Law Firm Branding and Lawyer Personal Brands

Is Your Law Firm Brand Ineffective? How About your Personal Brand?

Elite Law Firm and Lawyer Branding Experts Package Your Legal Expertise & Story

A well-defined, clear, and focused professional brand, both the law firm brand and an individual attorney’s personal brand, is foundational to law firm marketing success, yet its power is rarely understood and often poorly executed.

Here’s what branding is NOT:

• Your website (it’s an ingredient we create but not your brand)
• Your logo (it’s a graphic we do reflecting your brand)
• Your stationery, business cards, and such (see above)

Those are all look-and-feel items. Important for sure, but just elements of something bigger.

So, what IS branding in an elite legal marketing context?

Branding for law firms or any company is something deeper - something more important.

• It’s your legal expertise – packaged.
• It’s your narrative – shared.
• It’s your promise – what people can expect from you; consistently.

In the legal arena you have two brands:

• Each lawyer’s personal professional brand,
  and
• The law firm or Specialty Practice brand.

Elite Lawyer Management branding experts package (brand) both your practice and individual lawyers’ expertise to optimize your presentation, image, credibility, and platform for maximum practice development results.

A Lawyer’s PERSONAL Professional Brand – Individual Expertise & Image Packaged for Authority

We focus as much on a lawyer’s personal brand as on the firm’s.

Why?

Isn’t the law firm brand the important one for legal business?

Aren’t Apple, Amazon, Virgin… outstanding examples of company brands that a legal practice should emulate in their branding process? Individuals mere background – cogs behind the larger entity?

We DO build and promote law firms mixing design, narrative, image, and value Virgin Atlantic style (see Firm Branding section on this page) however, here’s what most attorney marketing agencies miss and it’s massively important – the power of personal branding for law practice leaders.

• If you look at the most successful companies and their development, odds are there is a Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Sir Richard Branson, Elon Musk… who started with little but their personal passion and enthusiasm and offered themselves as the face and voice of their company.
• We all connect with a person much more than a company, whether it’s Jobs telling us there will be a computer in every household, Bezos telling us digital commerce would be the next big thing, or a California lawyer in your firm’s San Francisco office forecasting intellectual property developments in the coming years.
• Law firms are an amalgamation of individual attorney brands, plus some additional X factor attributed to the combination – it pays to focus branding attention on individuals in addition to the firm.

So, Elite Lawyer Management personal branding pros create, expand, and help monetize compelling personal brands for practice leaders.

A well-branded lawyer is a strategic combination of:

• Well packaged legal expertise, including two or three core focus areas;
• Branded as a high visibility (see PR and Publicity) influencer and thought leader;
• Who maintains a high visibility information, commentary, and education platform (see Thought Leader Marketing) using blog posts, social media, publications, traditional media, speaking engagements, and in-person connections.

Powerfully branded lawyers dominate the top ranks of the legal profession in exactly the same manner as do leading products – consider Coke, Gerry Spence, the iPhone, Norm Pattis, Porsche, Gloria Allred, Rolex, Brian Mahany, Ritz Carlton, Joseph Tully… and this list goes on with the legal top guns in every specialty from intellectual property and commercial litigation to matrimonial, civil rights, criminal, qui tam (whistleblower lawyers), insurance law, class actions, mass torts, and the rest.

“In a profession of equals, some lawyers are certainly more ‘equal’ than others. They have that indefinable something. Powerful personal branding defines that something. The exciting thing is that any attorney can become a compelling personal brand.”

- excerpt from #1 bestselling book on personal branding Fame 101, author (ELM co-founder) Jay Jessup

The true beauty of the personal branding element of our elite legal marketing strategy is that a lawyer’s personal brand synergistically enhances the law firm brand and the converse. We build them separately but focus on the mutuality.

Elite Lawyer Management personal branding experts package your legal expertise for maximum business development potential and we do it in a manner that supports and enhances the law firm brand.

Law Firm Branding Experts – The 3 Essentials for Maximum Success

Branding a law firm is packaging the collective expertise and reputation of the attorneys who make up the enterprise and presenting that combination to the world – online and off.

The Elite Lawyer Management branding team builds and executes a multidimensional brand strategy that drives business development.

We focus on all 3 facets of your brand:

• Promise (reputation) and its narrative – both must be clear and unchanging.
• Thought Leadership in core areas – the Go To information source.
• Look and Feel across all platforms – it must be flawlessly consistent.

Let’s look briefly at each of the three:

The Promise & Narrative Element of Law Firm Branding

At its foundation, your brand is your promise and reputation, your story – an interconnected bundle that defines what people can expect when they connect with you either in-person or online.

We look at the promise your prospects want you to make and make sure your brand answers the question:

Can and will your law firm fulfill that promise? This is what we do and what we won’t do, who we do it for, and how we do it better than anyone else.

An important aside: Your promise must be specific vs general. For generalists, no one will know who you are and what they can expect you to do so they don’t hire you.

You build that reputation (and your law practice) when you keep that promise in your legal work, your writing, appearances, and the rest – consistently.

What about your story? The Narrative?

People form opinions (a narrative) about your firm based on appearance, rumor, prejudice, assumptions, and fear.

Your firm’s brand narrative must head off all uncertainty by telling the world, in an authentic and provable way:

• Who you are.
• What you do.
• How you do it.
• What they can expect from you.

Elite’s branding experts will define and package your promise and your story.

The Thought Leadership Element of Your Firm’s Brand Strategy – the Expertise

For law firms, thought leadership is about packaging, developing, and promoting your reputation as THE trusted, up-to-date, and forward-thinking expert information and influence source – the recognized authority in your focus area(s).

We help law practices evolve as thought leaders, from productizing your focus area expertise to developing information platforms and publicizing (a great brand with exceptional information is of no value if no one knows you’re there – See PR and Publicity) and marketing the result.

Elite Lawyer Management experts will enhance your reputation in an authentic and high-visibility manner focusing on building unassailable thought leadership for your firm.

Consistent Look and Feel Across All Platforms – the Visuals

Business clients expect you to look as good as they do. Crystal clear messaging, up to the moment graphics, fonts, colors, and the rest – tastefully packaged and reminiscent of leading B to B (business to business) brands.

Consumer clients elevate law practices packaged smartly with a sharp look and feel, subtly reminiscent of company brand visuals they know – think smart phone companies, top tech & travel brands… tempered with a patina of consumer-level legal gravitas.

An important aside: When SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and the resulting search engine rankings are important, there must be a design/SEO balance built into your brand strategy, particularly on the visual elements where search engines are inept at “reading” images - we are extraordinarily good at handling this balance to maximize your overall firm benefits. This doesn’t apply if SEO is only a minor part of your legal services marketing strategy.

Your brand look and feel must be consistent across:

• Websites
• Blog posts
• Social media
• Publications
• Videos
• Business cards, stationery, printed materials

Does your brand strategy and execution drive business development?

Combine a solid promise, clear narrative, and thought leadership with great visuals and you have a powerful law firm brand. Do this concurrent with branding one, some, or all of your individual lawyers and – presuming your expertise – you’ll take the #1 spot in your specialty.