Law Firm Branding as a Recruiting Tool: Beyond BIGLAW

There is a huge disconnect between what my candidates understand about my law firm clients – and what my law firm clients want my candidates to know about them. For most of these candidates, the large New York firms are essentially interchangeable – earning them the blanket description “BIGLAW”, as popularized by the various Greedy Associate message boards during the first dot-com boom. Little has changed.

We last looked at the issue of law firm branding as a recruiting tool back in December, when we compared Bingham’s confusing dogs-in-turtlenecks and flying-elephants brand advertising, with the marginally more effective efforts of Orrick – they of the ubiquitous “O”. Since then, we’ve been paying more attention to how our clients try to brand themselves – noting, for example, Sullivan & Cromwells icy and lofty heights, Dewey Ballantine’s lighthouse (still waiting for the H.M.S. Orrick to come in?), and Cadwalader’s colored pencils - and can only draw the conclusion that our clients still have a lot of work to do in this area.

In this month’s American Lawyer, Aric Press gives us his take on this issue on a page that faces, ironically enough, another Bingham ad – this time of a zebra chasing a lion. (It couldn’t be anyone else. Does this mean the ad campaign is working?) Aric’s editorial references a recent article in the Harvard Business Review called “What it Means to Work Here”, by Tamara Erickson and Lynda Gratton. That article discusses how companies like Goldman Sachs, Whole Foods Market, and Royal Bank of Scotland succeed in referencing and reflecting essential company culture and values in every aspect of their employee recruitment process – and thereby differentiating themselves as attractive places to work. You can’t argue with their success. No one refers to any one of these companies as just another BIGCO. Why should law firms – in this increasingly competitive market for attorney talent – want to settle for anything less? So bravo to Bingham, Orrick, Sullivan, Dewey and Cadwalader. You and I can giggle at the mixed or confusing messages – but at least they’re trying.