For the third year in a row, one of the largest law firms in the United States is being hailed as the firm with the “strongest brand” in the United States,

According to the Acritas U.S. Law Firm Brand Index for 2019, global law firm Jones Day—a firm with more than 2,500 lawyers and 43 offices worldwide—scored the top score (100 points) on the annual survey by the legal market intelligence company.

A total of 23 firms ranked in the top-20 spots (with several point ties, including four firms tied for the 20^th spot).

A number of Pennsylvania firms made this list of top brands. (If yours was one of them— congratulations!)

So why do I bring this up?

Because there is a lot of confusion about what it is—and isn't—a brand.

Because this survey measured brand awareness with a discrete group of buyers of legal services—which while very important to the firms on the list, may not represent your clients or the work that you do.

And because you and your firm can have a very strong brand—a brand that your clients and prospects identify with—even if you never make it anywhere near this list.

What a Brand Is—And Isn't

Despite all of the focus on brands and branding, I haven't found a universally accepted definition of what a “brand” is.

So let's start with what your brand isn't.

Your brand is not your logo. It's also not your website, your printed marketing collateral, your practice capabilities descriptions or your attorney bios.

Those are all expressions of your brand to the outside world—often called your “brand identity.”

Companies from global household names to tech startups, law firms and consultancies pay a lot of time, attention and money to developing, protecting and promoting their trademarks, logos and other brand identity elements. And for good reason: the assets are the (hopefully) recognized symbols and shorthand for how they want the people that make the buying decisions to remember them.

But you can't develop an effective brand identity without really knowing and understanding your brand.

My friend John Miller, from content marketing firm Scribewise, writes: “Your brand is your story and your story is your strategy. In other words, your brand becomes your business strategy. Now, the actual strategy will get into far more details, but the best companies have a deep understanding of who they are, and who they aren't. That is their brand.”

I like this expression of what a brand is, because it highlights the duality of branding—knowing who you are, what you do and for whom you do it—and understanding who you are not.

To take that idea one step further, it means making decisions in line with you are and ignoring the rest.

Another critical piece of the brand puzzle is this: Your brand is not who you say you are, it's how the market perceives you.

In other words, your actual brand—out there in the market—is not what your marketing says about you, but how your clients and prospects experience working with you and interacting with you and your firm.

The goal of branding is really to close the gap between who you are and what you do, and how your relevant market perceives you.

Which leads me back to the “strongest brands” list.

The U.S. Law Firm Brand Index

The Acritas brand ranking is derived from data collected annually from Sharplegal—a survey of 2,000 in-house counsel from 55 countries “who have senior responsibility for buying legal services in organizations with revenues of $50 million and above.” The U.S. Law Firm Brand Index uses a cut of the data: 624 phone interviews with U.S. in-house counsel and 258 non-U.S.-based senior legal buyers, conducted between December 2017 and November 2018.

The Sharplegal survey involves more than 50 questions. The Acritas ranking focuses on five: top-of-mind awareness; favorability; consideration for top-level litigation; consideration for major M&A work and most used overall.

To be clear, I am not finding fault with the analysis, its methodology or its findings. It's a data-driven ranking of big-name law firms that provides useful information about the legal services market in the United States.

And it's a snapshot of a discrete segment of a very large and diverse market. If this isn't your market, then it shouldn't drive your brand strategy.

So, What's Your Brand?

Building a strong brand requires that you know who your clients are and what their actual needs, wants and challenges are (from a business, personal and legal perspective), and that you align both your business development strategies and your marketing messaging with that information.

It requires asking questions—both internally and externally. Without both sets of information, your branding won't be the strongest it can be and, most critically, you won't have the knowledge you need to fix it.

• Who are your clients—those you currently have and those you'd like to have? Get specific about their businesses, industries and market sectors; their size, maturity and geographic area; and the folks that make the legal services hiring decisions.
• What do you do for your clients? What are the core services that you provide to them?
• Why do your clients need you? What does the work that you do provide for your client? Do you know what they care about or what keeps them up at night?
• Who are your competitors and how are you different? Before you can craft a strong brand message that differentiates you and your firm, you need to know who your competitors are, how they represent themselves in the marketplace (what are their brands?) and how the market perceives them. You also need to honestly evaluate what makes you meaningfully different—to your clients—from others in the same practice area, industry or market sector.
• What's the market's perception of you? This is the critical piece of branding that is often overlooked. Do you know how the market sees you and your practice? How does it compare to how you want to be perceived?

While superlatives like strongest, best, leading and top make for good headlines and interesting articles, they are subjective terms. Both perspective (yours) and perception (your clients) play a critical role in your branding and marketing.

Meg Pritchard, the principal of CREATE: Communications—Media—Marketing, is a lawyer, writer and marketing professional who works with law firms and lawyers to develop compelling content for their marketing and business development. She can be reached at [email protected] or 215-514-3206.