When you think of a big soft drink company, which brand comes to mind? How about computer company? Luxury cars?

If you answered Coca-Cola, Apple and Mercedes, then you are not alone. I recently listened to a presentation by Tony Robbins on the importance of owning your personal brand. In the presentation, he asked the same three questions to his audience. Unsurprisingly, more than 90 percent of the room identified the same three brands.

Unlike the big name brands mentioned above, your law firm most likely operates on a more local scale. That doesn’t mean that your brand is not just as important. Your brand is your virtual handshake. It represents you, your firm and the good will you have developed in your community.

Think about the example above.

What would it mean for your law firm if every time someone in your market thought of legal services, they thought of you?

Achieving that level of market recognition isn’t going to come without an investment in developing your brand, no matter how great your service is.

Why Is Law Firm Branding So Important?

We are currently working with a lawyer that recently launched a new law firm. After years of working with a large, high-volume personal injury firm, she decided it was time to step out onto her own. She is a tough litigator with years of experience working on high value personal injury cases.

But her biggest challenge starting out is that no one knew about her new law firm. In fact, in her market, there are two, maybe three, lawyers that dominate the airwaves, Google Ad results, sports stadiums and billboards. She needed a pipeline of new cases, and fast.

Despite the tough competition and market saturation, this attorney is now handling over 100 cases.

How did she do it? Was it expensive PPC campaign? A TV ad? Radio? While she has pursued those types of campaigns, a lot of her early success comes from a strong brand. From the outset, she invested time, energy and money to develop a recognizable logo, color palette and tone of voice that has come to pay dividends as she pursues more aggressive marketing strategies. In fact, her strategies are now informed by her own branding!

Like most law firms, this attorney still gets most of her business from referrals. That doesn’t mean her branding is any less important. In fact, branding may be even more important for her referral pipeline. For example, many of her leads call her office after receiving her brochure from a chiropractor. They then look up her website. And, if they live in the community she serves, they most likely have seen her billboard.

That means there are three touches that a referral source has with her firm before they decide to give her a call. On all three of those touches, her branding is consistent from the logo all the way down to the fonts she uses.

Want to create a recognizable brand for your law firm? Here are the most important things to consider when creating a brand identity

Mission Statement

Your mission statement is the crux of your business, and is a great starting point as you begin to create your brand identity.

The author Simon Sinek asks business owners to start with why. Why are you doing what you do? What is your purpose? Yes, it is important to describe who you are and what you do, but describing why you do it creates a strong message that people can connect with on an emotional level.

By identifying your mission, your purposes, your why, you can begin to develop other aspects of your brand such as a tagline, color scheme and logo.

Logo

Your law firm’s logo is often the first thing someone will use to associate you with your law firm. A good logo is strong, aesthetically pleasing, timeless and unique. It should help you stand out from your competition and be instantly recognizable.

But beyond that, your logo should be a representation of your law firm. Great branding pulls in your logo, colors, fonts and messaging across all aspects of your business. That means letterhead, folders, pens, your website, billboards, business cards - you name it. Developing a logo that uses primary and secondary colors with multiple layout variations and iconography is important as you look to create these assets for your firm.

Tone

The tone of your ad copy is equally as important in attracting your ideal client. Should you use an aggressive tone? Should you employ more compassionate language? Should you use terms of art, or write for laymen? The answer depends on who your client is and your law firm’s culture.

Consistency

Once your branding is complete, it is critical for you and your team to create specific guidelines as to how your brand will be used. This includes sticking to specific fonts, color palettes, and logo treatments - no matter where they are used.

Remember the lawyer I mentioned before? She took her logo and branding colors to create collateral for her office and for her clients. Moreover, she put her logo on cupcakes and other baked goods that she could send to referral partners. Her branding is prevalent across all of her marketing channels, such as her website, brochures and billboards. Even her social media posts are branded and consistent in tone, color and style.

Creating Your Brand

At NOMOS Marketing, our design team works with clients to develop a brand that bespeaks your law firm’s values and representation. We’ve developed a law firm branding process, where we ask open ended questions to develop your mission statement, tagline and unique culture. From there, we go through multiple branding rounds until we arrive at a logo, color palette and typeface combination that represents your law firm’s values. The end result is a full branding package with everything you need to set your law firm apart from the crowd.

Are you interested in developing a new brand for your firm, or just need a logo refresh? Contact us today to discuss your needs. We’ll walk you through our process and offer advice on how to get started.