Branded

brand
• noun 1 a type of product manufactured by a company under a particular name. 2 a brand name. 3 an identifying mark burned on livestock with a heated iron. 4 a piece of burning or smouldering wood.
• verb 1 mark with a branding iron. 2 mark out as having a particular shameful quality. 3 give a brand name to.

I’ve recently been inspired by an article from Kevin O’Keefe on Real Lawyers have Blogs on the importance to lawyers of creating their own personal brand. Although aimed at law grads and associates his Define your Personal Brand As A Lawyer post rang true to me also; as sole in-house counsel to a business which previously had no lawyer working in it, a large part of my time is making sure my colleagues understand the broader commercial value which a lawyer can bring to the business and that we’re not just here to fire-fight any disputes, check contracts or create red-tape and obstacles!

As I work in the digital marketing industry, I found Mitch Joel, in his 6 Pixels of Separation blog shared some great insight in his Top 10 Dos And Don'ts Of Social Medial For Current And Prospective Employees. It conjures up the picture of a personal brand being a 3-dimensional presence and that social media is the perfect tool to achieve that. I enjoy using social media tools to connect with the people I work with and my friends, and so Mitch’s blog was further inspiration to me to step-up a gear in relation to my own personal branding. I already Twitter as @in_house_lawyer (more followers than my personal Twitter account worryingly), so that seemed a good platform from which to take my own personal brand to the next level. It’s also a demonstration to the business I work for of the all-important value-add of an in-house counsel.

So, here it is, the next stage in my personal branding campaign, my In-house Lawyer blog. I tried to blog once before but the fear of being insufficiently profound, high-brow or intellectual or perhaps not the first person to spot a legal development stopped me from saying anything at all! However, now that I have a personal brand to develop, the purpose of my blog has completely changed as its now my vehicle for establishing my In-house lawyer brand.