Keys to Success: Professional Development Tips for Young Lawyers — Rainmaking Through Personal Branding for Young Attorneys
At the heart of any attorney’s marketing and business development efforts is his or her personal brand. In the ultra-competitive market for legal services, your personal brand can give you a distinct advantage in winning business by standing out and developing a visible and differentiated presence in the legal market. Conversely, a poorly defined or managed brand can hamper your ability to generate business or, at a minimum, result in significant lost opportunities to drive business growth.
Your brand is a value proposition—distinct and unique from your competition—that sets you apart and differentiates you from all of the other attorneys who provide similar legal services. Branding encompasses the psychological aspects—feelings, perceptions, opinions, attitudes—of your skills and behaviors, as well as the services that you deliver. Importantly, your brand is defined by the qualities that people think of when they think of you. Maya Angelou penned it perfectly: “… people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” That is the essence of your personal brand.
Effective branding requires a calculated, focused effort to strategically articulate and promote how your legal skillset, talents, and expertise make you uniquely qualified to skillfully resolve a client’s most pressing and complex legal problems. In order to develop an effective, impactful personal brand, determine what exactly you want people to think of you, both professionally and personally, as well as what differentiates you from your competition, and then determine how you will successfully articulate and convey that message. Once you have nailed down the contours of your personal brand, strategically leverage that message by utilizing those platforms and activities which will have the greatest impact in terms of allowing you to expose and promote your messaging to your target market.
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“Keys to Success: Professional Development Tips for Young Lawyers — Rainmaking Through Personal Branding for Young Attorneys,” by David J. Oberly was published in the May/June 2019 edition of CBA Report, a Cincinnati Bar Association publication. Reprinted with permission.