Module 2 · Brand your practice

What your firm stands for

Stage 1 starts here, and it starts with a decision rather than a color. Before anything gets designed, you settle what your firm leads with — because that one choice writes the sitemap — the list of pages your site will have — the homepage headline, and every page after it.

By the end of this lesson you’ll have the first half of a file called brand-strategy.md sitting in your project folder: your positioning, your lead practice area, and the one thing you can defend against a firm with a television budget. The look comes next lesson. The words come in Module 3.

Hierarchy, not amputation

Every marketing consultant a lawyer has ever met opens with “niche down.” It’s usually said to someone whose rent depends on taking whatever walks in the door, and it lands as an insult. So here is the version that survives contact with a real practice:

You don’t have to stop practicing eight things. You have to stop presenting eight things as equals. One to three areas get the full treatment — a real page, real depth, the pages beneath it. The rest get one honest page each and nothing more. Your navigation should make it obvious which is which, and a visitor should be able to tell in about two seconds.

What clients actually weigh

You’d expect brand recognition to sit near the top. It doesn’t. A consumer survey of 1,000 people by Legmark ranked “being a well-known national brand” 13th out of 14 factors — while a clear, step-by-step explanation of the legal process ranked first, named by 55%. That survey is UK data, so treat it as direction rather than a U.S. measurement. It still isolates something no American study we found does: the thing buyers say they weigh most is the thing a television budget makes harder, not easier.

The second number is the one that should cheer you up. In Clio’s 2024 secret-shopper study, researchers contacted 500 firms as prospective clients. Of the firms that answered an email at all, only 18% gave clear next steps or cost information.

Put those together and the bar you’re clearing is on the floor. Explaining what happens next, in order, in plain English, out-competes most of your county before you’ve written a headline.

Five wedges a small firm can actually own

Pick one. Not three — one, the one that’s true today, that you would still be willing to say out loud to a client who held you to it. Everything on the site then leans on it.

Watch it happen: Alvarez Family Law

Maria Alvarez practices family law, estate planning, a little landlord-tenant work, and takes the occasional misdemeanor when a friend asks. Family law is roughly three-quarters of her billing and all of the work she wants more of. Here’s what the interview did to her homepage:

Her positioning line, in the form the interview produces: “I help parents going through a contested divorce in Boulder County get through it with their kids and their finances intact — working with me directly, not with a case manager.” Her wedge is direct access. She still takes the landlord-tenant work.

Have these in front of you before you paste

The interview will ask for facts nobody else can supply. Gathering them first turns a forty-minute conversation into a fifteen-minute one.

• The states you're licensed in, and the city you actually work from
• Every area you currently practice — all of them, including the ones you're lukewarm on
• Which one brings in the most revenue, and which one you most want more of
• How you charge: flat fee, hourly, contingency, or a mix
• The three things clients most often say when they explain why they chose you
• The counties or courts you genuinely appear in — not the ones you'd be willing to drive to
• Whether your state lets you publish case results. “Not sure” is a perfectly good answer — Module 6 shows you how to find out

Paste this into Claude

This is short on purpose. The interview itself lives in the Build Kit’s brand-strategy skill, so the prompt just points Claude at it and sets the boundaries.

Let's start Stage 1 — my firm's brand strategy. Follow your brand-strategy skill.

Interview me first. One question at a time, and wait for my answer — don't answer them
for me and don't skip ahead. Cover at least: my firm name and whether I'm a solo, the
states I'm licensed in and the city I work from, every area I practice, which one earns
the most, which one I want more of, who my ideal client is and what state they're in
when they find me, how I charge, and the three things clients say about why they picked
me.

Then give me, in this order:
1. Which ONE to THREE areas I should lead with, and which get one honest page each.
   Recommend — don't hand me a menu of options.
2. My positioning line, in this exact form: "I help [specific audience] with [specific
   need] by [specific difference]." Show me two alternatives, then ask which is closest
   to true and wait.
3. The one wedge I can defend against a firm with a television budget — direct access,
   narrowness, geography, process transparency, or a speed promise I can keep — and why
   it's that one for me.

Rules: invent nothing about me. No case results, no awards, no years in practice, no
client counts, no bar admissions I didn't give you. If you need a fact you don't have,
ask me for it or leave it as [FILL IN: ...]. Don't call me a specialist or an expert in
anything. Describe my own service — never characterize other lawyers or other firms.

Once I've picked a line, write the positioning into brand-strategy.md, save a snapshot,
and stop there. We do the look in the next lesson.

What to expect

• Claude asks its questions one at a time and waits. If it fires off twelve at once, tell it to slow down.
• It reflects your practice back at you in sharper words than you used. That moment is the point of the exercise.
• It recommends a lead area and defends the recommendation.
• It writes the positioning into brand-strategy.md, saves a snapshot, and stops.