of legal fluency, newsroom instinct and boutique attention. The firm says several relationships have lasted more than a decade, a revealing measure in a business where the best work may be confidential and the best crisis may be the one nobody remembers.
- 01For law firms: positioning, thought leadership, business development, launches, mergers, websites and media relations.
- 02For litigation teams: public messaging, trial publicity, monitoring and press response that remain aligned with counsel.
- 03For leaders in trouble: preparedness, holding statements, stakeholder maps, media coaching and real-time advice.
- 04For institutions changing shape: research, naming, brand systems, employee communication and integrated campaigns.
Beyond legal services, the portfolio includes banks, municipalities, health organizations, schools and museums. Rohm and Haas hired the firm for a community project involving reflective roof coating; the campaign reported 8.3 million impressions. A Panitch Schwarze website redesign reported an 84.5 percent traffic increase. The thread is not industry. It is an organization with expertise that must become understandable, credible and useful to someone else.
The agency extends that idea through training, books and its On Record PR podcast. By 2025, the podcast was in its sixth season and heard in more than 30 countries. An international faculty gives the firm access to advisers in several legal markets without pretending that a Pennsylvania boutique has a full office everywhere.
The honest limit
Communications cannot rescue conduct that has not changed, and a media metric cannot prove trust. This approach also loses power when leaders will not settle the facts, assign one decision-maker or respond at the speed of the story. Message discipline is leverage only after operational discipline exists.
The second courtroom
A sentence is small. Its consequences are not.
Legal organizations are unusually difficult to market. Their best work is often private. Their language is built for precision, not warmth. Their leaders are trained to qualify. Their reputations may turn on matters they cannot discuss. The common temptation is either to say nothing or to say something so polished that it communicates nothing.
Furia Rubel occupies the practical middle. It asks who needs to know, what can be said, which result matters and how the organization will know whether the communication worked. Sometimes the answer is a global press operation. Sometimes it is a local-bank promise repeated with enough consistency to feel true. Sometimes it is telling a client not to chase a microphone.
The first courtroom remains the one with the judge. But outside its doors waits another audience, with no obligation to read the exhibits and no patience for a footnote. Gina Rubel did not invent that room. She simply noticed that somebody ought to prepare for it.