Let me start with a confession that will likely irritate many in the marketing world: most law firm rebrands are a complete waste of time and money. I know this is heresy to the creative agencies who make their living convincing professional services firms that they need a shiny new visual identity, but the data simply doesn’t support the cycle of rebranding that plagues the legal sector.
The Smarts
Professor Jenni Romaniuk from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute has spent decades researching how brands really work. Her extensive work on distinctive brand assets and memory structures should be required reading for any law firm considering a rebrand. Yet remarkably few seem to have gotten the memo.
The typical law firm rebrand follows a predictable pattern. A new Managing Partner arrives or merger occurs, and suddenly there’s talk about how the firm’s brand needs “refreshing” to “better reflect who we are today.” Cue expensive consultants, endless partner meetings about fonts and colors, and ultimately the big reveal of a new logo that looks remarkably similar to every other law firm’s logo.
But here’s the inconvenient truth that Romaniuk’s research exposes: distinctive brand assets take years, often decades, to build in customers’ memory structures. Each time you change your visual identity, you’re essentially starting from zero in terms of mental availability. All those years of building recognition and associations? Gone in an instant.
This is particularly problematic in the legal sector where purchase decisions are high-involvement and relatively infrequent. Your clients aren’t interacting with your brand daily like they do with consumer goods. They may only need your services every few years. So that familiar logo or visual style you just ditched? It was one of your most valuable assets in terms of triggering recognition when they next needed legal support.
Romaniuk’s research shows that brands typically need a minimum of three to five distinctive assets working in their favor to achieve decent levels of mental availability. These can include logos, colors, taglines, characters, or other brand elements. But they must be distinctive to your brand and consistently used over time to build memory structures.
Yet I regularly see law firms throw away perfectly good distinctive assets in pursuit of what they perceive as a more “modern” look. They fail to understand that distinctive doesn’t mean different. Your navy blue logo may look similar to other law firms, but if it’s been consistently associated with your brand for 20 years, it’s doing important cognitive work you shouldn’t casually discard.
More than Visual Identity
The problems with law firm rebrands go beyond just visual identity. There’s often an accompanying shift in positioning that demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how professional services brands function. Suddenly firms that were known for solid corporate work decide they want to be seen as “innovative disruptors.” Firms with strong regional reputations decide they need to position themselves as “global players.”
This is what I call the “aspirational positioning trap.” You end up ignoring your genuine distinctive strengths in pursuit of generic attributes that don’t align with your actual capabilities or market position. It’s far better to double down on what genuinely makes you different than try to be something you’re not.
Let’s look at some numbers that should give pause to any law firm considering a rebrand. Research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute indicates that even well-executed rebrands typically result in immediate drops in brand recognition of 20% or more. It can take 3-5 years to rebuild those mental availability scores to previous levels. For law firms operating in highly competitive markets, that’s a dangerous hit to take.
Then there’s the cost. A comprehensive rebrand for a mid-sized law firm typically runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars when you factor in agency fees, new signage, stationery, website updates, and internal rollout costs. That’s money that could be spent on actual business development activities with measurable ROI.
Now, I’m not suggesting that rebrands are never justified. There are legitimate scenarios where changing your visual identity makes strategic sense:
- After a merger where you genuinely need to create a new unified brand
- When your current brand assets have very low distinctive asset scores and aren’t doing any heavy lifting for you
- When your visual identity is actively harming your business by making you look seriously dated or unprofessional
But these scenarios are far rarer than the marketing industry would have you believe. Most law firms would be better served by focusing on consistently building and reinforcing their existing distinctive assets rather than starting over.
If You Still Want to Do It
If you’re still determined to rebrand, at least do it properly by following Romaniuk’s evidence-based approach:
First, audit your current distinctive brand assets properly. Measure their familiarity and uniqueness scores among your target market before deciding what to keep or discard. You may find some elements have much stronger recognition than you realized.
Second, test any proposed new brand elements thoroughly before implementation. Don’t just rely on qualitative feedback from partners or small focus groups. You need robust quantitative data on how distinctive and memorable your new assets are likely to be.
Third, plan for a much longer transition period than you probably think you need. Romaniuk’s research suggests that even with optimal execution, it takes 2-3 years of consistent usage before new brand elements start achieving meaningful distinctive asset scores.
Finally, be prepared to invest significantly more in marketing communications during and after the rebrand to rebuild mental availability. Simply changing your logo and hoping people notice isn’t enough.
The irony is that many law firms pursue rebrands because they want to stand out more in their market. Yet by constantly changing their visual identity, they make it harder for clients to recognise and remember them. True distinctiveness comes from consistency over time, not constant reinvention.
So my advice to law firms considering a rebrand is simple: think very carefully about whether you really need one. In most cases, you’d be better off investing in making your existing brand assets more distinctive and memorable rather than starting from scratch.
Look at the most successful law firm brands globally. They tend to be the ones that have maintained consistent visual identities and positioning over decades while gradually evolving and refreshing elements when needed. They understand that brand building is a long-term game.
As Romaniuk’s research consistently shows, the key to strong brands is building and maintaining distinctive assets that create mental availability when buying situations arise. For law firms operating in complex B2B markets with long purchase cycles, throwing away established distinctive assets is usually a strategic mistake.
So before you approve that expensive rebrand, ask yourself: Are you solving a real business problem, or just satisfying a creative urge for something new? Are you building on your distinctive assets, or discarding them unnecessarily? The answers to these questions might save you a lot of time and money.
Remember, your brand exists in the minds of your clients, not on your business cards. Focus on building strong, consistent memory structures over time rather than chasing the latest design trends. That’s how you build a truly distinctive and valuable law firm brand.