Vol. 75, No. 4, April 2002

Branding the Profession:
Educating the Public About the Value of Lawyers

by Dianne Molvig

hen we hear the word "brand," we might think of Maytag brand washers or Coca Cola brand soft drinks. But viewed in a broader sense, branding has applications in the law profession, as well. Think of a brand as a promise, says Michael Flaherty of Madison-based Flaherty & Associates, who acted as a consultant to the State Bar. The purpose of a branding effort for lawyers is to revitalize the legal profession's promise to the public. "In an era when people are increasingly cynical of law and lawyers," Flaherty notes, "it's important for the Bar to focus its efforts on helping lawyers reconnect with their communities."

A few years ago, Flaherty orchestrated a similar effort for the teaching profession in the "Great Schools" campaign of the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), which carried the tag line, "Every kid deserves a great school." Public opinion of teachers had plummeted; many people saw teachers as whiners who cared only about scoring higher salaries. When the teaching profession's reputation took a hit, so did political support for funding education. The WEAC campaign countered that trend by focusing on what schools and teachers were doing right and why Wisconsin's schools ranked among the best in the country. "After two years," Flaherty reports, "74 percent of Wisconsin people strongly or somewhat strongly support teachers and think they're doing a terrific job. Negative opinions are down to 6 percent. That's absolutely amazing, and it didn't happen by accident."

He cautions that rarely does a campaign sway public opinion so dramatically in a mere two years. Plus, it's inherently easier to stimulate public support for children's education than for the legal profession. Even so, a branding effort on behalf of the legal profession is an effective way to "humanize lawyers and personalize the idea that they are experts in the law," Flaherty contends.

Moreover, he adds, it's critical to focus on one unified message for the entire profession. "If you have multiple messages out there, you have no message," Flaherty emphasizes. "You need to support a consistent message, and it has to be repeated and repeated and repeated."

Determining a brand

Still, some would argue that a brand consists of only words and that no matter how many times those words may be repeated, they can't change people's attitudes toward attorneys. Public perception hinges on what lawyers do, these observers would contend, not on what lawyers say about themselves. Trina Gray, State Bar media relations coordinator, couldn't agree more. "But," she notes, "if lawyers are doing all these good things for the public and for the profession, why don't we talk about them in a consistent way and make people aware of them? Why don't we say that lawyers are committed to serving the public and show the many different ways they do that? That's the focus of the branding effort - to educate the public about the value lawyers bring to their communities."

Laying the Groundwork

A State Bar steering committee was formed to address attorneys' ongoing concerns about the public's deteriorating perception of the legal profession. Ultimately, the steering committee developed a new brand for the legal profession that supports lawyers as problem solvers, expert advisers, and people who serve the community. Those top three qualities resonate with the public and lawyers and form the foundation of the branding effort. To help promote these concepts, the steering committee developed an entire communications effort - known as a brand. The main elements of the brand are the three key qualities that the public values - problem solving, expert advice, and community service; and the tag line - Wisconsin Lawyers: Expert advisers. Serving you.

An early phase in developing the brand entailed collecting actual data on what Wisconsin people already think about lawyers - not the anecdotes, the jokes, and the general impressions, but rather real data. To gather that information, the Bar hired Chamberlain Research, Madison, to conduct a preliminary telephone survey of 600 randomly selected Wisconsin adults, with a representative mix of racial, gender, geographic, and other demographic characteristics. Those preliminary findings helped shape a second survey of another sampling of 600 people, this time posing more targeted questions. The second survey found that:

• When asked about their overall impression of attorneys, 35 percent of respondents stated it was "favorable" or "somewhat favorable." Another 35 percent pegged their impression of attorneys as "neutral." Members of this latter group would be most open to changing their opinions of lawyers.
• More than 60 percent of respondents had used a lawyer in the last 10 years. Of those, 43.4 percent said the outcome they valued most from that experience was obtaining expert advice. The second-highest response, at 25 percent, was that the lawyer helped solve a problem.
• Those people who had never used an attorney's services were asked which single characteristic would most improve their impressions of lawyers. The top responses were about equally split among "helping people solve problems," "advocating for their clients," and "serving their communities."

Coupled with findings from the public surveys were comments elicited from focus groups of attorneys held in La Crosse, Madison, and Milwaukee. In these groups, lawyers had a chance to register their views on what they perceived is their value to the public.

The intersections of the public's and attorneys' lists of most-valued qualities formed the foundation for developing the brand, which had to accurately convey to the general public what Wisconsin lawyers are about as a profession - and do so in only a handful of words that the public would notice, find credible, and remember. (Please see the accompanying sidebar, "Determining a Brand.") Over a six-month period, the steering committee members settled on the three key components of the brand - expert advice, problem solving, and community service. (Think of the brand as the overall impression that you want to convey to the public.) The steering committee then had to develop a tag line that could be used to support the brand. (Think of the tag line as the logo that appears on printed communications.)

Applying the graphic message

The steering committee created trial tag lines, finding it difficult to incorporate all three concepts into one tag line. The committee tested lots of different versions on public and lawyer audiences, before finally nailing down the final tag line, Wisconsin Lawyers: Expert advisers. Serving you.

Members of the steering committee include: Tess Arenas, nonlawyer representative, Board of Governors, University of Wisconsin System, Madison; Ann I. Brandau, Brandau & Waltz Law Offices LLP, La Crosse; Kelly Centofanti, Milwaukee Bar Association president, Aiken & Scoptur S.C., Milwaukee; Gerry Mowris, State Bar president, Pellino, Rosen, Mowris & Kirkhuff SC, Madison; Kevin Palmersheim, Dane County Bar Association president, Haley Palmersheim SC, Madison; James Friedman, LaFollette Godfrey & Kahn, Madison; Derek Mosley, Milwaukee County assistant district attorney; Marna Tess-Mattner, Brigden & Petajan S.C., Milwaukee; and Pat Ballman, committee chair, State Bar president-elect, Quarles & Brady, Milwaukee.

All phases of this project to date - including the research, consultant's fee, message development, and testing - cost the Bar a total of $15,000, or about 75 cents per member.

How the Brand Evolved

Distilling the three key concepts into the six-word tag line was an arduous task that perhaps can be appreciated fully only by someone who's been through such a process. "We wanted something that resonated well with the public," notes Kevin Palmersheim, steering committee member and president of the Dane County Bar Association, "but it couldn't be so generic that you'd never know by looking at it that it concerned lawyers." One example of a tag line the committee rejected for that very reason, even though it played well in early testing, was "Serving the community. Helping you." Those words could apply as easily to firefighters or nurses as to lawyers.

On the other hand, the message couldn't be too restrictive, either. It had to fit all lawyers, whatever their field of law or practice setting. "The concept had to address the qualities of all lawyers, whether they're litigators, business advisers, or fulfilling some other role," points out Pat Ballman, Milwaukee attorney and steering committee chair. "Lawyers serve different functions, and our brand needs to reflect that."

Brainstorming was a vital element throughout the brand-development process. Suggestions stirred lively debates and discussions about the impact - subtle or overt - of the selected tag line words. For instance, the phrase "Your trusted adviser" reminded some of Richard Nixon's infamous "trust me" - not the sort of reaction the committee hoped to evoke.

"One of the suggestions I made that got rejected was 'When it's important, call a lawyer,'" recalls Ballman. "Somebody said, 'Pat, that sounds like the slogan for Ghostbusters.' So we threw out a lot of ideas, mine and others'."

Concern also surfaced about the use of the term "expert adviser," which in the end did become part of the brand and tag line. But at first some committee members worried that such usage might violate rule restrictions against lawyers describing themselves as "specialists." Wausau attorney Dean Dietrich, chair of the State Bar Professional Ethics Committee, doesn't believe that's a problem.

Such restrictions exist, Dietrich explains, to protect the public from being misled into believing that a lawyer has a higher degree of skill in a specific legal area than he or she actually possesses. According to SCR 20:7.4, a lawyer can state or imply he or she is a specialist only if 1) the lawyer is admitted to practice patent law before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, or 2) the lawyer practices admiralty law, or 3) the lawyer has gained certification as a specialist in a field of law from a named organization or authority accredited by the American Bar Association. Furthermore, if a lawyer has that certification and thus claims to be a specialist in a particular field of law, he or she may be held to a higher standard of care in performing legal services in that specialty area.

Nowhere does the rule use the word "expert," Dietrich points out. And while "expert" may seem synonymous with "specialist," he says there's a crucial difference in the way "expert" appears in the tag line. It's used to denote that all lawyers have expertise or training in the law, rather than representing any particular lawyer as an expert in a legal specialty. "If you say, for example, that you're an expert in labor law," Dietrich explains, "then you will be held to a higher standard as an all-knowing labor law expert. But in the tag line, the word 'expert' is an adjective, not a noun, and it's used in a generic sense" to describe members of the law profession.

Ultimately, after all the brainstorming, debate, and feedback, the real test was the public's reaction to the brand. Throughout the development process, "We had to keep stepping back to remind ourselves that this message is not for lawyers," says Ann I. Brandau, La Crosse attorney and committee member. "Rather, it's for the general public. It was public input that got us to the brand we adopted."

Using the Brand

The next phase of the branding effort will involve communicating the brand message to the public, so that people see it, hear it, and begin to identify it as "a universal truth about what lawyers do for the community-at-large and for their clients," as Brandau describes it. She envisions multiple ways her local bar association in La Crosse might incorporate the brand into its public law-related education and community service communications. As just one example, every year her local bar group sponsors a golf tournament to raise money for community food pantries. "The brand could appear on any advertising or posters about the event," she explains. "That's the whole idea: to get this out there on every piece of information we send."

Other examples would be to print the tag line on local bar association stationery, weave the message platform - that Wisconsin lawyers are expert advisers and problem solvers and are committed to community service - into interviews with local media, and include it in promotions for Law Day events. If a law firm or local bar association sponsors a public television program, at the end of that sponsorship message could appear the words Wisconsin Lawyers: Expert advisers. Serving you. Likewise, firms that market their services through brochures, print advertisements, or media spots could include the tag line or simply emphasize any of the three key concepts. The possibilities are abundant. "If we as individual lawyers just assume that the State Bar is going to get this message out," Brandau notes, "and that we have no part in it, then this won't go very far."

Of course, the State Bar will play a role, as well. "Everything the Bar does from now on will use the brand," says Ballman, speaking as the incoming State Bar president. "And when I say everything, that's what I mean. Every piece of paper will have it. We'll incorporate it into the substance of every message."

Ballman emphasized that the Bar's branding effort is not a short-term, glitzy advertising campaign to sell lawyer services. It is, she says, "a long-term, public-focused communications effort to improve the public's understanding and perception of Wisconsin lawyers."

All three components of the brand are equally important and should be incorporated into lawyers' communications with the public, Ballman reiterated. Different types of communications will support different components of the brand. "For example," Ballman says, "if a firm is sponsoring a community fundraising event, the focus of the message should be on community service. If the firm is offering a free seminar on estate planning, the focus should be on expert advice. If the firm is promoting collaborative divorce, the focus should be on problem solving."

The Bar will create tool kits for distribution at the Annual Convention and through other routes in the coming months, including on WisBar, the Bar's Internet site. These kits will provide ready-made materials for law firms and local bar groups to use in communicating the brand. A sample press release, for example, can form the basis for a local newspaper story. Or a print announcement may fit the bill when the local high school band requests an ad for its next concert program. "We hear that a lot of firms, especially in smaller towns, get hit for that sort of thing all the time," Gray reports. "And those who don't regularly advertise struggle with those requests. So we can give them a camera-ready piece that's not a hard-sell ad, but that says that lawyers provide valuable services, and the law firm can add its name to it."

But why not leave it to local bars and individual firms to devise their own messages about the legal profession, as they see fit? Based on his experiences as a local bar president and on what he hears from presidents of other local bars, Palmersheim predicts little would happen. "It would fall through the cracks," he says, "because all lawyers are busy with what we have to do on a day-to-day basis. We don't have time to think about the big picture. This is a perfect type of activity for the State Bar, whose role is to represent and work for the entire membership."

That "big picture" outlook is vital if lawyers are to restore a healthy public attitude toward lawyers and what lawyers do, Palmersheim contends. "We're letting things change around us and trying to keep the walls from crumbling in," he says. "I think rather than being reactive, we need to be a little proactive. The branding effort is a start. I hope lawyers get behind it by using it in their communications, because that's the only way this is going to work."

• Branding the Profession: Educating the Public About the Value of Lawyers

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