By Erik Nelson
Personal branding is imperative because law firms are established and maintained based on the reputations of attorneys. Branding can help solidify your identity in the minds of potential clients and it helps to know what you are trying to achieve and how best to go about that. I spoke with two attorneys from a couple of San Diego’s best known firms: John Gomez, President and Lead Trial Attorney at Gomez Trial Attorneys; and John Morrell, Managing Partner and Chairman at Higgs, Fletcher & Mack LLP; as well as legal marketing expert Jennifer Whitelaw, of TW2 Marketing, to discover more about their particular approaches towards branding.
What is Branding?
Whitelaw: Positioning yourself, your career, and your firm as a brand; meaning to be known for some specific trait, expertise, or skill to a preferably targeted audience. The goal is to educate your circle of influence about how to refer you and your firm to potential clients and customers.
Morrell: A brand is a much more in-depth concept or range of ideas and communication than just somebody’s logo on the wall. The brand is what are you known for and what we are trying to do by our brand is reinforce what we stand for which is high quality professional services.
Gomez: Personal branding for me is both building an identity and living up to it.
Brand Development
Morrell: It is critical in brand building for an attorney to develop a particular ability within the law and to be known in the community for such. We want our lawyers to focus in on an area that is enjoyable to them, where they find interest, somewhere they want to develop their own niche. You don’t want to be a mile wide and an inch deep, you’re better off being 10 feet wide and 20 feet deep. Attorneys should focus on a few professional and civic organizations and become heavily involved in them. By virtue of being involved in leadership roles in the community you get to know people in influential positions that ultimately become your clients or will direct people to be your client, and they know you and know your capabilities.
Gomez: We first envisioned who we wanted to be as a group of trial lawyers. That was, lawyers that will fearlessly try cases and tirelessly help their communities. We then worked extraordinarily hard to actually live up to that vision by both trying cases and being active change agents both through dollars and sweat equity. Finally, with the work done and reputations established, we let our community know exactly who we are.
Branding Resources
Whitelaw: Social media offers myriad options like LinkedIn and Twitter, various blog platforms and both on-demand and live streaming video services like YouTube, Vine and Meerkat. Despite the limitless possibilities presented by social media, it still needs to be used in a way that’s consistent with your brand. Make sure you have a clear idea of what you want to convey and how you want to be known. Consider which platforms will best accomplish this and reach your target audience. Also, don’t over-commit to a social media campaign. It’s better to pick one platform to use consistently then to maintain an irregular presence on many.
Speaking engagements, whether obtained through a professional or community organization or part of a seminar hosted by your firm, can also help position you as an expert in your field, as can bylined articles and interviews in media publications. Rather than using these platforms to tout your own accomplishments, consider providing information that will be useful to readers and followers, but take caution not to represent your posts and presentations as legal advice without an established client-attorney relationship.
Awards often come with more than just bragging rights, many award programs are hosted by business or industry publications that then print information about the finalists and winners, offering yet another opportunity to position yourself and your firm as a leader in your field.
Final Thoughts
Gomez: What really determines success is how hard you are willing to work to live up to that brand, one client and one day at a time.
Morrell: Be an excellent lawyer so that you brand starts with your own particular performance as a professional, and that means internally and externally returning phone calls, your written product, the quality of your product, your honesty and integrity.
Whitelaw: Communicate with your referral sources on a regular basis, but make sure the communication you push out is valuable to them; don’t just fill up their inboxes and social media feeds. Everything you put out there (online and in person) should be consistent with your personal brand.
Erik Nelson is an attorney at law.
This article was originally published in the July/August 2015 issue of San Diego Lawyer.