Most firms compete on ‘experienced and we care’. So does every other firm. Ask three competitors in the same city what makes them different and you get three versions of the same answer: experienced team, client-focused, results-driven. None of it distinguishes anyone. A client who cannot tell firms apart falls back on price, proximity, or whoever answered first. A firm with no position is not chosen for a reason. It is chosen by default, or not at all. We are a strategic growth partner for law firms, and we have positioned them for over twenty years.
Positioning gets confused with branding: logos, colours, a clever line. It is more fundamental than that, and more commercial. It is the answer to why a particular client should choose your firm over the several others doing the same work nearby. If that answer is ‘we are experienced and we care,’ you have no position. Every competitor offers the identical reassurance, and the client cannot tell you apart.
A real position is something a competitor cannot honestly claim too. It is grounded in a true, defensible difference in how your firm actually practises, the kind of matters you are genuinely best at, the way you work with clients, the niche you understand better than anyone. Finding it requires looking hard at where your best matters actually come from, what those clients were really deciding between, and where the market is leaving a gap open. That is strategic work, not creative work.
It also requires the willingness to decide what you are not. A firm that tries to be everything to everyone, every practice area, every client type, every matter, becomes the obvious choice for no one. Positioning is as much about what you decline to claim as what you assert, and that discipline is what most firms find hardest and most valuable.
Consider a family law firm competing against a dozen others that all describe themselves identically. Looking closely, its best, most profitable matters and happiest clients cluster around complex financial settlements involving business assets, work it does better than its generalist rivals. A position built on that truth (rather than on ‘compassionate family lawyers,’ which all of them claim) gives a specific kind of client a specific reason to choose it, and lets the firm stop competing on price against firms doing simpler work.
“Our experience with Practice Proof has been consistently impressive. Dan and his team are responsible, personable and genuinely trustworthy.”
Three mistakes that leave a firm undifferentiated and competing on price.
Experience and care are not positions; they are table stakes, the price of entry, not a reason to choose. A real position is something a competitor cannot honestly claim too, and most firms never get past the table stakes.
What the partners are proud of and what actually makes a client choose are frequently different things. Positioning built on internal pride rather than the client’s real decision is vanity dressed as strategy.
Trying to be everything to everyone produces a firm that is the obvious choice for no one. Positioning requires deciding what you are not, and the firms that cannot bring themselves to narrow are the ones that stay invisible in a crowded market.
Where your best matters come from, what those clients were deciding between, what you do genuinely differently, and where the market is open, that is the raw material of a defensible position.
We look hard at your most valuable matters and happiest clients to locate the defensible thing about how your firm practises, the real reason clients choose you, which is often not the one the partners assume.
A position that is true, defensible and relevant to the client’s actual decision, the foundation every other piece of marketing is then built on.
AI accelerates the market and competitive analysis; the strategic judgment stays human, built by lawyers for lawyersThe position becomes the spine of the website, the content, and every channel, so the firm says one coherent, distinctive thing everywhere a client meets it.
Take a commercial law firm that has always marketed itself as a full-service general commercial practice, indistinguishable from a dozen others. The diagnosis reveals its genuine strength and best margins lie in advising fast-growing businesses through funding and acquisition, where its partners have unusual depth. Repositioning around that, and deliberately declining to lead with the generic full-service message, gives a specific, valuable kind of client a clear reason to choose it, and lets the firm command its worth rather than competing on hourly rate against generalists.
A firm with no position has not avoided competing. It has chosen the worst ground to compete on. When a client cannot tell two firms apart on anything that matters, the decision collapses to whatever is left: price, proximity, or who replied first. So the undifferentiated firm discounts. It wins on cost the work a positioned firm wins on fit, and it erodes its own margins doing it.
The longer this runs, the harder it is to escape. The market learns to see the firm as interchangeable and prices it accordingly. Meanwhile the firm that owns a clear position attracts exactly the clients it is best suited to, at the rates the work reflects, and stops having the price conversation at all. This is where engagements should start. Tactics built on a muddled position fail slowly and expensively, which is the worst way to fail. A positioning conversation commits you to nothing, and it often reframes how a partner sees the whole firm.
It turns away work you were winning on price and never well suited to, and wins you more of the work you are best at, at better rates. Narrowing feels risky and is almost always the opposite: a firm known for something specific is chosen deliberately, while a firm known for everything is chosen by default, if at all.
No, branding is how the firm looks and sounds; positioning is the underlying commercial decision about who you are for and why they should choose you. Branding executes the position. Get the position wrong and the most beautiful branding in the world is selling the wrong thing beautifully.
Often true at the partner level, and often not reflected anywhere in the firm’s marketing, which still says ‘experienced and client-focused’ like everyone else. The gap between what a firm knows internally and what it actually communicates is where most positioning value is found.
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The work compounds when channels connect. These pair naturally with what you just read.
Positioning decides what you stand for; StoryBrand turns it into a message that casts the client as the hero. One leads naturally into the other.
Explore →A sharp position has to be seen as well as said. The brand is how the position becomes visible at every touchpoint.
Explore →Start with a positioning session, we will pressure-test where your firm actually stands, what you are genuinely best at, and where the market is open. No obligation beyond the conversation.
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