using press release for 10% backlinking

Will it possiblly give me a boost for some rankings or bump me down? I always read that a good PR for a cool app/something business worthy will help out a lot and get picked up by google news and huge outlets, etc...but obviously that's not my strategy

But I'm doing this for an attorney and trying to hit the local channel stations. I just like seeing abc7(random ass city) in backlink report.

Waste of time and money for ranking for a particular long tail keyword?

Real companies often cap out at quarterly press releases. If 10% of your links are from press releases it will at a minimum look very very fishy.

It's not going to give much boost since does links won't hold much juice so in my opinion waste of money really. Press releases are good for anchor diversity or trying to get natural links from other website that might pick up your article but the link itself won't do much ranking wise.