Vol. 75, No. 4, April
2002
Image...Imagine.
The Bar is launching a long-term effort to
educate the public about the value lawyers bring to their clients and
communities.
by George C. Brown,
State Bar executive director
NEARLY EVERY TIME THE STATE BAR CONDUCTS a membership survey,
the programs that the majority of Wisconsin attorneys find valuable are
CLE seminars and books, the Wisconsin Lawyer, and ethics
opinions and the ethics hotline. Through the enormous efforts of
volunteers statewide and a hardworking staff, the Bar fulfills these
needs for education, information, and advice. One program request that
members rank among the highest on their wish list is a Bar effort to
help improve the image of the profession.
In the past, the Bar has been content with the old public relations
adage of "doing good things and telling people about them." That
approach was fine before people were bombarded daily by thousands of
messages and before other professional organizations began to use
sophisticated research and advertising dollars to improve their image in
order to compete better in the marketplace.
Among the various professions, the accountants often are singled out
for remaking their image from that of bean counters to trusted business
advisers. It didn't happen overnight and it didn't happen for free.
Beginning more than a decade ago, the AICPA (American Institute of CPAs)
spent $20 million to research their image and to develop a message
platform and an advertising campaign. Recently, AICPA has spent another
$20 million over four years to advertise accountants' remade image in
only five publications: The Wall Street Journal, Business Week,
Fortune, Forbes, and Barron's. As the communications
professional who told me this exclaimed, "Talk about market
penetration!"
Your State Bar is working to change its past approach, not through a
large-scale ad campaign, but with a focused, coordinated communications
effort. Beginning with the Annual Convention in May, the State Bar will
roll out a new effort to educate the public about the value of lawyers,
based on extensive research with members of the profession and the
public. This represents a change in focus for the association from one
of how the State Bar works to help you, the member, to a focus on how
lawyers help the public through providing expert advice, solving
problems, and performing service to the community. (Please see the
article, "Branding
the Profession," elsewhere in this issue.)
The State Bar already supports your ability to provide expert advice
and solve problems through the numerous State Bar CLE seminars and books
and through the Wisconsin Lawyer magazine. You also are
afforded the opportunity to provide community service through the
various Law-related Education programs like high school mock trial and
through the Lawyer Hotline Program and many other public service
programs.
Thus the old adage is transformed from "doing good things and telling
people about them" to telling people about the good things you do in a
way that can be heard above the thousands of other messages people
receive every day.
Wisconsin
Lawyer
