BigLaw: a long-time investor in the brand market

The BigLaw brand

In our age of competition and connectivity, law firms face an unprecedented challenge from the brand, and BigLaw, the largest and most successful law firms in the world, tend to play long-term. For BigLaw to “win,” you must continue to enhance your business brand to attract and retain your clients and attorneys. The question is: Are your attorneys playing the same game?

Personal branding

In today’s mobile job market, many lawyers may be shortening the market. And they have the tools to do it; the same standard equipment that BigLaw gives each attorney when they join the team. Any attorney intending to “win” 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.

Personal brands distinguish lawyers

At the Inaugural Penn Law School Women’s Summit, approximately 200 members of the Penn Law community gathered to celebrate the leadership and pioneering work of Penn’s national and international attorneys. As the Summit made clear, the women of Penn Law have many victories, marks and more 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 events. commercial.

In addition to building business, the brand helps lawyers take control and effectively own legal practices. Consequently, personal branding plays an important role in accelerating an attorney’s journey to professional achievement, increasing their value within the law firm and contributing to the firm’s financial success. Not surprisingly, BigLaw supports its attorneys in the development of their individual brands; Those marks are as important to individual attorneys as they are to the law firm.

Personal Brands Support BigLaw Brands

Strong and diverse personal branding creates exciting and dynamic law firms. Each BigLaw brand represents a collection of talents that inspires and attracts attorneys and clients alike. BigLaw pays a large amount of expenses related to executive coaches, seminars, and extensive professional development programs for its attorneys. BigLaw fully supports its attorneys in the effort to create and maintain personal brands.

From his perspective, helping attorneys develop distinctive experience and specialized skills elevates their attorneys and brings 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 robust the individual law brands, the healthier and more productive the law firm will be, and the more effectively it can attract clients, grow, and cross-sell its services. As a result, every brand name law firm is filled with brand name attorneys, in the ranks of partners and associates.

Brand versus personal brand: which is the best investment?

To the extent that personal brands distinguish one attorney from another and generate recognition for professional excellence, they increase the value of an attorney inside and outside the law firm.

Now there’s a perfect storm of lawyer churn and a rise in personal branding (in fact, social media makes personal branding easier than ever). Personal branding enables attorneys to maintain a web presence on both law firm and personal web sites, and carefully select their respective marks on each of them.

Is it wise for BigLaw to continue to assume that its trademark will triumph over its attorneys’ personal and wearable marks?

To win the long game, BigLaw cannot lose its stars to another team. Rather, your stars should recognize personal accomplishments, but value team success more. The BigLaw brand will remain strong only if its attorneys can merge, but also maintain ownership and autonomy over its distinctive brands.

There will always be competition between BigLaw brands, but there should be no competition between any BigLaw trademark and the personal brands of its attorneys. By grouping and scoring together, just like the women of Penn Law, everyone has a victory to celebrate!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *