How To Build A Personal Brand

Table of Contents

• What is a personal brand?
• What is the difference between personal branding and PR?
• How do I create a personal brand?
• How Nexa can help you launch your own legal consultancy.

What do Jamie Oliver, David Beckham, and Richard Branson have in common? They have developed incredibly powerful personal brands. One of the secrets of growing your legal consultancy is to have an identifiable, effective personal brand so your existing clients seek your help for every legal problem they have, and prospective clients can quickly evaluate if you are the best lawyer for them.

What is a personal brand?

Your personal brand is how you present yourself to the world so clients can immediately identify with your legal services. A brand is a visual and verbal concept based on your values, aspirations, and how you see your professional self.

A strong brand provides a foundation for you to build your consultancy legal practice around. It is separate from the New Model Law Firm you might be working with, which will have its own brand and marketing.

What is the difference between personal branding and PR?

Personal branding is not the same as self-promotion; however, all the PR you do should be to support your brand. Rather, it is about knowing who you are and what you stand for professionally and ensuring this is communicated to your current and prospective clients.

A great example of brilliant personal branding is Maria Forleo. From her catchphrase “everything is figureoutable” to her positive, upbeat attitude, her unique brand radiates across every part of her business empire.

When it comes to lawyers, Amal Clooney nails personal branding. Yes, it helps that she’s married to a famous movie star and designers give her clothes and other goodies for free. But even before-George (BG), anyone who followed Amal’s career knew she was incredibly intelligent, compassionate, and devoted to protecting the human rights of some of the world’s most vulnerable people, including victims of mass atrocities and genocide.

How do I create a personal brand?

The key to developing your personal brand starts well before you go anywhere near Instagram, YouTube, or writing articles for legal publications.

Step One – Define your values and vision

Many lawyers choose to join a New Model Law Firm because they want to practice in a different way than how they were forced to work in a traditional law firm. One of the biggest motivations for joining us is our lawyers want the ability to earn as much as possible and be able to provide attentive, personal service to a level that is simply not possible as an employee. Spend some time working out what your values are, what you want your practice to bring to the world, and write your ideas down.

Step Two – Understand your clients

Powerful brands have a deep knowledge of who their clients/customers are, their frustrations, desires, behavior, and what keeps them awake at night. An excellent example of this is Chanel. When its founder, Coco Chanel was starting out, she recognized that existing fashions of the day meant women struggled to participate in sports, so she made practical designs that allowed them to move freely. Her little black dress (LBD) was created to allow women of all social classes to have a chic item in their wardrobe that could be dressed down for the day and glammed up for evening functions.

Step Three – Bring your values and vision into every aspect of your professional life

One successful businessperson I know decided the words that best described her vision and values were ‘heartfelt and practical’. Everything about her professional persona, from her website design, communications, even down to the way she dresses (floral frocks paired with trainers) embodies these concepts. This is how you create a brand, by figuring out what makes your legal practice unique and showing and telling this through everything you do.

Step Four – Call in the experts

Creating and implementing a personal brand strategy takes time and knowledge of disciplines such as marketing, social media, and PR. If you are busy building your legal consultancy and getting used to working in a New Model Law Firm, time is probably something you don’t have a lot of. Fortunately, there are people who live and breathe branding who can give you all the advice you need. Investing in professional advice will ensure you can develop a personal brand that will grow alongside your business and resonate with the clients you want to attract.

How Nexa Law can help you build a strong legal consultancy brand

Joining Nexa Law allows you to transition seamlessly into the world of consultancy. We provide marketing and will do everything possible to support you in creating your own personal brand.

If you’re thinking of launching your own legal practice, please give us a call. We would love to hear about your commercial ambitions and tell you how we can support them.

Schedule a call on +44 (0)3300 24 24 20 or fill in our contact form.

We look forward to celebrating your success.