June 23, 2006
Is Law Firm Branding Worth the Effort?
The topic crept into presentation after presentation, including those that would otherwise appear completely unrelated. It arose time and again as essential to law firm continuity—long-term success. It also arose as an expression that law firms can no longer depend solely on ineffective attorney rainmaking. And finally, it appeared as a strategy to entrench the firm’s culture and core beliefs. I was impressed by the faculty's understanding that “who we are” makes a difference.
Angelo A. Paparelli of Paparelli & Partners said it this way: “Branding can become a self-fulfilling phenomenon. The more a firm succeeds in establishing a distinctive brand, the more probable it is that like-minded attorneys will apply for employment with the firm, and that clients who want or need a particular type of branded legal services will search out the firm for help.”
I was also intrigued by a case study reported by the faculty that illustrates how slippery the branding slope can be. A particular law firm was undergoing a branding program to make sure that the brand clearly communicates the firm’s value proposition. The firm’s current website emphasizes the firm’s courtroom successes. But when targeted prospects were surveyed, those prospects indicated that winding up in court was considered a failure. Potential clients valued quick resolution of issues over successful court trials.
The reported case is an example of what Peter Drucker called the “wrong quality”—when we get so caught up in what we are technically capable of doing that we build products and services that are out of synch with what the marketplace wants to buy. It is also reminiscent of a prior post, “Too Good, Too Expensive and Too Inconvenient."
Defining "branding" isn’t easy. I would define it as matching your unique qualities with problems that your defined market wants to solve and then finding a way to convey that through image and style. Branding also involves deciding what you are not and the business you will not pursue.
- The first step is to define your strengths
- Second, match those strengths with problems the prospects want solved
- Next, define your market as narrowly as practical with an eye toward market leadership
- Lastly, invent a way to combine your strengths, the market you are addressing, and the benefits your customers will realize into a “brand”—a combination of the visual, audio, print and style that conveys that message.
It is not an easy task, but for more partner income it is one worth pursuing
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Filed under Firm Culture, Marketing by Tom Collins