Legal Research

"Do Something! Re-Tool Your Tagline"

Posted by Allison Shields: "In July of this year, on Nolo's Legal Marketing Blawg, Carolyn Elefant penned a post entitled, "Tag(line), You're It!" discussing the importance of taglines, noting the poor quality of most law firm taglines, and providing some hints about how to go about creating them.

This week, Steve Matthews of Stem Legal wrote a post on the Law Firm Strategy Blog compiling a list of law firm taglines: 101 Law Firm Taglines - 2009 Edition. The post generated lots of comments, including a comment from Jordan Furlong of Law21, who said:

The revealing thing about most of these taglines is that you could switch them with one another and clients would be none the wiser regarding which firm you're talking about. "Solutions," "experience," "success," expertise," "excellence," and let's not forget, "business" -- like most law firms themselves, they're largely interchangeable.

Not only are they interchangeable, but many of these words are words that clients expect their law firms to be able to say about themselves - they are, in effect, the price of admission. After all, no client wants to hire a lawyer that doesn't have experience and can't offer solutions. While these words may not, in fact, describe all lawyers, in the minds of clients, they should, and as such, they aren't going to mean much to clients.

Matthews re-joins the conversation in the comments and notes that often, law firm taglines have a difficult job to do because there are many stakeholders involved, resulting in generic taglines. Firms with several different practice areas may also have difficulty crafting an effective overall firm tagline.

Where are the clients?
Lisa Solomon brings up another excellent point when she notes that, "What strikes me is how many of the taglines are about the firm, not about what they can do for the client (or the prospective client)..." 

Creating an effective tagline
Returning to Carolyn Elefant's post and her compilation of tips about creating a good tag line, Elefant suggests not outsourcing the tagline to professionals...

Elefant also suggests looking at the characteristics of great taglines, particularly outside of the legal profession. For example, Nike's Just Do It is great because it gets at the essence of benefits to the customer.

As a fitness company, Nike appeals to athletes and would-be athletes with a specific outlook or mentality. The tagline suggests that the company and its products support those values - strength, accomplishment, perserverence - a 'no excuses' outlook.

Elefant also cites an exercise to help create a tagline...

Finally, Elefant suggests trying out your tagline on others - a great idea - but try it out on clients, potential clients and those who are part of your target audience, or are familiar with or can relate to your target audience."

Full text and active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Legal Ease Blog, 30 September 2009

Full post as published by Stark County Law Library Blawg on October 01, 2009 (boomark / email).