Legal Marketing & PR

Halleland Lewis Introduces 100% Lean Law Firm

By Larry Bodine, Esq.

A giant nutrition label grabs your eye at the Minnesota airport. It's not for an energy drink or pack of lunch meat, its an advertisement for a "100% Lean Law Firm.  Newbreedlaw.com."

As a general counsel or client executive, I'd like what I see: 0g fat. Equally divided among six key practice areas. Putting clients first: 100%.  And my favorite: Obnoxious lawyer schtick: 0%.

It's the innovative new ad campaign by Halleland Lewis Niland & Johnson. The airport ads are so clever it makes people stop in their tracks and pull out their cell phone cameras.

Marketing genius Dustin Sanick, of the ad agency Kohnstamm Communications Inc. in St. Paul, explained: "The campaign highlights the specific practice groups and how their client-focused approach along with their applied business practicality maximize their clients' business results.  The ad doesn't bloat the groups, but keeps them 'lean" for their clients."

It's  smart marketing approach, because most law firms promote all their dozens of practice groups, and as a result doesn't promote any of them at all.  By targeting six practices, the firm has created a comprehensible idea for clients to wrap their minds around.

It helps that the firm was founded as recently as 1996, and thus is not burdened with hundreds of years of stultifying tradition.

The firm's unconventional website states, "A look around our firm will tell you a great deal about the way our people work. All attorneys have offices of equal size. We've invested heavily in the quality and efficiency of our common and meeting spaces. We focus not on hierarchy, but teamwork — because you get better results that way."

Partner Keith Halleland sums it up, "What could be harder than creating a brand around a law firm?  But Kohnstamm's relentless PR efforts have truly helped take us to a whole level of business."

Full post as published by Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog on December 17, 2009 (boomark / email).