"Some people are writing in service of their own ego. I'm writing in service of the reader."
When she moved from corporate law into the insurance industry in the early 2000s, Woodruff Sawyer’s Priya Cherian Huskins found writing useful for processing the vast amount of information she needed to master in her new career. She hasn’t stopped writing since. “I still write to understand, but I think my work has become a resource for others in the insurance industry. We all do better with good information circulating in the ecosystem, so I write to help everyone level up. I'm not the only one doing that, of course, but 
I sure like contributing to that effort.”
We talked to Priya about her writing, success, and becoming one of JD Supra’s most-read authors in insurance law.
Why did you start writing?
When I came to Woodruff Sawyer in 2003, it was the beginning of a second career. I had a lot to learn even though I was a seasoned corporate securities attorney. I was starting in a brand new field, and I had a lot of studying to do. I’ve always done that by gathering information and writing something for myself. I started when there were no blogs, and the height of success was getting an article published in, say, the Stanford Law Review: we’d order reprints and mail them to our contacts. They wouldn’t read a 20-page law review article, of course, but we sent it all the same.
I still write to understand. Things are always changing in this business: the litigation landscape, the insurance landscape, the political background, the law, etc. It’s a constant challenge to stay ahead of what's going on.
"Write something that will be substantive and useful."
But I write to help others understand, too. I know my clients, colleagues, clients of colleagues, etc., struggle with the same challenges: most of my topics come from questions I get from others. So my blog is also intended to educate readers. That’s why I regularly write about commonly asked questions. For example, if everybody asks, "How do you handle tail policies?” I’ll write something on it so that everyone has a common understanding of the challenges and solutions.
Over time, I think my work has become a resource for others in the insurance industry, and that's fine. I think we all do better when we all have good information circulating in the ecosystem. More to the point: the entire insurance industry suffers when any broker makes foolish mistakes. None of us look good when any insurance client has a really bad experience. So that's part of it: I write to help everyone level up. I'm not the only one doing that, of course, but I sure like contributing to that effort.
You publish an article every week. What is your writing process?
To be honest, the discipline of the weekly blog can be absolutely brutal. There’s a process of going from inspiration to publication: you have to come up with topics and commit to writing. I have always worked while raising my children, so even though they’re grown now, I still seem to do all of my best writing between 10:00 PM and 2:00 AM on a Sunday night for Tuesday or Wednesday publication. Not the healthiest of habits.
"...[we] maintain a calendar where we plan what I'm going to write about."
I gather ideas as they come and keep a file of things I may want to write about. There's inspiration everywhere. I mentioned clients asking questions, but I will also see other authors picking up different topics online. For example, law firms often write about corporate governance topics that impact director and officer liability even when they’re not directly writing about director and officer liability. That’s an opportunity to bring clarity to the subject.
Our marketing group and I maintain a calendar where we plan what I'm going to write about. Thankfully, we also track when I don't have to publish new material, say on the 4th of July, Thanksgiving, or during the last two weeks of the year.
One of the great things about doing a weekly blog is you can write a series of posts on a single topic. They're much more readable than the long articles I used to write and allow the audience to quickly decide if it’s relevant while still letting me, as a writer, explore a topic completely.
In addition, at Woodruff, we release annual guides on a variety of topics, some of which I write as the primary author. Those need to be planned and scheduled, like our annual ‘looking ahead’ guide to D&O insurance that we usually release in September.
Your work covers a mix of evergreen and timely topics – how do you decide what to write about?
I have the luxury of having an organic process around topics because our marketing department has a very sophisticated view of analytics. They give me an annual report on which subjects had the most traction over time, that is to say, which topics were most relevant to our readers. As it turns out, these issues tend to be evergreen topics. We slot those topics into the calendar so we know we’re providing our audience with the information they’re looking for, and that begins to fill up the content calendar.
The timely topics are just that – posts we can't plan but need to be covered, like the recent Supreme Court decision on the Slack litigation. I had been waiting for that, and I needed to write on it when it came out. Evergreen topics will always get bumped for something timely.
Finally, I like to write about the issues I'm working on – either client work that is relevant to a broad audience, discussions I'm a part of, or speeches I'm giving. I recently sat on a panel for the American College of Governance Counselors that addressed Section 11 litigation and direct listings, also stemming from the Slack litigation. If I have to prepare for a panel, I might as well write a blog post about the topic.
Who is your audience? How do you frame your writing to be useful for them?
I think of my audience as smart professionals who are not insurance or corporate governance experts. They’re savvy about business but don’t have expertise in these areas. I am the expert, and that requires me to be able to explain the issues clearly and simply.
For years, I’d ask my mother to read a draft of my blog posts. And she read every single post that came out. She's a doctor, a smart professional, definitely not in this industry. Her perspective was critical – anything that was not clear to her told me that I had more work to do: if she didn’t understand something, I needed to rewrite it.
"The risk for any expert is the overuse of jargon and assuming people know things that are just not obvious."
That’s no longer true: over the years, she’s actually become quite sophisticated in insurance and corporate governance. But it was incredibly helpful when I started writing. The risk for any expert is the overuse of jargon and assuming people know things that are just not obvious. My mother helped me avoid those pitfalls.
I try to make all of my writing substantive and useful for readers. One of my first bosses at Woodruff Sawyer, Judy Roberts, who co-founded our D&O practice, was not a lawyer but could read an insurance contract better than 99% of the lawyers I've met. She told me, “Everybody hates writing that is clearly intended to hide information, to make you look smart, and to make the reader call you for the answer. Don't do that. Be useful. Write something substantive.” Nobody wants to read articles where the writer doesn't want to give away their secrets.
Another boss I had early in my career here, Doug Morton, who co-founded our practice with Judy, gave me another piece of advice that has always stuck with me: "People aren't hiring us for what we thought yesterday. They're hiring us because of what we will think tomorrow. So tell them. Tell everybody. Write it.”
"...I'll get an email from a reader saying that they read this or that post and it was particularly useful."
Those two pieces of advice have always been the cornerstone of my writing philosophy. Some people are writing in service of their own ego. I'm writing in service of the reader. From time to time, I'll get an email from a reader saying that they read this or that post and it was particularly useful. Those notes are incredibly encouraging because sometimes it can feel like you are writing in the dark alone, or in my case, with only my mother reading the blog. It’s so energizing to get a little bit of encouragement from the occasional email or note.
You talked a little about analytics. How do you use the reader data JD Supra sends you to inform your writing?
I see the analytics reports prepared by JD Supra, but it’s our marketing department that analyzes and interprets them along with other data and uses them to help guide what I write about. Our marketers are very sophisticated and deliberate about identifying issues we need to write about because they affect our clients.
"...I love that I have readers from industries ranging from retail to real estate and press reads ranging from PR News Wire to the Financial Times."
It might even be a niche question, not broadly popular, but still very relevant to a set of people who are important to us. We make deliberate decisions about the topics we need to address based on the data we get that shows what questions readers are asking.
How has your writing succeeded? Has your writing supported the growth of your business?
I sure hope so – it’s been a lot of work! For me, one measure of success in writing is when people ask a question, and I have written a piece that supports my efforts to explain the answer. That means I was accurately able to predict a question. It's really nice to be able to discuss an issues with a client and then send something I wrote so that they can remember the answer and refer to the writing in the future.
Also, before potential clients decide to contact a brokerage house or an individual broker, they often conduct an online search. They will quickly find Woodruff Sawyer, replete with experts who regularly write and share information, and I think that tells them something about both our expertise and – I hope – the kind of firm we are: we’re here to help.
Another area where I measure success is helping our recruiting efforts – the firm has grown significantly over the two decades I've been here, and we want to continue bringing in experts in the field. We recently hired a new cybersecurity expert who told me, when he announced he was joining Woodruff Sawyer, that his contacts in insurance and D&O insurance called to congratulate him about working with the author of the D&O Notebook. That was a thrill for me.
One of the great things about writing a blog is the sheer reach of the internet, particularly if you are getting super-charged by a highly regarded aggregator like JD Supra. The 66,000+ views of my blogs are clearly not coming just from subscribers to the D&O Notebook! As a writer, I love that I have readers from industries ranging from retail to real estate and press reads ranging from PR News Wire to the Financial Times.
What were your expectations when you started writing, and how have they changed?
It is always and forever will be very difficult to write a post every week. The writing process will never get easier. One thing that has changed is that I have a lot more colleagues now that write guest posts. That gives me a little more time to focus on what I want to say because I know that I have colleagues who can write excellent content.
One thing that hasn't changed is my goals: I still write both for my own understanding and to explain issues to others. It is always encouraging when the analytics show that a lot of people read my work, but that's frosting. That wasn't the purpose. I like it, and I think our marketing department particularly likes it. But my goals are the same.
What’s the single most important piece of advice you have for authors who aspire to become thought leaders through their content?
Write something that will be substantive and useful.
Is there other advice you would give, for example, on mechanics – word choice, format, titles, etc. – or on the role writing can play in their practice?
Short sentences are better: if your sentence is five lines, it's three lines too long. And writing once a month is not enough. You have to commit to writing. The discipline of writing every week is not about the reader. It's about the writer.
[The latest in a series of Q&A discussions on successful thought leadership with recipients of JD Supra's 2023 Readers' Choice awards. Read additional profiles here.]
