A Rose by Any Other Name…

Published February 23, 2010

Traditionally, when a lawyer or lawyers open a firm they take their own names. One reason for this is ego, but another is that they are really general practitioners without a specialty. They may migrate to one or two or three or four specialties as they become more seasoned in their practice, just by virtue of where their clientele comes from, not because they’ve selected it.

Another reason for using your name is that your name, to some degree, becomes your brand. When you want people to come to you, how are they going to find you in the phone book or through an Internet search engine? If clients want to refer friends or associates to you, how are they going to describe you? By your name, of course. As you grow, and more partners are added to the firm, then it becomes an issue of choice whether the firm name also grows. Inevitably, over time, the first couple of names for a firm are the ones that clients and prospects associate with the firm. To go contrary to that “share of mind” is at odds with your marketing purpose. But when you see five or six or seven names in a letterhead of a smaller firm, it’s inevitably because the other partners believe they need that for their own personal marketing purposes.

It is a growing trend for firms to develop an entirely new name based on the type of law the firm practices. The advantage of calling yourself the Business Connection or Family Law Center is to appeal to that segment of the marketplace from which you anticipate receiving the bulk of your business. It’s a way of specializing without going through the specialization process that some state bar associations specify for focusing on a practice area. This is purely a marketing consideration, to be made only if you’ve decided in advance that you want to have one kind of practice. If you expect to expand into other practice areas, it makes no sense at all.

One thing a generic law firm name does do is symbolize that clients belong to the firm and not to the lawyer, and that is in the best interests of firm, lawyer and client alike. Lawyers who have successfully “branded” themselves as personalities, like a Melvin Belli or Johnnie Cochran, are few and far between. Most clients presume each lawyer is as competent as the next. Institutionalizing the work done for a given client can involve other firm lawyers in the delivery of legal services, even if one lawyer remains the client’s primary contact. If clients place primary reliance on the firm, the lawyer benefits as the firm itself maintains relationships and generates new ones.

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Audience type: Administrators, Associates, Large Law Firms, Small Law Firms, Sole Practitioners