Your personal brand can be key to networking successfully. And by "personal brand", I mean the series of impressions and ideas that arise when people hear your name or see your face. The intangible perception others have of you based on what they have seen themselves and heard from others. 

Shaping your personal brand

Your personal brand won’t necessarily reflect how you want to be perceived, so shaping your personal brand will to some extent come down to your level of self-awareness. If you make a conscious effort to remain aware of how you are coming across, and to constantly assess how your attitude, character, abilities and approach to work are influencing others’ impressions of you, then you should be well placed to deliberately adapt your actions and behaviours towards building a personal brand that aligns with how you want to come across.

As explained by Steve Weiner (ex-City solicitor, learning and development professional, and author of the excellent 21^st Century Solicitor): “Managing brand is all about perspective, understanding the context in which you work, and modifying your behaviour where necessary. You should be questioning your behaviour all the time, perhaps by asking yourself questions like: 

• Should I outwardly convey composure even if feeling overwhelmed? Do I come across as panicked? Am I using reassuring language to put people at ease, for example “I’ll take care of that. Leave that with me”? How might the phrase “I don’t understand” come across to others? Do I need to display a sense of urgency to please this supervisor? 
• How might a messy desk with notes strewn everywhere reflect on my organisation skills? What will they think of me if I skip that training session?
• Do I need to say thank you every time I ask my secretary to do something? Did I talk down to them when I told them they had made a mistake?. Is sending an email the best way to deliver good or bad news?

Ultimately, the best junior lawyers are at the intersection of “competent professional”, “innovative business person” and “likeable colleague and adviser”. They are calm, approachable and good natured. They are great communicators. They show empathy and understanding, listen carefully and react accordingly. They never show aggression, and they are appropriately enthusiastic about every element of their job – even the rubbish bits.” They also pay careful attention to how they are coming across during external (e.g. client) interactions, in the knowledge that their personal brand will also reflect on the firm. 

Professionalism

Consistently demonstrating the right attitude and appropriate level of professionalism is key to cultivating a positive professional brand in a professional environment. In the junior stages of your career, you probably don’t want to stand out for your appearance – including your choice of clothes, hairstyle and so on – so take stock of your surroundings and how others dress and hold themselves. You should also be wary of being too informal with seniors, as you may need to earn this right and some might perceive informality as demonstrating a lack of respect or arrogance. 

Always avoid arrogance, steer clear of gossip and badmouthing others (word can spread surprisingly quickly, and you may need to work with these people for years to come!), don’t show panic, and never outwardly come across as bored or lacking an interest in the work or your clients. Instead, be helpful and enthusiastic, carry out your work with a smile, and become known for being punctual and reliable. 

As with internal interactions, always treat everyone with courtesy and respect, from the person in the cloakroom and the serving staff, to the receptionist, secretaries, trainees and senior lawyers. It’s common decency, plus you never know who will be asked for their opinion of you come appraisal time (and fee earners may notice if you don’t show the same respect to support staff).

Visibility

Personal brand is also about visibility. You might come across phenomenally well, but if very few people know you, then what’s the point? You should actively seek opportunities to update, inform, educate and empower others, for example by offering to deliver presentations. On what, you may ask? Well, anything from which your colleagues, and the business more generally, might benefit. 

Delivering training sessions, legal updates, case summaries, cross-practice insights, overviews of legal processes, insights into completed deals and how certain challenges were surmounted, sessions covering mistakes made and how to avoid them, and so on, can help to enhance your visibility within the firm, and thus your profile, which in turn can help to establish your personal brand more widely. And this in turn can be key when it comes to cultivating a network.

To conclude, Steve Weiner provides this summary of what to aim for: “the best commercial lawyers are likeable, well-connected and command high organisational visibility, both internally and externally. They seem to know or know of everyone. They always seem to have the time to chat (if not now, then later). They listen attentively whenever you talk. They ask questions to show they are listening when relevant, and they react calmly and appropriately to what others say, do or ask.”