Podcast Ep. 142: Personal Branding for In-House Lawyers: Take Yourself off of Mute and Pump up the Volume!

In this episode of the Legal Marketing 2.0 Podcast Guy is joined by Lisa Lang, Lisa currently serves as the General Counsel for Kentucky State University, a role she has had for four years. Lisa first began her career as a lawyer working as an associate attorney specializing in insurance defense for a law firm in Louisville, Kentucky. She left that firm in 2008 to work for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. She first worked in the Office of the Attorney General as an Assistant Attorney General and then for the Kentucky Department of Education in a variety of in-house counsel roles until taking her current position at Kentucky State University. Lisa Joins us to discuss tactics in-house lawyers can use to brand themselves, what challenges they face, and how to overcome them. You can connect with Lisa on LinkedIn or Twitter. 

Podcast Show Notes 

1. How can in-house lawyers brand themselves?

When you’re in-house, I think that you can brand yourself, and you can market yourself in-house to your internal internal stakeholders, you can do it to your external stakeholders and then you can do it to those people in your profession. The way you approach those three different audiences can be somewhat different. When you’re talking about your internal stakeholders, you need to create a narrative or a perception of who you are and what you do and what value you bring. I have the ability to brand myself internally by participating in events that people don’t generally think a general counsel is involved in. Externally what I do is I write articles and I also do a lot of posting on LinkedIn and I do a lot of podcasts. 

2. What are some of the things that work well for you when branding?

It’s very individual, and I think you’ve got to do what you enjoy doing, because when you enjoy doing it it shows in your work. The product that results from that endeavor is not going to be something people want to see or hear or read, they’re going to want to see things you are passionate about. 

3. Why are many in-house lawyers not comfortable branding?

I think that part of the problem is most of the work we do in the industry is very confidential. Lawyers are a little bit worried about the confidential nature of their job and they don’t want to disclose things they are unsure of whether they should disclose, and they’re afraid of what their employer is going to think about what they’re posting.

4. What challenges do in-house lawyers face when trying to brand.

It’s about making the time to do it. A lot of the marketing directors and the law firm partners make it part of the expectation and it’s really easy when you’re in-house to not make the time to do it. Nobody is setting any expectations for lawyers to be branding themselves.  

5. What do you look for when you’re hiring an outside lawyer and outside law firm to come in and help with a project?

You have to make sure it’s about relationship building and it’s about the attitude that you bring forward. Somebody that I look for it’s less about your legal aptitude and more about some of those soft skills. You must have the ability to work as a team, collaborate, and innovate. The person must be about the team and have some leadership ability. 

Takeaway

Oftentimes lawyers, in-house and law firms alike, aren’t aware that personal branding is for everybody. Lawyers find it difficult to find the time and ability to invest in their own marketing efforts but discovering a passion may just ease things up. Pursuing personal branding efforts in a way that tells the world you are an expert and are passionate about your niche can do wonders for your personal brand. 

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