First, there was the Magic Circle. Then, those nice people at The Lawyer brought us the Silver Circle. Now, The Firm Identity suggests the next roundness-inspired taxonomy for law firms: the Knitting Circle.
Eh? The Knitting Circle, so called because it represents all the firms looking to merge. We all know who they are, even if they don’t publicly admit to it. The question is, what does an intention to merge do for one’s brand?
It can be damaging. Unmanaged merger rumours can make a firm appear desperate and insecure, alienating potential clients and (perhaps more importantly) potential employees. Far better, I suspect, to be reasonably open about one’s intentions, admitting that there is a growth strategy that might be realised by an association with a firm that meets stringently applied, pre-planned criteria.
Incidentally, in the exciting world of LSA-pocalypse, which firm will be the first to merge with a non-legal organisation? Serious and creative suggestions welcome.
Here’s an article on the BBC site about ‘sonic branding‘, which discusses the prevalence of ‘micro jingles’ for technology firms, in particular Nokia and Intel. Basically, it appears that these are quite good for marketing, even if they do make most of us want to run screaming from the room and wreak firearm-related havoc in the local sub-post office.
So the semi-frivolous question that has to follow is: what role does (or perhaps more accurately, will) audio play in your firm’s marketing efforts? Now, I’m not suggesting that any minute now a magic circle firm is going to launch a Smash or Shake ‘n’ Vac style ad for litigation work. But the more you think about it, the richer our media channels become, the more that music, the human voice and sounds effects will be needed in order to create rounded, engaging messages.
The OC has made a bid to squeeze the ’sheds and others out of the ‘firm of the future’ slot on the legal marketing spectrum. Not only have they adopted a new futuristic illustration style on their web site, but they’ve also updated their logo to one that makes them look rather more sleek and aggressive.
Up until recently, the OC logo looked like this. Not any more.
The UK’s first nationwide network law brand rolls out as we speak, with ‘Quality Solicitors’ tarting up independent High Street firms the length and breadth of the country. This seems like a sound approach to creating brand equity in advance of the forthcoming ‘TescoLaw’ apocalypse, and it has to be said that despite the audible sniffing of many legal commentators QS appears to have got a lot a things right.
What’s working? Basically, a no-nonsense web site that makes buying law look as comfortable as buying a sofa, a reluctance to overcomplicate web architecture and office re-launches with stars from reality TV series and popular soaps.
As of May 1st we find ourselves living in a post-Lovells era, when the merger between the hardy Holbornites and Hogan & Hartson went live. But where are the trumpets, the star endorsements, the ticker tape parades? Nowhere. Instead we find the new age heralded by a very modest – almost apologetic – web site.
Perhaps it’s just a lack of time, or a feeling that the legacy sites were more than adequate in terms of positioning the firm(s). Perhaps they don’t want to be seen to be chucking dollars around whilst clients are still weeping into their end-of-years.
Maybe, perhaps, in a week or two there’ll be a site that makes Coca-Cola’s look like Topps Tiles’. But for now, there’s little that actively differentiates, and what looks like a whole lot of box-ticking.
I’ve just read Andrew Pugh’s excellent summary, in The Lawyer, of the recent round table discussion of the US-based Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC). In it, Pugh reports thoughts from several of the world’s most eminent general counsel, including those from companies big enough to buy up and spit out even the largest global law firms.
In summary, the essence of the dialogue was as follows: in-house budgets are likely to remain flat, technology needs to be leveraged and work standardised to further drive down costs, and that external counsel will need to offer reduced costs for non-strategic work and provide fixed-fee solutions that allow for GCs to work with flat, rather than variable, budgets.
Of particular interest was the idea that relationships don’t exist with firms so much as with the partners within them. That said, what does it mean for branding, particuarly as a business development tool?
It’s no accident that this column so regularly delves into the world of digital. After all, the corporate website often acts as a reasonably accurate shop-window of everything a firm does and everything it has to say about itself. But how long is that going to be the case? We’re starting to see firms build websites with the user experience at the top of the agenda. Sites that wrap themselves around a simple proposition – “what do you want from us?”. It’s a giant leap is a profession that’s still playing catch-up against rival professional services marketing methodologies. But is it sustainable?
Just been wandering around the site of Access Legal, Shoosmiths’ ‘post-LSA brand’, according to Legal Week. Access Legal (which I shall call AL, as Paul Simon almost said) is a big plastic pot into which the Shoosters are chucking all their volume business. Conveyancing, personal injury, medical negligence – the kind of itty-bitty ambulance chasery that clogs up an otherwise perfectly decent episode of Countdown.
As a bellwether for ‘Tesco Law’, what does AL teach us? Largely, that brand-building is harder than it looks, especially if you don’t edit your copy proficiently.
Now, we discussed CMS Cameron McKenna and the ‘Reflect’ customer relationship management programme a couple of weeks ago. Subsequently, those wags at Roll on Friday have run an update in which they reveal how the firm is publicising the initiative internally with the aid of posters stuck up in the company toilets.
Like this:
Now, we don’t want to lower ourselves to ROF’s deeply smutty standards by making all the obvious gags. (Well, perhaps one or two might slip through.) But there is a semi-serious question here: is this a media platform that could become a long-term contributor to the bottom line, or merely a flash in the pan? (Told you.)
Remember the good old days, when lawyers were lawyers? When everyone dressed like Captain Mainwaring and hung around El Vino talking knowledgeably about Suez and its possible influence on the Glyndebourne season? In Latin?
Well, if that’s the way you think then you’ll be one of the many appalled by the latest gizmo on offer to the partners and associates at Camerons. Called ‘Reflect’, it’s an application which gives lawyers things to talk about when entertaining clients.
The Lawyer headlined its story, ‘Camerons to generate cocktail chat from a computer’, with editor Catrin Griffiths labelling it ‘faintly depressing’ and an example of how ‘even normal business interaction has fallen prey to systematisation’.
