Fresh start: Rebranding a law firm after its name partners retire

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Key takeaway points:

1. Start by drilling down into the values, ethos and culture of your law firm. By being able to confidently answer questions such as what makes your business different, where is it heading and why a rebrand will help it get there, you'll be better positioned to secure buy-in from your partners and staff and drive through the necessary changes.

2. Costs will quickly rack up if you’re undergoing a full rebrand and creating a new identity out of nothing isn’t easy. To save money, a partial rebrand that retains elements of the original branding (such as the same logo or part of its name) gives you the best of both worlds.

3. Check that your proposed new brand name hasn’t already been taken. Run potential names through the Law Society’s ‘Find a Solicitor’ database and check the logos of your competitors – they won’t take kindly to you infringing their copyright.

4. Remember that law firms now need to think digitally. A great brand counts for little if you don’t have a great domain to go with it, so do a few Google searches and use a domain lookup tool such as Who.is to find out what’s available and what’s not.

5. Often, law firms undertake rebrands to boost their financial performance by, for example, making them look more professional or opening up new business avenues. However, many then forget to track the results. Set your business a target (such as increasing revenues or profits) to focus minds – and use Google Analytics and company accounts to monitor your progress towards achieving them.

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In October 2014, our northwest UK law firm, Myers Lister Price Solicitors (MLP Solicitors) became MLP Law. This may sound like a small change but it was actually the culmination of months of planning. It involved detailed discussions with my colleagues to create a new name, a new logo, new marketing literature and even a new web domain.

Moreover, all of this came about at a time when the business was undergoing unprecedented change - a new leadership team had just been put in place (including me stepping up as managing director), new investment had been secured and ambitious new growth targets had been put in place. Meanwhile, it was business as usual; our existing legal cases were being progressed and new business leads were being pursued.

So, how did all of this happen? In order to fully explain why we felt the rebrand was needed, what changed and what the rebrand achieved, we really need to start at the beginning.

Original branding

Our law firm was set up as Myers Lister Price Solicitors in Altrincham, Greater Manchester, in 1989. The co-founders were Ronnie Myers, Michael Lister and Gillian Price. However, Ronnie Myers retired in 1997, Gillian Price retired in 2002 and Michael Lister decided to step back from the managing director role, retire as a member and become non-executive chairman in April 2014.

We've seen a gradual transfer of power over the past 20 years and,
over the past 12 months, in particular, there's been a real changing of the
guard. We secured alternative business structure (ABS) status in January 2014, Lesley Gill was promoted to director in August 2013, Leanne Sodergren became a director in February 2014 and I took over from Michael as managing director
in May 2014.

The firm has also expanded beyond
its home in Altrincham. We opened
our second office in Salford Quays in 2012 and our third office in Liverpool
over the summer.

It had been a busy year, but I knew that there were a lot of things that still needed changing, starting with the brand.

Rebranding decision

The decision to rebrand came about, quite simply, because our name didn't reflect our business anymore. With all of our three name partners having retired from the partnership, it had become increasingly difficult to justify the firm's brand continuing as it was.

Likewise, we're not just an Altrincham business anymore. Our name is well known in southwest Manchester, but it's not as familiar to the people of Salford and it's even less recognisable to the people of Liverpool. So, as we increasingly looked to enter new geographical markets, it made no sense that the first impression we gave was
of our history in Altrincham, rather than our future as a law firm operating across the northwest.

Having said that, I was also keen not to completely abandon our past, because the old brand still had a lot of goodwill attached to it. Referrals form a huge proportion of our new business, so
we didn't want to make it difficult for current and former clients to recommend us. We had also won awards under our old brand and our staff were comfortable with it, so it didn't make sense to create
a radical upheaval.

Together with the rest of the management team, I decided that the time was right to rebrand. Once this decision had been made, there were a couple of options open to us: We could either do
a total rebrand or a partial rebrand.

We seriously considered a total rebrand, which would have involved abandoning the 'Myers Lister Price' and 'MLP' identities altogether and replacing them with something new. This could have taken the form of another acronym, or something that more accurately described our core commercial and private client offerings, or a more generalised name that didn't tie us to any particular services.

However, we quickly realised that it would have been very expensive to create a strong new brand out of thin air. In addition, we felt it would have been highly disruptive for management to divert so much time and energy on brand-building rather than driving the firm forward at such a crucial time in our history.

This left us going down the route of a partial rebrand that still retaining the MLP identity in some form. We rapidly decided that it would make most sense to put MLP at the start of the new name, because it instantly connects us with
our past.

Next, the conversation moved onto what suffix we should use. We considered a number of options for this, including 'legal', 'lawyers' and 'solicitors', before finally settling on 'law'. Everyone eventually agreed that 'MLP Law' gave
a truer picture of the full range of services that we offered, whereas words like 'lawyers' or 'solicitors' in our brand name made us sound less approachable and risked pigeonholing us as just a base
for legal professionals.

The selection of MLP Law brought other benefits too. Its similarity with our previous name meant that the logo we created three years ago during an earlier rebrand (which also featured the phrase MLP in white lettering inside a blue dot) did not need to be scrapped but instead could just be updated. So, we added the 'Law' suffix to
the original logo, and we also included the phrase 'formerly Myers Lister Price'
in the bottom-right corner to retain our link to the past and hopefully benefit
from the positive sentiment attached
to our old name.

Similarly, our marketing literature could also be refreshed rather than redone. And, while a new domain name would be needed and the website would then have to be migrated over, at least
we would not also have to go to the expense of completely rewriting all
of the webpages.

Key changes

When we began the process of rebranding, I was amazed at how
much needed changing. Of course,
there were the obvious things such
as the company logo. But, there were
also many other things that needed updating such as letterheads, email signatures, office signs, publicity banners, email addresses, business cards, promotional flyers, social media profiles, the wording on the website and so on.

Fortunately, we managed to save ourselves a lot of work by retaining elements of our original branding.
For example, the fact that our new
logo was broadly similar to our old
one meant that we didn't have to
scrap some of our signs.

Having said that, it was still a huge amount of work to ensure all of our branding was consistent across the business, so I certainly wouldn't want to downplay the amount of effort required. And, putting aside the minor changes for a moment, we also had to overcome a few major issues.

The biggest one involved our domain name. Originally, our website was hosted on the domain mlpsolicitors.co.uk and we had used this without problem for around 14 years, but this URL obviously wasn't appropriate for the revamp.

As mentioned previously, everyone eventually agreed that the business should be renamed MLP Law, but it wasn't the only choice under consideration. We were originally weighing up two names, but ultimately the final decision came down to domain availability. We knew that we still wanted a domain that included the '.co.uk' generic top-level domain (gTLD) because we're a UK business and we recognised that a strong gTLD would help to build trust among clients in the short term and boost our search rankings in the long term.

Unfortunately, the domain associated with one of the shortlisted firm names had already been taken, which raised the prospect of spending a lot of time and potentially money to secure it. Happily, the domain associated with the other name on our shortlist was available, meaning it was clearly the best all-round choice. Once everyone was happy with this, we then moved swiftly to secure the domain.

I love the new firm name now but, looking back, it's funny to think how close we came to going with something else.

The rebrand has been well received by both our staff and clients. Internally, what helped us to secure a positive response was that we made a deliberate effort to include everyone in the business in the decision. Obviously we didn't want the firm to come to a standstill while staff bandied about idea after idea, so we recognised straight away that the final decision would have to be taken by senior management. But, managers were encouraged to regularly update their teams on what was being discussed and to report back with any specific pieces of feedback. This emphasis on communication really helped staff to buy into the process.

Final thoughts

What I've learnt from this process is that rebranding a business isn't for the fainthearted. It requires a substantial commitment of time and energy from all of your staff and, in particular, from your senior management team. It can also require a lot of money, although this isn't always the case if you can build on what you've got rather than starting from nothing.

Perhaps most importantly of all, however, it requires you to adopt a proactive can-do approach to overcome any obstacles that may present themselves. You have to be prepared to answer a thousand little questions on everything from publicity banners and business cards to letterheads and email signatures. As a lawyer, it is inevitable that many of these issues will force you outside of your comfort zone. For example, I've learnt a lot about securing domains and migrating websites over the past few months, which are subjects that I would never have had to deal with if it wasn't for the rebrand.

However, I was convinced at the time that the rebrand was necessary - and
I'm doubly sure of it now. Today, we have
a brand that accurately reflects who we are, where we operate and what we do.
We've shown that, while our founders are still important to us, we're moving on from the days when they were in charge.

Stephen Attree is managing director of MLP Law (www.mlplaw.co.uk)