Many firms are dispensing with unwieldy traditional names in favour of client-friendly brevity, but does this cosmetic change represent wider modernisation? Cameron Timmis reports


Traditional names for solicitors’ firms, some centuries old, are disappearing fast from the legal landscape. Today’s vogue is for a shorter and snappier moniker. Last month, City firm Nabarro Nathanson proudly jettisoned ‘Nathanson’, becoming just Nabarro, and joined a growing list of firms that have erased partners’ names from their title in favour of shorter form. Ashurst, which ditched ‘Morris Crisp’, and Beachcroft, which lost ‘Wansbroughs’, are just two recent examples.



In a similar bid for brevity, others have dispensed with names of partners altogether, in favour of initials, most famously DLA (latterly DLA Piper), but now a growing trend with the likes of TLT in Bristol, south-east practice asb law (which also favours the lower-case style), or north-west firm DWF.



Last month, Derby firm Flint Bishop & Barnett also joined the bandwagon, abbreviating its name to Flint Bishop. Managing partner Ken Dixon explains: ‘It was a very traditional name. A number other firms had changed to just one name, but “Flints” seemed too sharp. Flint Bishop was a compromise between the two… it was a balance between maintaining a traditional solicitors’ title with the convenience of a one-name title.’



The change in name followed part of a wider appraisal of the firm’s future, in which a marketing agency was engaged to rebrand the firm. ‘It was time for a change,’ explains Mr Dixon. ‘The nature of the firm had changed over the last three or four years – we went from a turnover of £4 million to £13 million… it reflected that change and set out a vision for the future.’ While engaging a branding agency was ‘not cheap’, Mr Dixon maintains that ‘we have had

good value’.



Similarly, at Nabarro, the name change was instigated following an extensive – and costly – rebranding exercise that aims to raise the firm’s profile in the market. Over a period of nine months, with the help of a branding agency, the firm arrived at the concept of ‘clarity matters’.



After adopting this, says business development and marketing director Guy Bigland, it was a natural step to shorten the firm’s name to one word. It then added a humorous twist to the exercise, announcing that ‘from now on we will be doing business on first-name terms’.



On the surprisingly thorny issue of not including the ‘s’ after Nabarro, despite the firm being informally referred to as ‘Nabarros’, Mr Bigland is sanguine: ‘Tesco is called Tesco, but people say Tescos… people will lengthen or shorten your name in a colloquial way – there’s no way we are going to pressgang the whole world to call us Nabarro’. Lovells went the other way on this when it cut down Lovell White Durrant.



Curiously, this is one area where UK law firms seem to be ahead of the US counterparts, who by and large still favour the long list of partners in their titles: Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison and Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom are well-known examples. However, as Tony Williams, of legal consultancy Jomati observes, US firms, being younger than most UK firms, are more likely to have name partners still working in the firm, making any shortening of a name ‘quite a sensitive issue’. Even so, says Mr Williams, the names of these firms are ‘beginning to shorten’.



On one level, changing a firm’s name can be seen as a somewhat trivial exercise – justified by the need to make a firm’s name more convenient or ‘user-friendly’ and reflecting the reality that clients (and media) will always tend to shorten names. Why not, as Nabarro puts it, simply make the informal name the ‘official one’. However, dig a bit deeper and it is clear that something else is afoot: a growing recognition by solicitors that the names of their firms are an important part of their brand identity.



Simon Slater, managing director of First Counsel Consulting, identifies two distinct issues for firms considering a name change: ‘There is the superficial issue: the pithier, the clearer the name, the easier it is to build strong brand recognition… Nabarro is evidence of that. People tend to shorten something where it is unwieldy. From that point of view, it’s absolutely the right and logical thing to do.



‘The second issue is rather more complex. The question is what else is changing about the organisation for the better. Is it simply a change in name, or is it a change in proposition? To what extent has a firm changed internally and behaviourally?’



Tim Nightingale, of Nisus Consulting, echoes this point and the danger of changing a law firm name without changing anything else: ‘If you are traditional firm selling traditional services by the hour in exactly the same way, there’s no point in having a whizzy new name. It’s just the emperor’s new clothes… if you are not differentiating the offer, then it’s just fluff, puffery. When a law firm changes its name, it needs to look at its value, its offering, the promise to the clients.’



Certainly, in the case of Nabarro, the firm has stressed the wider significance of its name change. Mr Bigland says: ‘It’s not just one of those visual changes for the sake of it. It’s actually got a real brand promise and a proposition that is a real client benefit, which is that clarity matters.’



Overwhelmingly, law firms that have changed their name have opted to keep at least one of their partner names in the title rather than devising an entirely new name. While it is no longer required to include a partner name in a firm name, few would risk forfeiting the goodwill built up in their name or ‘brand’ over many years. By contrast, start-up firms have nothing to fear from taking a more innovative approach to a choice of name.



In 2003, Christopher Hutchings and Matthew Higdon founded M Law, a specialist media practice in London. Originally, says Mr Hutchings, the pair considered the name ‘H Law’ (following the shared initial of their surnames) but decided, given their expertise was media, to settle on M Law. ‘We wanted to be modern and we just liked the brevity of M Law,’ he recalls. ‘We didn’t want to be seen as an old-fashioned firm and be tied down to two surnames.’



Mr Hutchings adds: ‘Branding doesn’t just apply to Marks & Spencer and McDonald’s… it applies to anyone providing services. Clients like to be associated with 21st-century firms.’



Rather than turning to outside experts, the solicitors trusted their own instincts: ‘Both of us have got certain skills where branding and PR are concerned… it came in a moment of inspiration.’



Similarly, when launching his own niche practice, sports lawyer Mike Townley sought no outside assistance. Taking his cue from the model agency Models1, he came up with athletes1 Legal. ‘I wanted to use a name that was new and modern and spoke directly to the client base… it took us about ten days to work it out. I was out running and thought of the name… I road tested it on a few clients, kicked it around the office and we said “yes – that’s good”.’



Mr Townley, however, does not consider the choice of name to be hugely important. ‘It’s your track record, your own personal name which counts…. I could change the name of the firm tomorrow with no significant impact on the marketplace.’



Others firms have also been adventurous – you can find The Endeavour Partnership on Teesside, London media firm H2O Law, London employment lawyers Archon, and a company/ commercial firm in the capital, Sabretooth Law.



Aston Bond, based in Slough and Reading, also took a refreshingly different approach when it launched in 2004. According to chief executive and managing partner Stephen Puri, the name was inspired by a friend’s interest in James Bond, and his own fondness for Aston Martin cars. ‘It was all a bit of a joke at the beginning,’ he recalls. ‘We thought being different, young and dynamic, we would do something completely different… we just took Aston Martin and James Bond and put them together. We thought it had a good ring about it – and we liked the initials AB.’



While Mr Puri says that to some Aston Bond ‘sounds a bit cheesy’, he has no regrets about the choice. ‘It’s definitely the best thing we did. Everyone remembers it – it’s fantastic.’ It also fitted the image the firm was trying to portray, he adds, combining a ‘classy, West End-type image’ with ‘old-fashioned values’.



Another benefit of the name, says Mr Puri, is that it can be exploited for marketing purposes. In a recent business-to-business exhibition, where his firm was exhibiting, Mr Puri placed his own Aston Martin in a prominent position outside the exhibition hall, hoping to draw clients’ attention to it, and in turn, his firm.



‘Solicitors don’t really think out of the box,’ says Mr Puri, ‘I’m a businessman – you have to be a bit creative.’



Cameron Timmis is a freelance journalist