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Your brand is your best asset
All boutique lawyers have a personal brand, and choosing to leverage that can and does result in greater professional success, says Clarissa Rayward.
Jerome Doraisamy
“People do business with people. They don’t do business with names.”
“I didn’t set out with that purpose of building a personal brand and leveraging it at scale… what happened for me is I became an advocate in the divorce space for amicable divorce, because it was something that I believe in, and as I became an advocate, I realised that by writing and talking about it, people were attracted to it. I built up thought leadership and clients came,” she reflected.
“I’ve now replicated that process as a wellness advocate in the legal space. If you positively harness and acknowledge that you are a spokesperson for your business, then there’s incredible opportunity. Who you are and how you show up will always influence your business.
“You can pretend that it’s not happening, but it’s actually happening. Every one of us has a brand. It’s just whether we’re out there advocating around it or not. You don’t have to shout that from the rooftops, and you don’t have to run an Instagram account if you don’t want to. There are all different ways of doing this, but you do need to accept that your brand will absolutely influence how your business works, and who comes to it, and their experience with it.”
Boutiques don’t have to figure out the perfect branding right off the bat, she noted. It is a process that can and does require regular tweaking, as she has discovered.
“You’re always pitching and then listening, and the feedback is ‘Oh, that didn’t pitch as well’, and there [are] different pitches to different people. So, my messaging in terms of my personal brand absolutely has shifted,” she mused.
“Back in 2013, when I started the blog that really kicked off my personal brand, it was all around divorce. I was just writing and really advocating for collaborative divorce, amicable divorce, positive divorce. That was where I began. And I got known for that, and then I was able to add this other element in terms of wellness for lawyers.”
Such advocacy to prospective clientele should be grounded in one’s passions, Ms Rayward stressed, be it personal beliefs or professional drivers.
“[Amicable divorce and legal wellbeing] are things I’m passionate about. They’re things I believe in, they’re things I work in, they’re things I’ve spent years reading and researching and understanding. A good friend recently asked me, ‘What’s your reason for getting up [everyday]? What’s your reason for going to work and doing this stuff that you do?’ And I said to her, ‘I think my superpower, I’m coming to learn, is that I have the ability to give others confidence, to believe in themselves, to achieve what they want to achieve, not what I think they should achieve’,” she said.
“That’s something that carries across both of the practices that I have, and the way that I position my personal brand is that this is me. That’s who I am. I’m interested in unlocking for you what matters to you, and then helping you achieve that.”
To listen to the full episode with Clarissa Rayward, click below:
Jerome Doraisamy
Jerome Doraisamy is the editor of Lawyers Weekly and HR Leader. He has worked at Momentum Media as a journalist on Lawyers Weekly since February 2018, and has served as editor since March 2022. In June 2024, he also assumed the editorship of HR Leader. Jerome is also the author of The Wellness Doctrines book series, an admitted solicitor in NSW, and a board director of the Minds Count Foundation.
You can email Jerome at:
