Cattle are branded.  Lawyers are not.  So says Kevin O’Keefe and Doc Searls, who fired the first salvo.

As for personal branding, I still think it’s an oxymoron. Branding is a corporate practice, not a personal one. Build a reputation by doing good work. Put that work where others can judge its value. Contribute to the success of others, and credit others generously for their contributions to your success. Never promote for its own sake. I think it’s a mistake to categorize these practices as forms of ‘branding,’ because they are expressions of humanity and integrity.

Branding is a word used by every marketer on the internet.  Pounded over and over in the hearts and minds of the clueless, we must “brand” ourselves.  Putting aside that it’s marketing jargon designed to make it clear to lawyers that we have no future unless we incorporate the language of marketing into our lives and practices, the meaning is that we must define ourselves or we’re nothing.  Worse still, if we don’t define ourselves someone else will.  You don’t want that, as someone might define you as stupid, incompetent or uncaring (the worst thing any lawyer can be on the internet).

But my newest heroes say “nay”, forget branding.  Kevin offers a short list applicable to human beings.

Rather than talking of personal branding, I’d actually be more comfortable categorizing the below practices for lawyers as expressions of humanity and integrity, as opposed to forms of ‘branding.’

• Build a reputation by doing good work.
• Put that work where others can judge its value.
• Contribute to the success of others, and credit others generously for their contributions to your success.
• Never promote for its own sake.

Heresy, and the comments to Kevin’s post show it.  Sam Glover from the Lawyerist  writes:

I don’t disagree with Doc’s post, but I think it is a matter of semantics. You can call it reputation or you can call it personal branding; the result is the same.

Marketer Nancy Myrland  says:

Kevin, call it what you’d like, and maybe not branding as it is a misunderstood and often maligned term, but we all do have a brand whether we like it or not. We can choose to let it be formed for us by those who observe us, and choose to define it as they wish, or we can take an active part in its formation and communication. I choose a combination of the two, hopefully led by the latter.

The assumption that this is a shallow practice is not constructive, and will only serve to confuse lawyers and other service providers whose clients are looking for a reason to choose them.

I’m not saying I’m blatant about using the words that I have chosen to define my brand, but it is my responsibility, and my practice, to use them, to model them, to act like them, and to communicate them when it is appropriate.

Karen Cariello chimes in:

At its most basic level, branding is a shorthand for the promise of value that the product intends to deliver. Thinking in these terms it’s easier to wrap your head around its application to a professional service provider. As Nancy eloquently said above it’s important to be proactive in defining what your promising to deliver to the community – what does one’s name mean? After all, isn’t the first step to Google someone before we hire them?

Is it a semantic difference? Are lawyers remiss in not being proactive in defining their brand?  Heather Morse-Milligan  comes clean:

Lawyers come to marketers daily with the request to “differentiate” them from their competition. Usually this is impossible because their competition also graduated top of their class from a similarly ranked university, top of their class from an Ivy League law school, and are AV-rated, Best and Super-duperist with their competition who practice law across the hall, down the street or on the other side of the country.

Having a personal brand is what differentiates you from your competition. Your personal brand is what you stand for. It’s based on your reputation. It’s what you’re known for in the marketplace. It’s what differentiates you from your competition. It’s what comes to mind when someone says your name.

The battle lines have never been laid out more clearly, all the meaningless rhetoric aside. 

Branding is what you want to call yourself.  Reputation is what other people call you.  You give yourself a brand.  You earn a reputation.

If your name is associated with the words, aggressive yet caring criminal defense lawyer, every time it appears online, does that make it so?  According to the marketers, you are whatever Google says you are.  Of course, that doesn’t mean that anyone else in the world agrees with your characterization of yourself.  But seriously, what matters more, being the person you want to be or appearing that way on Google?

Of all the marketer’s protestations, Heather’s offers the clearest and most comprehensible, both in its frankness and its illogic.  It’s the world of lawyers through the marketer’s eyes.  As Heather says, it’s what marketers do to fulfill the lawyer’s desire to “differentiate” himself when the sad reality is that he’s got nothing to distinguish himself.  He’s like everyone else, so he fabricates a brand.

But Heather goes on to write:

Your personal brand is what you stand for. It’s based on your reputation. It’s what you’re known for in the marketplace. It’s what differentiates you from your competition. It’s what comes to mind when someone says your name.

This, of course, is the big lie.  If this was the lawyer’s reputation, then he would have no need of marketers to manufacture it for him.  Indeed, if the lawyer had a reputation in the marketplace, he would have no need for marketers.  Rather than being “based on reputation,” it’s the creation of what one wishes was his reputation.  It is, in short, the pretense of reputation in the absence of any.

Marketers must vehemently disagree with this, as nobody would buy their services if they tried to sell branding as “scam your way to success by fabricating a reputation that you’ve never earned.”  That would make it sound dishonest, and some potential marketing customers might feel badly about signing up for something so underhanded.

But marketers can’t actually do much if they aren’t allowed to create a reputation, a brand, out of whole cloth.  It’s not like they can make you a better lawyer, help you to win cases, to research better, write better, argue better, become credible to judges and juries alike.  That takes work.  And time.  And the lawyer who wants to market wants results now.  They certainly don’t go to marketers to be told that a reputation takes years of effort to achieve.  Well, a bad reputation can be achieved pretty quickly, but that’s another story.

Kevin gets it.

Can you imagine someone telling Clarence Darrow, labeled a ‘sophisticated country lawyer,’ that he needed a personal brand to survive? I cannot.

When someone’s reputation is unfairly sullied, they’ll ask ‘Where do I go to get my reputation back?’ They don’t ask where do I go to get my brand back?

Legal marketers have struggled against lawyers’ animosity toward them and their hard work of marketing a law firm. Maybe it’s because they hear terms like brand and don’t want a brand or to be marketed? Maybe those lawyers want to know how to be a better lawyer, how to serve more people, and how to let more people about their skill and passion without selling themselves? I don’t know.

Yes you do, Kevin.  You can buy a brand, but you can’t buy a reputation. 

For all the lawyers who, in their effort to “differentiate” themselves overnight by paying a marketer to attribute qualities to them that they do not deserve, bear in mind that there are only so many words available to frame the lie.  Your marketer may call you “aggressive yet caring,” but he’s going to write the same things about the next lawyer who pays him, as will every other marketer.  Your “brand” won’t distinguish you any more than it will distinguish every other lawyer who wants to buy an overnight reputation.  Plus, you will know that you don’t deserve it, haven’t earned it and are living a lie.

It doesn’t matter if you think you’re the Super-de-dupest lawyer around.  It only matters if that’s what your clients, your judges, your potential clients think.  No brand is going to make you any better than you are, or give you a reputation you don’t deserve.

Lawyers get reputations the old fashioned way; we earn them.  The only thing personal branding will do is earn you the reputation for being a shameless marketer.  It’s a hard reputation to shake.