It is bad news, law firms. You tell yourself and your colleagues that you are ready, able and willing to brand. The truth is, you are not even close. Despite the huge demand for information on branding and the article- or seminar-of-the-week marketing circus, most law firms are far from branding readiness.
Of the few firms that do reach the branding stage, even fewer know how to protect the brand and keep it perennially in the public mind.
It has been clear – during the 18 years we have been marketing law firms – that the general rules that apply to marketing in the product, retail and service sectors also apply here.
Selling legal services is different from selling breakfast cereal. But strategic planning, market research, advertising, positioning, public relations, direct mail and branding can all be applied and used effectively within the world of law firm marketing.
The real issue is whether law firms will make the investment needed to implement these tactics successfully. And specifically, whether the complicated art and science of branding can be translated and effectively applied to all the law firms that are sending off their minions to hear the self-appointed branding experts attempt to simplify the complex and sell their wares.
Branding is not as simple or as quick to accomplish as positioning. While a firm may achieve a position as the best intellectual property firm in the City of London, branding goes one step further.
In branding, a firm’s name becomes synonymous with a set of attributes or a level of quality, such as McDonald’s with fast-food burgers or Procter & Gamble with household products.
The firm can then use the equity of this brand reputation to market itself and to extend into different markets: for instance, from burgers to salads or from patent prosecution to litigation.
Types of brands
Some law firms are already brand names. Generally speaking, they have become brands because of two factors: longevity or leadership in a well-defined niche.
Let us offer a few examples. Because of their longevity, firms such as Cravath Swaine & Moore, Baker & McKenzie, Davis Polk & Wardwell and Piper & Marbury are all well-known brands – there are certainly others. We do not even need to use their full names in some cases. The mere mention of the name Cravath conjures up all of the images that the brand carries.
We are sure none of these firms ever set out to create a brand. They were probably not conscious that they were even nurturing or growing a brand. For lack of a better name, we will call this phenomenon ‘spontaneous branding’. In other words… it just happened.
Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom is the best example to illustrate what we will call ‘niche’ branding. When you think of the most important business deals, when you think of M&A work in the US, you think of Skadden Arps. Skadden Arps does not have the longevity of some of the firms mentioned above, but it has a special set of skills and quality that have become its brand.
In both of our spontaneous branding and niche branding examples, the firms involved dedicated no resources to develop the brand – no seminars, no lectures, no books and no consultants. And, to date, they have done relatively little to take advantage of the tremendous power of their brands.
Only a few of the branded law firms have begun to advertise in even the most modest ways. Brand extensions, except in the form of branch offices, have been almost non-existent.
