Law firm branding: joining the dots

In brief

• Key scenarios in which communication breakdowns and internal discord see law firms struggling to deliver a coherent and convincing brand message.
• A positive example of a chambers working together to completely overhaul its brand image, while ensuring that every staff member is on board with its values and goals.

‘What’s the point spending tens (or hundreds) of thousands of pounds and endless hours building a law firm brand, if clients’ experience doesn’t match the hype?’

This was the question we discussed at LegalCX 2022, a legal marketing event run by client experience experts Insight6. We all agreed that where there is a disconnect—for example, in the communication between marketing and legal partners and staff—this can completely undermine a legal brand.

And it wasn’t just us in the room that thought this. In preparation for the event, Kysen surveyed 30 lawyers and legal marketeers, on LinkedIn and directly by email, and found an astonishing 60% believe law firms need to do much better in joining the dots between PR messaging and what actually happens between lawyers and their clients on the ground.

One respondent commented: ‘Lawyers often see marketing as “hype”, rather than a reflection of what they do and how they approach it’, so in many firms there isn’t even an expectation that the two should marry up.

Another, a consultant specialising in helping law firms market for growth, said: ‘We don’t think law firms are good in general at understanding what it is their clients value about them, nor at leveraging the customer feedback that they do have’, let alone making sure PR messaging connects up with this.

And another delegate made us laugh and wince in equal measure by reminding us of the time some years ago a high-profile Top 25 law firm, famous for its friendly, customer-focused brand, was blacklisted by Google because of its aggressive marketing tactics. That was a disconnect (hashtag #understatement!).

A couple of scenarios discussed on the day illustrate the point…

Scenario 1: Communication breakdown

A firm’s marketing team holds back from sharing information with partners about what they’re doing, fearing unreasonable demands and criticism. The more they do this, the more frustrated partners become: mutterings of ‘I’ve no idea what our marketing people do all day’ echo around the firm’s corridors, making the business development and communications teams withdraw even further from dialogue with the lawyers.

The marketing team is happy to work with the ‘nice’ partners, or those with time and enthusiasm for marketing, or practice areas that are easy for lay people to understand, such as employment (we all have jobs, right?) or are immediately sexy, like sports law. They ignore the fact that the priority for the business is actually to push its stand-out niche in complex litigation of hard-to-fathom financial disputes.

Moreover, because the lawyers and marketeers aren’t talking to one another properly, those important exchanges about what’s actually important to clients never take place. As all of us in this room know, often it’s not about legal expertise at all—this is often assumed—but instead it’s about service and whether clients feel their lawyer is ‘in their corner’.

So the firm’s marketing messages completely miss the mark, despite the money spent on expensive events and promotional campaigns. As a result, partners and lawyers disengage from the marketing team even further… meaning the marketeers withdraw further and communicate even less, becoming even more fearful of criticism… and so the vicious cycle continues.

The result? A very confused and weak brand.

One commentator made a distinction between how law firms fare in the legal services/expertise space, compared to the environmental, social, and governance (ESG)/employer brand space. ‘With the latter, I think there is a lot of overplay here—too much charter-signing, the right words in the right places, but not always as quick with the action.’

Scenario 2: Hypocritical hype

A firm spends £50,000 and hundreds of hours carefully planning a campaign to set it apart from competitors. The marketing team have approached this intelligently, being highly strategic in their approach, focusing the campaign tightly around the partnership’s primary business objective to attract bigger clients and better calibre recruits. They’ve thought long and hard about the profile of the firm’s target audiences—big company client prospects and high-calibre recruitment candidates—and what matters to them, so they know the right messages to put across that will truly resonate: the campaign is focused on the firm’s unique approach to wellbeing, making it clear that it’s more than a buzz-phrase by showing that the firm goes above and beyond what competitors do in this area.

The firm has ‘Charters’ to point to, promising excellent service while promoting healthy working practices for clients as well as staff, and the marketing team have thought carefully about how best to reach the right audiences in delivering this message.

They’ve even planned how to synchronise this communication across the firm’s various different channels—website, social media, press, advertising, events, etc—for a truly co-ordinated effort, ‘chiming’ the activity for maximum impact. They’ve thought of everything!

The campaign works! The firm is soon famous for taking wellbeing to another level, setting it apart from firms that only pay lip-service. It’s become a big part of its brand—and is also highly successful as a means of getting the firm noticed.

And then…

…an email from the Head of Corporate, calling associates ‘snowflakes’ for not wanting to burn the midnight oil and questioning their commitment for wanting to work office hours only, is leaked to the legal press.

Of course it is.

Overworked junior lawyers have become increasingly disgruntled at the hypocritical hype being churned out by the firm’s marketing machine. There’s so much disenfranchisement in this part of the firm, any one of the associates could have leaked the story.

And because it runs directly counter to the firm’s public image, of course the press has a field day. Over the next weeks and months, journalists continually dig to find more and more stories of how the reality at the firm falls so short of the shiny brand promise. Oh dear. All that money promoting the brand completely wasted. Worse, those bigger potential clients that the campaign was designed to attract are now actively put off by the firm’s tarnished image. And the better recruitment candidates look elsewhere. No one takes the firm seriously for years.

So how can firms avoid this disastrous disconnect? One seasoned legal marketeer emphasised the importance of the firm’s leaders having confidence in the marketing team, and vice versa. ‘It’s a two-way street’, she said. ‘Marketing works best in a firm when the lawyers you are involving in a campaign know it is supported from the top and that the leadership team respects and takes advice from the senior marketeers on messaging and brand. And by leaders I don’t just mean the managing partner or management committee, but HR and the other functions within a firm as well. Without this, you can’t hope to match the “hype” and the internal reality.’

Kysen couldn’t agree more. In the consultancy’s experience, the most successful legal brands come as a result of open, frank and frequent dialogue between the firm’s function heads: where marketing, management, human resources, professional development and finance all work together as one in understanding, developing and then promoting the firm’s true points of difference over competitors.

A lesson in working together

We wrapped up our discussion at LegalCX with a positive story, which shows what can be achieved when a legal business organisation gets this connectivity right.

In 2021, Kysen had the privilege of working with (then) Hardwicke Chambers on its renaming to Gatehouse, together with the RCR Partnership, when the set decided to sever associations with its former namesake and slave trade supporter Lord Hardwicke in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. This was one of the boldest and most positive moves I’d seen in law in my entire career. The premises of Hardwicke Building, named by Lincoln’s Inn, was the set’s home from 1991 and gave it its name. But once it was discovered, the history of the name did not sit comfortably with their barristers and staff. The set moved as one to rebrand, because everyone, at every level and in every corner of chambers, was so bought in to its values.

Working closely with CEO Amanda Illing on this was a privilege, and an education in how to bring people along with your thinking and create true consensus across all the different parts of the business. And it was inspiring to see a set so unified in its brand values. Marshalling over 100 barristers, plus staff, getting everyone to agree to something as emotive as what their set is going to be called, is no mean feat! I had the pleasure of sitting in on the multiple focus groups she ran with the always delightful Charles Bagot KC in what they called the ‘Working Title’ group, to develop the new name. I can tell you she was masterful in corralling all the different parts of chambers and getting everyone working together as one. It also says a lot about the culture of collaboration at this particular set of chambers: it was amazing to see how effectively and harmoniously everyone worked together.

At the same time the new brand was being worked on, they were also running an ambitious refurbishment project of a building they were planning to move to: their new and very impressive home in Gray’s Inn at 1 Lady Hale Gate. Their new chambers is a physical statement of how successful their rebrand has been—and how far they have moved on: their new accommodation looks nothing like a barristers’ chambers, instead channelling a smart, City law firm: spacious, sleek interiors, and not a single piece of wood panelling in sight! It boasts state-of-the-art facilities for hosting virtual hearings, and even a party space on the top floor with an amazing terrace overlooking the whole of Gray’s Inn. As I said at the time, it is a physical representation of how Gatehouse has given everyone a new perspective on the Bar.

This uplifting story shows the possibilities when everyone in a legal business has bought into the same values—and is keen to join the dots between brand messaging and action on the ground!

Clare Rodway is managing director of specialist professional services consultancy Kysen PR (www.kysenpr.co.uk).

Others contributing to the discussion via responses to the LinkedIn/email survey were:

• Victoria Thomson and Louise Beddoes, SA Law
• Victoria Ash, The RCR Partnership
• Isabel Bertram, Radcliffe Chambers

All were asked only to share observations from previous roles, not their current firms, to promote candid responses.