The mark of the great law
In our age of competition and connection, law firms face an unprecedented branding challenge, and BigLaw, the world’s largest and most successful law firms, tend to play the long game. For BigLaw to “win,” it must continue to enhance its business brand to attract and retain its clients and attorneys. The question is: Are your lawyers playing the same game?
Personal Brand
In today’s mobile job market, many lawyers may be shorting the market. And they have the tools to do it; the same standard kit that BigLaw issues to each attorney when they join the team. Any lawyer intent on “winning” quickly learns to use these tools to develop expertise in an area or areas of market opportunity as well as a personal brand to market to it.
Personal Brands Distinguish Lawyers
At the Inaugural Penn Law School Women’s Summit, approximately 200 members of the Penn Law community came together to celebrate the leadership and pioneering work of Penn’s national and international female attorneys. As the Summit made clear, the women of Penn Law have many victories, marks and others, to celebrate.
The agenda included a session titled “Building Your Professional Brand, Online and Offline,” during which panelists and attendees shared the importance of individual branding as a business development tool. They discussed the importance of creating a specialized practice and the many ways you can declare yourself an expert: blogging, posting articles on LinkedIn and Facebook, posting photos on Instagram, hosting personal and professional websites, tweeting, speaking at conferences, and participating in trade events. .
In addition to building business, the brand helps lawyers effectively take control and ownership of legal practices. Consequently, personal branding plays an important role in accelerating a lawyer’s journey toward professional achievement, increasing their value within the law firm, and contributing to the firm’s financial success. Not surprisingly, BigLaw supports its attorneys in developing their individual brands; those marks are just as important to individual lawyers as they are to the law firm.
Personal Brands Support BigLaw Brands
A diverse and strong personal brand creates exciting and dynamic law firms. Each BigLaw brand represents a collection of talent that inspires and engages attorneys and clients alike. BigLaw pays a large amount of expenses related to executive coaching, seminars, and extensive professional development programs for its attorneys. BigLaw fully supports its attorneys in the effort to create and maintain personal brands.
From their perspective, helping lawyers develop distinctive expertise and specialized skills elevates their lawyers and attracts new clients to the law firm, where, in addition to receiving high-quality legal services, these new clients will come to value the firm’s brand. of lawyers. In fact, the more numerous and stronger the brands of individual attorneys, the healthier and more productive the law firm will be, and the more effectively it will be able to attract clients, grow, and cross-sell its services. As a result, every brand law firm is filled with brand attorneys, in the ranks of partners and associates.
Business Brand vs. Personal Brand: Which Is The Better Investment?
To the extent that personal brands distinguish one attorney from another and generate recognition for professional excellence, they increase an attorney’s value within and outside of the law firm.
Now there’s a perfect storm of lawyer attrition and increased personal branding (in fact, social media makes personal branding easier than ever). Personal branding allows lawyers to maintain a web presence on both law firm websites and personal websites, and carefully select their respective brands on each.
Is it wise for BigLaw to continue to assume that its trademark will trump the personal and portable brands of its attorneys?
To win the long game, BigLaw can’t lose their stars to another team. Rather, your stars should recognize personal achievement but place a higher value on team success. The BigLaw brand will remain strong only if its attorneys can merge while maintaining ownership and autonomy over their various brands.
There will always be competition between BigLaw’s brands, but there should be no competition between any of BigLaw’s trademarks and the personal brands of its attorneys. By banding together — and scoring — together, just like the women of Penn Law, everyone has a victory to celebrate!