Practice Management

Sure, if you look on TV or look anywhere you will see evidence of successful co-branding.  Southwest Airlines has co-branded with SeaWorld to launch their Shamu inspired airplanes.  Michael Jordan teamed up with Nike to sell $100 plus Air Jordans.  And, there is TGI Fridays teaming up with Jack Daniels in terms of food flavoring.  But, co-branding really does not happen in the legal field?  Right?

Well, I did not really think so, but the truth of the matter, whether the bar-tenders or I like it or not, it happens all of the time.  An obvious example involves title companies or agencies, most of them run by or headed by lawyers.  The process of titles involves law, insurance, abstracting and accounting, but it is usually alright for an attorney to team up with a title agency or company, under its name, in terms of running what is know as a "fee office".  That is co-branding.

Then, there are legal insurance companies which team up with groups of attorneys to provide services for their insured.  In a way this is co-branding, is it not?

Lobbyist are often lawyer or are associated with non-lawyers or lobby firms.  This is often difficult in some states in which the lawyer has to be the owner or the employee but lawyers and non-lawyers cannot mix as partners to share profits.  That is not true in markets like Washington, D.C. where lawyers and non-lawyers can operate as partners for specific reasons, and non-lawyers can be included in the firm's name.  See here.

And, then there are lawyers that start or work closely with surrogacy and adoption organizations.  That is co-branding.

I am sure there are more examples.  But, what becomes obvious is that attorneys that actively solicit referrals in various professions and from various types of professionals are in fact co-branding.  It might not be intentional or contractual necessarily, but they are co-branding in the sense they have formed an informal alliance and they have a marketing synergy as to a particular type of related service.  When you as the attorney trade on the market segment of others, that is what co-branding is really all about.

Finally, when you break it down, niche marketing is really a loose form of co-branding.  If you limit your practice to real estate closings, you are co-branding with real estate sales.  If you organize your practice around the wineries, you are co-marketing with the wine industry.  In these examples, it might be without the overall consent of the industry for you to do this, but you are forming an informal alliance to work together with the industry even if that decision is unilateral on your part.

I guess my overall point is that I am going to look at co-branding and lawyers a little differently from now on.