It’s almost 2023, and your client base wants to know who you are on a deeper level than just where you went to law school and the latest client alert you authored on your law firm’s website.
While we have a ton of resources focused on beefing up marketing for entire firms, we’re talking about individual attorney branding today, and it’s a topic that should pique the interest of attorneys at firms of all sizes. Relying exclusively on a firm’s brand to market your services as an individual attorney is a big mistake.
We’re in a new age of marketing that relies heavily on human-to-human interaction and authenticity, and more than half of consumers are conscientious and strategic in their search for service providers and are willing to pay more to engage with providers with whom they connect and understand.
What is your personal brand strategy saying to your prospective client base? Is your brand voice even speaking to them at all?
Your brand as an attorney matters now more than ever. Upon hearing the name of your law firm or especially a referral for you as an attorney, most every prospect and referral source will run straight to Google. If what is returned on Google doesn’t align with what you state is your practice area of expertise, that creates a big problem.
In this digital-first world, there is an expectation that you will have a digital presence and that your digital presence will be authoritative and credible.
So, how do you build a personal attorney brand that strengthens your legal practice and can build authority and connections with potential clients within and outside of your law firm’s marketing strategy?
Let’s talk through four attorney branding tips:
- Identify What You Want to Be Known for in the Legal Industry
- Choose a Clear and Compelling Statement for Your Personal and Law Firm’s Brand
- Create Cohesion in Your Personal Lawyer and Law Firm Branding
- Leverage Your Personal and Law Firm Brand With Video
Identify What You Want to Be Known for in the Legal Industry
Good branding, especially one’s personal brand, means more than simply putting together an effective logo or creating an appealing letterhead for yourself. It is messaging that reflects your values, commitment to client service, and core messages. A strong brand is a differentiator that can boost your reputation and attract clients… with the right messaging.
So who are you, and what do you want to be known for in the legal industry?
You’ve gone to law school, you’ve succeeded in a host of internships, and you’ve put in the time to hone your skills and excel in a specific practice area, right? Though you likely can provide excellent legal services in a variety of practice areas, prospective clients want to know where you shine and why they need you specifically.
Think of iconic tv-drama trickster-turned-lawyer Jimmy McGill, aka Saul Goodman. Jimmy was a struggling attorney trying to build a strong brand for himself but was spreading his expertise a bit too thin. He was casting a wide net and hoping to collect any business he could, which didn’t build expertise or authority in the plethora of practice areas he touted… that was until he narrowed in on his focus and what he really wanted to be known for doing well.
If you’ve not seen the show we’re talking about, the Cliffnotes version is that this struggling attorney, Jimmy McGill, completely transformed himself and his book of business with a niche down of his areas of service and his values. He literally made a new name for himself outside of being a problematic personal injury attorney and built a successful (albeit legally questionable) firm and book of business, all based on his new and niched-down brand.
We’re not saying you should change your name or get into business with the cartel like Jimmy/Saul, but we can take a few notes from his playbook and branding strategy. Jimmy/Saul wanted to be financially successful and didn’t mind operating on the outer parameters of the law and serving like-minded clients.
In a less made-for-TV fashion, let’s look at how to practically niche down your services and core values into a branded message on how you want to be known in your field.
Think clearly about what specific type of client you want to serve. For example, instead of being a trademark attorney, you might want to be a trademark attorney who serves e-commerce companies in the drop-shipping space. Clearly identifying who you want to serve and in what capacity pretty much writes your brand strategy for you!
Do you see how specificity can be your friend here? That leads us to your next step…
Choose a Clear and Compelling Statement for Your Personal and Law Firm’s Brand
Your brand promise should be succinct and able to be summed up into a clear and compelling statement about who you are and the clients you serve.
We recommend narrowing down key messages and sticking to one. It should be a clear and compelling message that helps communicate what you do and who you serve with specificity.
The way many lawyers do this is they do what we just did in the last step and then stop instead of elaborating and adding an emotional element. You see, a compelling, strong brand statement evokes an emotional response. And, here’s an even bigger secret:
The brand voice that attract the best clients are the ones that speak to their prospect’s core desires.
For example, the trademark attorney who works with e-commerce companies in the drop-shipping arena may create lawyer branding that looks something like this:
“The trademark attorney who elevates your business from part-time side hustle to full-time founder.”
Do you see how this lawyer’s work is clearly identified, his target audience is defined, and there’s an element of emotion and encouragement that speaks to every scale of drop-shipping professional the attorney hopes to call his client!?
Re-formulating how you write your brand statement can tap into your prospect’s dreams and deepest desires, which is pretty darn compelling, don’t you think?
Our next step takes the emotional elements and clearly defined service offerings and expands them.
Create Cohesion in Your Personal Lawyer and Law Firm Branding
Great lawyer branding goes beyond a tagline – it is woven into all of your marketing. Here’s how to do that. First, you have to re-introduce yourself to the world with your new personal brand message across the platforms on which you speak to your client base and the world.
This means updating your LinkedIn profile with your new brand statement, weaving your new personal branding statement into your firm bio, and even thinking about how you can relate this personal branding statement back to all aspects of your marketing.
For example, the trademark attorney focused on drop-shipping e-commerce businesses might re-write his headline to read: “Trademark Attorney who helps e-commerce drop-shipping owners elevate their business from part-time side hustle to full-time founder.”
In turn, that same attorney will create a posting schedule on LinkedIn and other social media platforms that help him convey his personal brand to his followers and connections with articles, insight, and common outreach that all point back and promote the brand identity.
In this specific example, the trademark attorney may realize most drop-shippers are worried about other businesses copying their work, so the strongly branded trademark attorney here may create an entire series of LinkedIn posts about the importance of protecting your brand name, logo, and identity from copycats and imitators.
The more continuity the trademark attorney creates in regular social media content and shows up in public settings with his or her new personal brand, the more likely referral sources and clients will start to associate him or her with that brand.
You might be thinking this is so much more work on top of the billable hours and outreach you already perform, but there is a lot of repurposing that can be done with your existing work that can help create brand consistency on social channels. That series of posts on drop-shipping protection from the trademark attorney was easily put together from a recent client brief or white paper the attorney had already created. Think of it as reformatting your work for the masses!
Speaking of leveraging your work and reformatting messaging in engaging ways… lights, camera, ACTION!
Leverage Your Personal and Law Firm Brand With Video
Yep, we’re talking about video… again! We bet you know why we keep touting the powers of video, even if you’re adamantly against it. It’s everywhere, and video messaging is only growing, and it’s not as difficult as you may think.
Many lawyers mistakenly believe that using video in their marketing is going to be a huge time investment and hard pull off successfully. This is absolutely wrong. We actually find that the lawyers willing to leverage video spend less time on marketing than any of our clients.
Video has many advantages for lawyer branding. Video helps build that human-to-human connection we mentioned at the start of this video, but the most important advantage of video is that it can be easily repurposed. We told you we’re about saving time and repurposing over here.
One piece of video content can be transformed into audio, written content, social media posts, visual graphics, and even more micro-video or short-form content. This means one twenty-minute video can become a full 1,2000 word article on LinkedIn, several social media posts, a short-form video, and even a potentially entertaining infographic or carousel post to use on your firm website, in email campaigns, and across every single social platform known to man.
We’ve even seen that when lawyers embrace video marketing, they get far more opportunities to display their own lawyer branding before large audiences, like the press. This is because when the press sees you have camera presence and you can distill complex legal topics into digestible information, they are far more likely to reach out to you than the next lawyer – you know this is true for invites to moderate professional panels and speak at conferences, as well.
This is how video allows lawyers to build the most authoritative, credible and valuable brand identity. As you can see, when you have brand identity that is credible and authoritative, you and the services you provide become more valuable.
This is powerful because it means you don’t have to rely on law firm branding. It doesn’t matter if you work for a big firm, a small firm, or are a solo practitioner at your own firm. You hold the power to choose where you work, the brand you build, what opportunities you want to pursue, and how many hours you want to work.
Bonus Tips for Law Firms Looking to Leverage Their Brand and Attorney Brands
If you found these tips helpful, and want to learn more about expanding your own brand identity or to help your law firm’s attorneys create a stronger brand, check out our available free resources and check back in with us soon for a deep dive into one of our most favorite platforms… LinkedIn.
We know many law firms are still dipping their toe into video, but most firms require their attorneys to have a presence on LinkedIn. Are your attorneys’ profiles consistent with your law firm brand? Reach out to us to learn about LinkedIn training and best practices for attorneys and successful law firm leveraging.
