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| Daniela Conte |
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| Ben Girdlestone |
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| Leor Franks |
Brand is sometimes viewed as amorphous and intangible, its benefits not always easily quantifiable. However, an emerging breed of CEOs and management teams at the world's largest, most successful financial and professional service firms are increasingly realizing the tangible benefits of a strong brand and taking steps to capitalize on this.
In this article, we examine the concept of brand in the legal sector and the differences in law firm brands. We also share our thoughts on planning, executing, and measuring impact and overall performance, which may help shift priorities in the legal industry.
Daniela Conte looks at how branding has become an increasingly important function at law firms. Ben Girdlestone discusses how a law firm's brand can be defined and differentiated, and how U.S. and U.K. headquartered firms approach branding differently. Leor Franks shares insights on how law firms can effectively measure the performance of their brands.
Daniela Conte on a Failure to Plan
"Failing to plan is planning for failure," according to the old adage, and to some extent this might apply to how a large law firm approaches its brand.
Large, multinational firms — in recognition of the significance that their brands have on their respective revenues, recruitment and staff engagement — are moving toward more mindful management of their brands. This shift has been evident for some time, as law firms created dedicated roles to manage their public relations, communication, creative design, social media and other brand functions.
Brand functions have increasingly become professionalized, as evidenced by the recruitment of public relations teams that are able to deal with inquiries and incidents effectively and efficiently, across all time zones.
As the use of social media has become more widespread by lawyers and corporations, law firms have engaged specialist social media professionals who manage how their firm's brand is disseminated and promoted on platforms such as LinkedIn.
Given how many disciplines are affected by the concept of law firm brand — and the need to weave these threads together in a coordinated and integrated way — large firms are introducing even more specialized brand roles, such as director of brand. These roles ensure professionals are in situ to focus on building and protecting their firm's brand across jurisdictions in a more structured way.
More generally, larger law firms understand the integral role that brand plays in communicating and implementing major change within their own organization, and more time is now devoted to planning how these events should be branded.
Nowhere is this more evident than in law firm mergers, which use some of the most sophisticated rebranding techniques: compelling visuals, strong messaging, staff engagement and client briefings. Brand work has moved to front and center of what is a major business decision and has become a key aspect of planning for change management.
Ben Girdlestone on Defining a Brand
There are three distinct questions:
- What, in essence, is a law firm brand?
- How does one differentiate a law firm's brand?
- Do U.S.- and U.K.-headquartered firms approach the concept of brand differently?
Let us take each of these in turn.
A Law Firm's Brand
If one asks 20 different branding and communications professionals working in law firms to define the concept of a law firm brand, there will be 20 different answers. It is a challenging thing to define. In my opinion, a law firm's brand can be defined by one word: reputation.
Really, it is the perception of the firm by internal and external stakeholders — partners, staff, potential clients, current clients, former clients, referrers of work and regulatory bodies. How do they feel about the firm? Do they understand its values and what the firm stands for?
Effective Differentiation
The legal sector is conservative by nature. When minimizing and controlling risk is front and center in the majority of client work a firm undertakes, it is challenging to shift that mindset to being bold in respect of building a brand or, put differently, dialing up the various elements that together symbolize and represent a firm's reputation.
These comprise a number of components: most obviously a firm's name, but equally any taglines, logo, design, including the website, content materials and the built environment, as well as the tone of voice used internally and externally.
The first challenge is understanding that firms essentially all sell the same thing — expertise in blocks of time. Authentically describing one's work and the success it brings clients as a result is essential. When firms get this right, it is striking — and when they get it wrong it looks like an expensive mess. Sadly, there are too many examples of the latter.
The second challenge in effective differentiation is a very simple concept — consistency. Even the biggest law firms have historically made heavy weather of making their website, promotional materials, signage and other touch points look the same. This has certainly improved in the last decade.
Transatlantic Differences
Although U.S. firms make up a significant proportion of the London legal market following a sustained period of remarkable growth, they have a very different approach to brand than their U.K. counterparts.
U.S. firms see their brand as something to be controlled and protected at all costs. U.K. firms, generally speaking, want to grow and amplify their brands.
For many U.S. firms, tradition and heritage are front and center. This can be seen most clearly on firm websites with unabbreviated firm names, traditional fonts and a generally restrained approach. Generally speaking, U.S. firms are cautious on speaking publicly about certain issues; again, all designed to do no harm or shine a spotlight on their reputations.
U.K. firms, particularly, those outside the top 20, know they have to fight hard in a large and saturated market to differentiate, to be seen and to be understood. They will generally invest a bit more in external brand consultants and internal brand and communications professionals because the challenge is clear.
Notably, consolidation has long been a feature of the U.K. legal market, which is where of course brand professionals really earn their crust. Building a unified brand from two individual firms is the greatest challenge of all, starting with the name itself.
But how does one know when the brand is right?
Leor Franks on Measuring a Brand
"If you can't measure it, you can't improve it," so said management guru Peter Drucker.[1]
Effectively measuring the performance of a law firm's brand requires a degree of structure. We prefer the four-stage so-called favorability journey marketing audit toolkit,[2] which covers the recognition, reputation, relationships and revenue components of the business development and communications mix.
This enables assessment of the favorability of a client or target, with evaluation options that can be flexed depending on budget and timetable. Ideally, this mindset should be embedded in planning and executing business development and marketing, but it can also be retrofitted as a stand-alone so-called brand audit at any point, or as a yearly barometer to judge results of initiatives or events.
Recognition tools calculate how well a brand is known by target markets. Where time and budget allow, a representative survey of clients and targets is helpful. This would seek both quantitative and qualitative data. Best practice is to implement this on an unprompted, i.e., anonymous, basis via an external expert.
Where resources do not enable, firms can undertake internally using simple digital survey systems. Another low-cost, speedy option is to use public data from Google on the volume of searches or clicks for a firm's name, ideally benchmarked against competitors.
Reputation tools consider the sentiment of target markets toward a brand. A popular choice is to collate media coverage of the firm. This should cover both volume and tenor of articles. Digital methods today can make it quick and relatively cost-effective, and increasingly include social media comments among the inputs.
Another route for the legal market is to gather data on rankings in directories or award providers, and to compare to close competitors. Firms may additionally look at employee-led career sites, and for those who focus on consumers, attention must also be paid to online customer review platforms.
Relationship tools evaluate feedback from existing clients or referrers. Many larger U.S. and international law firms will already have programs for this purpose. For one-time or lower-value accounts, a simple e-survey is often used.
For retained or strategic customers, an in-person interview conducted by an independent board member or the firm's chief marketing officer can yield valuable insights, potentially head off issues, and even cross-sell additional services.
Best practice is for both methods to include qualitative and quantitative questions to enable pattern identification. Care should be taken to treat findings confidentially and, if needed, link to the firm's complaints process.
Revenue tools identify the strength of a brand for pricing cases and closing deals. Such analysis is rarely undertaken by medium-sized firms and may be a missed opportunity. At its simplest, seeking feedback on work won and opportunities lost can yield valuable insights.
Capturing data from conversations on fees, whether annual rate reviews, tenders, or one-off negotiations, can also be helpful. In larger markets where regulation allows, databases on rates and market share are available, which can be useful to compare against internal results. The key here is to systematically capture and interrogate information in a timely fashion.
Brand is often seen as intangible and hard to measure. Using a structured approach such as the favorability journey can provide insights for law firm leaders to understand the awareness and performance of their brand and identify options to improve their position.
Many tools exist to audit recognition, reputation, relationships and revenue, the choice of which will depend on budget, resources and mindset. Where possible, data from methods selected should be compiled into a favorability barometer and reviewed at least annually.
Well-managed firms are increasingly adopting such methodologies and will continue to outpace those who are yet to proactively manage their brands.
With a combination of careful planning, a strong understanding of differentiation, and an embedded approach to measurement, our experience is that law firm brands are a significant value-adding asset that require active engagement and management.
Daniela Conte is director of brand at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
Ben Girdlestone is joint managing director at Byfield Reputation Counsel.
Leor Franks is chief business development and marketing officer at Kingsley Napley LLP.
The opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of their employer, its clients, or Portfolio Media Inc., or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.
[1] Peter Drucker - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker#Personal_life.
[2] Favourability Journey - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/favourability-journey-leor-franks.
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