How many times over the past 12 to 24 months have you clicked to read an online story or mention of your law firm or firm's attorneys, only to be blocked by the dreaded subscription paywall? Where once you could freely roam the online pages of a newspaper or magazine, now you either have limited access to content or must pay a fee to read everything on a site. And the trend is only going to spread.

One study found that 76% of surveyed editors, CEOs and digital content leaders said that driving digital subscriptions is an important or very important revenue focus, ahead of both display and native advertising. That's a reverse from what the same survey found three years ago. The push toward digital subscriptions and other forms of reader payment is in full force.

At the same time that publishers are increasingly charging readers to view content, you're probably finding fewer and fewer media sites willing to publish your news for free or, in some cases, at all.