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Think of the three or four largest law firms in the U.S. Now think about Gerry Spence, Johnnie Cochran, Greta Van Susteren, and Alan Dershowitz. Who has created a brand name?

Harry Beckwith has said, “In the public’s eye, a brand is a warranty. It is a promise that the service carrying the brand will live up to its name, and perform.” Beckwith’s book, Selling the Invisible, is a great starting point for thinking about branding for legal services. Here are some more links to great resources for further study:

The Brand Channel — http://www.brandchannel.com
Brand Channel is a portal site on the Internet to resources on branding. A very good starting point.

The Manager.org’s Branding Directory — http://www.themanager.org/Knowledgebase/Marketing/Branding.htm
Great set of links to articles and other resources on branding.

Branding Your Law Firm — http://www.greenfieldbelser.com/media/news/media.62.pdf
Still valuable 1999 white paper by Greenfield Belser, Ltd. on law firm branding.

The Law Marketing Portal — http://www.lawmarketing.com – Larry Bodine’s excellent site on legal marketing is a great place to find articles on branding and other legal marketing topics.

Altman Weil’s Marketing Library — http://www.altmanweil.com/about/articles/lfma/marketing.cfm
A collection of very good articles on legal marketing, including great articles on branding by Jim Wilber and Charles Maddock.

The Internet Roundtable on Branding, Part 1 — http://www.llrx.com/extras/ir34.htm
Part 2 – http://www.llrx.com/extras/ir35.htm
The Internet Roundtable is a column on Internet marketing for lawyers written by Jerry Lawson, Brenda Howard and me. In our two-part column on branding, we cover the branding of law firms in the Internet context in great detail. There are some very interesting ideas in these articles and part1 has a good bibliography of branding resources.

Getting Found: The Dual Requirements of Law Firm Branding and Positioning — http://www.levick.com/media/news/news.15.pdf
Richard Levick’s and Mike O'Horo’s articles present a great practical discussion of law firm branding.

Branding with Specificity — http://www.sugarcrest.com/resources/articles.cfm?ID=14
Fascinating roundtable discussion of law firm branding that features the comments of ten law firm marketing offices and consultants.

eLawyerblog — http://www.elawyerblog.org/ - Legal Internet guru Jerry Lawson has created a multi-author blog focused on elawyering and a variety of other new approaches to the practice of law. Jerry has put together a stellar group of guest authors and this blog is a place to watch on a variety of topics, including the branding of legal services.

TomPeters.com — http://www.tompeters.com – Tom Peters is one of the best known experts on innovation. He writes and speaks about innovation in the professional services industry on a regular basis. His site, including a newsletter, gives you a way to access his materials and current thinking on branding and many other topics.

LoveMarks.com — http://www.lovemarks.com – This fascinating site is an effort to measure the strength and attractiveness of famous and best-loved brand names and marks.

Are law firm brands real? A lot of very smart people sure think that they are. These resources will help you think about and implement your branding efforts.