123 - The power of personal branding for lawyers

My guest today is Jon Gregson, a Partner at Weightmans, a UK national law firm.

Jon is an employment lawyer within Weightmans' Employment, Pensions, and Immigration team, with over 20 years of experience in the law.

Jon is also consistently ranked as one of the top Legal LinkedIn influencers from the UK's Top 200 law firms.

Today, what we’re covering is the power of personal branding for lawyers and how to use LinkedIn to stand out from the competition.

Jon's LinkedIn is here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jongregson/

Weightmans website is here: https://www.weightmans.com/

About Dan:
Dan provides law firm owners and partners with leadership and management skills that have been proven to dramatically increase their profits while reducing their workload. Over the last five years, Dan’s clients have grown their revenues from 15% to 392% in one year while more than halving their workload.

To find out about Dan's availability and programs, click here: https://www.danwarburton.com/

Proudly edited with finesse by Mike at Making Digital Real ✨

Transcript

Welcome to the Law Firm Owners Podcast. I am your host, Dan Warburton. If you are a law firm equity member, partner, CEO or MD who wants to increase your profit while reducing your workload, then you are in the right place.

It's the skills that I needed to become a leader. Yeah. I'm so happy that I've met you in my life.

You've spoken about the revenue increase. It went from like 70,000 to nearly half a million. What percentage increase is that? It's over 400% in that range.

Our monetary returns have been insane. And what we have made in extra profit as compared to what we spent on you is incomparable. You've just trebled the firm's profits in one year.

Yeah. Are you getting what I'm saying? After working with Dan for a few months, my income is up. My happiness is up.

This has changed my whole life. My guest today is Jon Gregson. He's a partner at Weyman's, a UK national law firm.

Jon is an employment lawyer within Weyman's employment, pensions and immigration team and has over 20 years of experience in law. Jon is also consistently ranked as one of the top legal LinkedIn influencers from the UK's top 200 law firms. And today, what we're covering is the power of personal branding for lawyers.

Jon, it's great to have you here. Morning, Dan. Thank you.

I was just looking at your profile and there's a post here where I don't know if it's you or somebody else wearing a top and it says, Jon from LinkedIn, the man, the myth, the legend. Yeah, I didn't buy that for myself. I definitely didn't buy that for myself.

Don't worry. Yeah, I've not got that much of an ego at all. No, definitely not.

No, yeah. But I mean, you know, you can just see like things like that are gaining so much engagement. We've got 47 reactions and 50 comments, you know.

I mean, even to just put that up on your page must take like courage to some extent and also been able to laugh at yourself, right? Yeah, it's been a journey, I think is the way I would describe that because if you were to absolutely ask me this 12, 18 months ago, no chance. But I, you know, I would I don't know what's the kind of thing that wants you to be sick in your own mouth. But I am now in a place where actually I can see the benefit of that.

I can see the, maybe the kind of self-appreciation that can come with it. But actually it's kind of what it is and what it's becoming is a brand piece to that. And the benefit to it very much though, both for me, but also the firm and how it all kind of fits in and kind of knits itself together.

So yeah, it's, it comes with a smile. I think it's probably what I would say to that at the most. And it stands out.

I mean that, you know, that would stop you scrolling. That's not the normal thing that you see. And so it's, it's little strategies and little creative ideas like that that get you noticed on LinkedIn.

What would you say has, has been able to have such an impact and create posts that get such engagement and create such a base of followers done for you, your branding, your positioning and growing your firm? I'm really conscious with, with how I do this about most kind of the content pillars and what I do with things. So for whatever reason, there seems to be a load of employment lawyers on LinkedIn. It seems to gravitate and bring is toward that.

Now I get absolutely, you know, so I actually respond from these organizations. That's what I do. If you're on the other side of that, you know, if you, if you work for individuals, it's a great place where you're going to find, you know, clients, you're going to find referrals.

Fantastic. So I can understand why there was such a large number of employment lawyers that will kind of, you know, find ourselves on that. But obviously then that means there's every time you look an employment lawyer, how do I elevate myself? How do I stand out? How do I make myself more distinct from that? We've been very much one of those things that I certainly kind of thought about and looked at probably 12, about 12 months ago when this started to really kind of catch fire, what they got for me was, well, how do you become someone that's different? How do you stop that scroll? How do people go? Actually, I do remember Jon.

I do remember Waitmans. That might be the employment lawyer I want to work with, or I might want to go and work for. That's, that's what I'm thinking about.

So it was about how you can kind of create that kind of little bit of a personal brand, how you could create that piece that stops the scroll and that you kind of call back to it. But it's worked really well because actually what it does, and that's where kind of the concept helps, but what it does is it gets you to a place where undoubtedly there's been referrals, there's been work, there's been new clients. We've rebooted to it.

We've been able to bring in new people into the team when we need it. I get to come and do stuff like this, you know, which gets me a whole new audience again. And that constantly is another means to be able to kind of come and talk about this.

That is a really important one for me because it's not just about the work and about the people we can recruit. I think there's a, there's a really important part that we all play about trying to encourage others in the legal community to go, this is really something we can be doing here on LinkedIn. It's a state, it's an important space for us.

So if it encourages one of the persons to go, I could be part of this, I could take part, you know, I could, I could contribute, I could be visible. I can, I can get involved. That's a really important part to all of this too.

But then also the bigger pieces is what it just creates for the firm and what we can do with that because actually it's not about me. It's not about the bit that says Jon from LinkedIn. It's about me as being a partner of Waitmans.

It's about the firm and it's about what I can represent for the firm and how I kind of help push, you know, Waitmans and what we do and how we work as a firm. That's what this is really about as well. Yeah, yeah.

Your, your proactiveness as a partner is a, is a breath of fresh air. With a lot of my clients I work with, they come to me and they say, I really want to take the firm to new heights but the other partners, they just don't get it or we all agree we're going to do things at meetings and then we come to the next meetings and the other partners don't do what they say they're going to do. And so it's really frustrating for the ambitious partner in a law firm and they're the ones that end up becoming my clients.

Yeah. But how do you think the rest of the partners feel with you having such gravitas and almost like fame on LinkedIn? I think it's probably a mixed bag. And it probably depends who you ask.

I mean, I see it really, well, there's two ways I look at this. So the one thing I always say about what I do on LinkedIn is that the minute this starts to feel like work, I'm out of it because actually I have enough to do in the job. The job is hard enough as it is that the minute this becomes another part of the job in that sense, I'll stop doing it because actually, you know, to turn up every day to kind of create that kind of content, do what we do, that's hard work.

I don't need that because, you know, I don't have a 9 to 5 Monday to Friday job. What we do, it's hard as it is. So that's always the baseline for everything we do here.

That said, you know, the reality is, and I take it, you know, very importantly, as a partner, you're there to lead. You have a huge influence within the firm and elsewhere with that. Yeah.

If that means there are things that, you know, I absolutely buy into and I believe I need to do that, great. If there are some things that maybe aren't necessarily, maybe absolutely aligned with what I will think or I will do, I've still got a responsibility to be involved in that and potentially lead through those things. That comes as part of what I sign up for.

And this, and there's a story and there's a back piece to LinkedIn. I was very much in that latter category when I started with this, but I'd kind of gone through that journey where actually I'm now at the other end of that spectrum and I will kind of go through the wall first with it. Internally, I think we've got a real mix of people.

I think, you know, we've got some other partners. Ben Trogan, one of our kind of healthcare regulatory team, absolutely does stuff. You know, he's very active really on board with it.

I've equally sat in meetings where I've had other partners go, not Facebook, and all the other kind of stereotypical kind of naysayer nonsense pieces have been pushed at me. I think in the main, people see the benefit. There's probably also that little bit of going, well, I can't do it like that.

So what can I do? How do I get involved? A lot of that unknown, I think is still there. What can I do? I don't have the time. Probably all the similar challenges you get with anything else you ever try and get, you know, a partner on which doesn't involve, you know, the day job, the client relationships, bringing the revenue in.

But fundamentally, this for me is part of that responsibility you have as being a partner for that wider piece of what we have to do in, you know, for the firm, the brand and generally what we have. And also for the more junior people in the firm as well, because we can't encourage them and expect them to be involved in things and to get there and to get them on a journey if you're not willing to get involved yourself and to lead by example and stuff like that. Yeah.

Yeah, I can sense that as with most, well, all businesses, everybody has strengths and weaknesses. For you, your strength is putting yourself out there in a catchy, fun way that builds that following. Now, one of the other partners might cringe at that and doesn't want to have their face over everything.

But of course, they've got other skills that you're not so strong at that they bring to the table. And I guess the key is to work as a real team amongst the partners so that you've all got every base covered, right? It absolutely is. And that's where, again, I'm very much live to where I can bring things and the strength that I will have to that.

So, you know, and again, there's a journey to this, but for me, this is where I can absolutely play to a strength of something. And, you know, it's whether that be, you know, what it's like to come and work with me, whether that's to come and work, you know, for me, whether that's to talk about what it's like to be a lawyer in my profession, I can do that. And this gives me a medium for which to do it.

You asked me to go and stand on a stage and talk to 200 people. I'm going to do that. That's fine. 

That's part of my job. I'm an advocate. It's part of my job.

You asked me to walk in a room and go network with 20, 30, 40 people. I'm that one that kind of comes late, turns up, leaves early. That's not for me.

That's not where my strength will lie in that. But I'm very open and I'm very honest to that point because that talks directly back to what you just said there. It's about the strength of that.

Equally, there's going to be some people, there's going to be some partners. They're not going to show up on LinkedIn. They'll scroll through.

They might like the odd thing, you know, once every six months. That's fine. But they've probably got all the fantastic field health work.

And it's about, you know, the right people in the right place at the right time and how we do standard support and we do all of that. And it might be, you know, I'm going through what I do here. That's where something will come to me and I can just be fair at all.

Yeah, that'd be the right way of doing it. So no, it's about the right people in the right place at the right time is always the key thing for me in this and not expecting the same output from everybody. That's all.

Yeah. Yeah, brilliant. I very much resonate with your whole take on the personal branding because I've gone from zero.

Nobody, like a nobody in the legal space, non-qualified lawyer to now having had a whole series of high level law firm owners and partners as clients. And I've gone from zero to that with only LinkedIn. So LinkedIn was my way of first reaching out saying, hey, you know, I'm a business mentor looking at moving into the legal space.

Could you give me some advice? And then I had a load of law firm owners and partners say, yeah, I'll give you 15 minutes on a call. Then they gave me their advice. Then one of them became a non-paid client.

Then I practiced all my growth skills with them. They started to succeed and then bit by bit adding and adding more people. And then I started to find out about opportunities to network, speak at events that I end up with those and then just snowballed and snowballed.

But all of this has happened only because of LinkedIn. You know? It's phenomenal actually when you see the power of what you can do with this because, and I've talked about this before in that I think we've always, everyone's always had a LinkedIn account. You know, I think I've probably had mine for 12, 15 years and certainly kind of, you know, 10 of them nothing on it.

You know, you post the odd thing and the most I think you ever used it for was to kind of go and have a bit of a stalk with somebody online that might be on the other side of a case or something without realizing that they could see that you looked at them. But that was the most you ever used it for. You never used it for anything at all and then it's only when you get involved in it and you start to use it and you then suddenly see actually there's a real power in this and it's about the connections but actually it's what then comes with it and what I think I've certainly found is you always kind of get to a point where you reach that kind of critical mass and then the opportunity to kind of come through with it.

So as I say it's things like this you get to speak at events the day peep comes in the day-to-day you know the opportunity and the work referrals everything else but it's so much more than that it's the community it's the people you find and it for me kind of it opened up a world that probably was there but I would never have been part of that world and I just wouldn't have known it existed without just simply being able to kind of get involved in this. It's absolutely phenomenal what it's been able to do. Yeah brilliant.

Brilliant. What advice would you give to a law firm owner or partner who's would really love to generate more business and they've got a LinkedIn account but they hardly ever post or hardly do anything with it. What would you say is like the basic strategy that they need to hit and maintain for it to start really working? I think for me in a very very simple sense you just have to be willing to try and no different to the advice that you know you give to you know trainees, paralegals coming into firms.

Those that go the furthest those that have the most effect are the ones that are willing to give it a go. You know it might be out of your comfort zone you might not have a clue what you're doing with it to start with you just have to get involved and give it a go and I think you know if you regularly turn up and that's not every day you know it might be once twice a week it might just be you'd like the occasional post while you find your feet occasionally you'll comment and as you then find yourself a little bit more familiar get a little bit more confidence you naturally will find things will go with it. I think the other really important piece to it though is you kind of have to leave the metrics and the vanity metrics for one side of it you know you can't change the numbers you can't go only five people have liked that post today or 49 people have liked this one this morning I think if you start to get into the habit of looking too much of that stuff that's where it kind of drives you a bit crazy because you kind of go well I thought that was a pretty good post and only 12 people have liked it or this one took me five minutes and suddenly like a thousand people but if you kind of get caught up in the numbers piece you completely lose yourself in it because actually all you need is you just need that one person you know I just need that one HR director or that one person who has got sufficient influence in a business to go I need some employment advice today or actually I remember that guy that wore a stupid t-shirt or you know posted about a raccoon on a train was the one the other week that went absolutely crazy that's what you're kind of hooking back into I just need one person for that I don't need you know the 1,500 other people who like it just need the one so I think the advice is really about you have to be consistent you have to bear with it it takes time but that's no different to anything else we do and ultimately it's about finding your own way and you will find your own level with it and then you will probably find a way of doing it and go there but you know I can't lie it takes time it's hard work but actually I think what we've all found and those that kind of had a degree of success recently it's not hard work in the sense of work it's just it takes time and depth that goes into it but yeah it's worthwhile and it's an enjoyable way of doing it yeah I've found that the hard work side of the content creations feels like hard work at first but then as you do more of it you get faster and faster at it and if you save all your posts and let's say I used to set a day aside a week to write my five pieces to post every day Monday to Friday but now I've got so quick at writing posts that I just sit down and just do it every morning before I start my day's work and post something and it might be a hash of the past I might look through personal photos was it something I did on the weekend was it an ice cream with the kids sitting on the beach you know and I guess one of the mistakes that I see a lot of you know people looking at utilizing LinkedIn to create business is they post too much businessy stuff or post an article about something happening in the industry and just don't post enough personal stuff yeah yeah I think it's a really fine line so again that was one of the things that I made a decision on about 12 months ago so I used to kind of try and always find some kind of employment law related stuff but it just started taking an awful long time kind of you know looking at tribunal judgments or you know finding stuff in the breath and I was like again it goes back to that kind of baseline it's become work and it was just too much time and then actually people aren't really that interested in it you get the occasional piece and I absolutely again except there are some people that's a really good way for them but for me it was difficult and then you'd find something and I had to lean into a particular way that I will be with something that's quite difficult so you know a lot of the content now will have a slightly depreciating or certain tone to it and so trying to overlay that on to somebody who's lost their job or who's been discriminated against or who's been harassed that's an even harder line to take again so I made that decision of actually I'm not going to post technical employment law updates I'm going to go more into the kind of those four pillars as I say about you know it's either what it's like to be a lawyer what it's like to work at Wakeman's what it's like to work with Wakeman's if you need a law firm or the fourth one what it's just like to turn up and be on LinkedIn and have that they're the kind of the themes that I will talk to and that might be some personal it might be work related but those kind of layers run through every single post with it but very much no employment law there's no employment law in that for me there are others who do that far better that's for them so I think that line is a really important thing and I think it kind of talks to the point of I'm kind of finding your niche finding what works for you but now I definitely think there's a point it doesn't need to all be technical business pieces because ultimately it's finding people the conversation finding again something that you're going to relate I want to work with that person I want to see the individual I want to see what that person is like because hopefully or fundamentally that's generally why we work with people a lot yeah what you're speaking about reminds me of what I read in Endless Referrals a book by Bob Berg and he speaks that people that receive services or buy services in particular only buy it from people they know like and trust so the whole mission of being on LinkedIn is to become known liked and trusted the first bit known be noticed liked this is what you're skilled at you speak about your take on things but I think in a very British humour way as well which has people connect with you so you go past the known bit then you become liked and then they see you often they hear about you they hear about the successes you have for your clients and then you're trusted and then at that point you've got a real clear space to then get in conversation with them and possibly create a new client yeah it is and that's where then with the space you need you might take that offline or you'll take it into another conversation and that's where actually we can talk about the employment lot piece or we can talk about what the issues you've got are there's a space for that and that's where we'll have that in no different in the same way you would have that in any other way than a prospective client or anybody who's got an issue might well come to you so it's exactly that and it's just about how you build that it's just a different way of doing it and a different lens through which you look at it for me yeah yeah brilliant do you post or comment and gauge on any other social media platforms no so I don't have any social media whatsoever other than LinkedIn I have absolutely no idea I'm completely out of the loop on those things and you know I spend half my life kind of moaning at my wife about pinching it off Facebook and the irony of just sat there kind of constantly scrolling when I probably spend a good deal of my own life on LinkedIn with it but no I don't have any other social media whatsoever and I'm absolutely resisting even the transition to kind of video for the LinkedIn piece of the zaps that you know when they kind of tick tock or anything like that or it's just no I just don't because again it's the time piece it's the work it's the act piece for me I just don't do it yeah and I complete the complete irony and probably hypocrisy that comes with me saying that but no just have no interest in it at all yeah and rightly so I mean LinkedIn is the B2B social media platform of them all it's the king you know I've got a Facebook account and every so often I'll post the same post that I put on LinkedIn up on Facebook but it doesn't go anywhere never does anything never builds up an interaction and after speaking to you I'm really tempted to just delete it all close it down completely and just only be on LinkedIn yeah yeah and yeah so I guess one of the things that I'm really conscious about how I do this as well is almost kind of how I frame a lot of this so what whilst I will talk to the personal to a degree I make a very clear distinction between the work life and what you see of that and how much of my personal life you get from this as well so I perfectly don't talk about my home life I don't talk about my family I keep very clear lines around that in a sense and again it's about just that this is something I do probably in that work sense which you can talk about probably some of those things but again it means I stop I draw a line I go home from it and I think does that in some way go to the fact I don't have all the social media pieces maybe but I'm very clear on this is related to me as the employment lawyer and that's where it goes with it but I do put that kind of framework around that content piece for that as well.

I think that's a great piece of advice there if you're worried about being too personal then you probably are being too personal rather than having photos of you with your kids having dinner you would have a photo of you on the train or somebody that you met along the way right? Yeah and it was Simon Marshall actually he described it the way he did it it's like you look through a letter box of the house and what you do is it's how close to that letter box is how far down the path you go when you can see through is how far away you get from showing people into your house and your world and that kind of really resonates with me in a sense because that's what I'm very clear on is you'll get a little glimpse but it's probably if you stand 10-20 feet down the path that's how much you can see into my home and my life with it but no I'm very clear on that because again it puts that framework around it where I can go right that's linked in that's work related then I step away from as well. Yeah it's interesting I'm actually quite open to posting a picture of me with the kids camping with my wife or something because my my intention there is to really show the people that like my content that I am a real human being that you know that this is my life this is what I'm like and again it creates that known and trustability factor. Yeah and different things work with different people with it and and was that a conscious decision to start with? Probably not but I think it's where it just kind of found its natural level with me because and this is probably really important thing for me there was a lot of hit and miss to start with on this so you know I said I used to post once a week twice you know there's a lot of up and down here this took a lot of kind of not mud thrown at a wall but there was a lot of up and down there was a lot of trying to find things out see how it would work found my own level found my own voice almost with this and I think as part of that naturally where I went other people find their own way of doing things that's how you create your own level of trust with it I absolutely get that but yeah it takes a little bit to find your own way through this I think and to kind of navigate that and the other point which is really important when you make up it then becomes a lot easier to find that content and to create it five ten minutes in the morning start three hours the night before and you kind of start by going what am I going to do tomorrow there's no point in this at that point yeah absolutely and we're seeing a lot more post gaining attention which are videos are you moving into videos if I can avoid it I think I did one it's just look it may well be something I get to it's just probably not a natural medium for me I guess and again I say that look you know I'm an employment lawyer I do a lot of advocacy I spend a lot of time literally on my feet with clients but also in employment travel so I don't mind the attention I just haven't found it to be a natural space for me to do that I probably need to invest the time and get used to it doing it I'm also not entirely sure it leads into the style of what I do and how I do it I don't know I'm not quite there with that part of it it's probably the honest piece but I guess that's the space for me to develop and maybe evolve into at some point I guess if I really need to but yeah it's not quite there for me just yet I don't think do you want to record one now well potentially you can do if you want look at this look here we go let's go for it a really short I'm even leaning there to be in it when I'm actually on the screen I'm still out of depth on a video yeah let's just record it and see how it goes yeah here I am recording an episode on the law firm owner's podcast with the one and only Jon Gregson it's such an honour to have such a LinkedIn celebrity here and we're just talking about branding yourself and positioning yourself and using LinkedIn and how video is the next medium and so we thought well why don't we just record a video of us recording a live podcast episode right now and that's probably my first ever proper LinkedIn video you posted there you go so you see yeah even for somebody that's got this much presence it takes courage to do something new so take that on today start something new put yourself out there consistently and watch what happens cheers seriously is it but even that that's where I go that pushes me slightly out of the comfort zone yeah though yeah after a bit of talking about it probably the right thing to say that yeah yeah it's it's something that I've I've now got used to doing I can I can even pick up the the phone walking down a high street where lots of people around me and record a video yeah then that's done it but that's the thought even taking the selfie bit is like a the thought of it and be I still think I look like a thumb so I am not in that headspace yet where you can just phone out to walk down the street and talk to it I mean that the guy I think does it really well is William Peake so he's absolutely nailed that so you know from Harney's but the way that he's kind of moved into that but to naturally be able to just do that and it you know it doesn't look rehearsed it's simply phone out walk and talk with it you'll be happy to know I probably won't post this video because behind the screen is a complete mess like I've got my screen set up with zoom here so it looks all grand with a light around me the button but you know the rest is a disaster so you know again that that point of coast I don't I don't mind coast it yeah you'll be a long time before you find me actually doing myself yeah brilliant well look I really enjoyed having you on this show today and I feel like we've pushed the boundaries of what it feels like to be comfortable and uncomfortable but overall we've covered the sheer power of it in that both of us have created full-fledged successful careers and positioning in our industries through LinkedIn right yeah absolutely and it's it's for me it's another level it's another dimension to being a lawyer to being a partner and it's very recent you know this is this is the last year of you know 20 years in this career already so it's for me something where it just shows you again there's always other things there's always opportunities other possibilities you can see in what we do here and if you wouldn't kind of just try it and jump in and see it and yeah the fact that we're both sat here is I think testament to what you can do with this it's true the only reason why we are sat here recording this podcast episode is because of LinkedIn absolutely and and that is it and it's you know it's not about the work it's the connection it's the friendship there's so much that's come from it I honestly it's hard to actually articulate it in some way yeah and more to the point I actually live in the south of Spain on Costa Blanca just up from Alicante so I don't get to go out networking and speak at as many events as I'd like and so this being able to dial in on a live zoom call like this has been become my bread and butter as you say yes it really does work yeah yeah no it's phenomenal it really is yeah brilliant well look Jon I've loved having you on the show I've learned a lot from you I'm sure the listeners are going to gain a lot of useful insights from great hearing you speak as well and yeah let's stay in touch and I'm sure we'll meet when the time is right yeah perfect thanks Dan I've really enjoyed it cheers thank you thank you for listening to the Law Firm Owners podcast with me your host Dan Warburton if you found this useful then join my Law Firm Owners club which already has over 850 members it's free to join and as a member you'll get my very best episodes exclusive content free training tickets to events I'm speaking at and the opportunity to network and learn from other highly successful law firm owners if you'd like to join this for free find out about working with me or contact me then click the link in the episode description