When Your Words No Longer Fit: A Personal Branding Problem Lawyers Don’t Recognise
Over the past few weeks, I’ve had conversations with experienced lawyers standing at a quiet pivot point in their careers:
Focused on promotion and business cases
Building or scaling their practices and reaching more aligned clients
Pivoting their careers, including their: practice, sector specialisation, firm, organisation, or stepping into a leadership role
Every conversation came back to the same thing:
“The way I talk about what I do no longer fits.”
And for lawyers, that’s not a small problem.
Because how you articulate what you do doesn’t just describe your work.
It shapes what work you’re trusted with next.
Personal Branding & Lawyers
This isn’t a confidence issue.
And it’s not a visibility issue.
It’s a positioning issue.
When lawyers haven’t deliberately built a personal brand.
They accumulated one — over years of decisions, roles, and associations.
And at a certain point in your career, that accumulated narrative stops keeping up with you. The result? You’re:
Known for what you used to do and who you did it for
Positioned for work you’ve outgrown
Struggling to articulate where you’re going next
Why This Happens
Lawyers are trained to:
Be precise
Minimise risk
Rely on precedent
But none of those instincts help when you’re trying to redefine how you’re positioned.
Because repositioning requires:
Experimentation
Moving beyond what has worked in the past
And a willingness to move beyond what’s already been said
You can be highly competent, and still poorly positioned.
Your Authority
In my corporate career, I worked on countless profiling and repositioning projects within law firms.
These were structured, strategic processes designed to ensure senior lawyers were positioned clearly and consistently.
But most professionals don’t have access to that level of support.
And many don’t have someone they can say to:
“I think I’m ready for something different.”
The Consequence
When this isn’t addressed, the impact is subtle, but significant.
You don’t stand still, you become stagnant.
And in private practice, that has real consequences.
Because your reputation isn’t static.
The Reframe
This isn’t about becoming more visible.
It’s about becoming more intentional.
It’s about stepping back and asking:
What am I actually known for right now?
Does that reflect the work I want to be doing?
And if not, what needs to change?
Your Personal Branding Reset
My framework was built from these moments.
From the conversations I’ve had with colleagues, clients, and friends navigating this exact transition.
It’s the same curiosity-driven process I use to help people recalibrate their positioning with clarity and integrity.
A structured way to:
Atep back
Reflect honestly
And find language that actually fits
Not everyone has access to a communications team.
And not everyone has someone they can have these conversations with openly.
But everyone deserves access to the clarity those conversations create.
Because when your words no longer fit…
It’s not a sign something is wrong.
It’s a sign something has changed.
The question is whether your positioning has caught up.
For many professionals, LinkedIn starts as a digital version of their resume. Early in a career, that makes sense. But careers evolve.