“Our assets go down in the elevator every night.”
Take that bromide seriously.
You must give people a persuasive reason to come back “home” every Monday morning.
Make them believe in the ongoing vision of a vibrant institution, a living firm where they can make a contribution in their own way, where they have a voice, where they can matter, where they are part of a team, where there are new mountains to conquer and new clients to be won, new legal innovations to be created with your firm’s imprimatur on them, new dimensions of professional development which you can create and with which you can inspire and energize your associates, new, heartfelt, admirable and groundbreaking commitments to pro bono, new, clear-eyed and profound commitments to client service and client relationships, new and innovative uses of technology to deliver cost-effective services clients increasingly will demand while at the same time sparing your associates scut-work. New, new, new.
Those are the things that will inspire people to come back on Monday.
If a firm is known to sufficient numbers of clients, carries out its tasks, and keeps its promises, it earns confidence. Its name — be it Skadden, Linklater, or McCarthy, or something less gilt-edged — is shorthand for a repository of client trust. Its brand is essentially its marketplace ID, its industry access pass, its credit line of credibility. Lose that, and it loses everything…Look at it this way: a brand is a promise to the marketplace that your product or service will consistently feature the characteristics X, Y and Z. An individual lawyer can say, “I will provide these sorts of legal services, I will deliver them in this fashion, and I will deliver them to these types of clients.” That’s the heart and soul of a professional brand right there. The lawyer who chooses to makes those promises and carries through on them controls his brand.