Reputation Isn’t Soft Anymore—and Law Firms Shouldn’t Treat It That Way
By, Arielle Lapiano
Most law firms will tell you reputation matters.
But in practice, reputation is the red-headed stepchild of firm strategy. It’s acknowledged, but rarely managed with the same rigor as business development, client relationships, or talent.
If a firm already has a strong reputation, it’s easy to take it for granted. The brand does the work. The phone rings. Rankings roll in. Reputation is assumed rather than actively shaped.
If a firm’s reputation starts slipping—or falling short of where it wants it to be—the instinct is often to increase activity, rather than to redefine strategy. The firm pumps out “thought leadership,” winds up the webinar machine, leadership demands more top-tier press, and every now and then a CMO or Director of Communications is a casualty and asked to move on. Without a clear reputation strategy, however, the gap the firm is trying to close often remains.
In both cases, reputation is treated as something that exists rather than something that is deliberately shaped. Not because firms doubt its importance—they don’t. Reputation has always mattered.
What many firms have lacked is clarity. An understanding of the reputation they are trying to build and how to invest in it intentionally. As a result, the opportunity cost of underinvestment has been easy to miss. Reputation influenced trust, credibility, and choice quietly, without a clear framework for measuring what was being gained—or lost.
That’s changing.
A new thought-leadership report from global corporate communications behemoth Burson, suggests that this is indeed a tangible cost in reframing the concept of “reputation” as “Reputation Capital”—a measurable driver of business performance, not a byproduct of good marketing.
Reputation, Reframed: From Perception to Capital
Burson introduces Reputation Capital as the accumulated trust, credibility, and confidence an organization earns over time.
Burson’s analysis found that reputation generated an average 4.78% in unexpected annual shareholder returns—returns that could not be explained by financial performance alone. Applied globally, that equates to a $7 trillion reputation economy.
As the report puts it:
“Reputational return exists above and beyond traditional financial drivers.”
For law firms and B2B professional services organizations, this should resonate. Clients aren’t buying a product. They’re buying judgment, clarity, and confidence under pressure. Reputation is how clients decide who they trust with the most complex, high-stakes work and how lateral talent decides where to move next.
Reputation Isn’t Static. It’s Either Growing—or Slipping.
One of the most important ideas embedded in the report is also one of the easiest to overlook. Reputation is not a fixed state. It is actively moving in one of three directions according to the report:
- Cultivation
Cultivation is intentional. Leadership is visible and credible. Messaging is consistent across stakeholders. Decisions are made with reputational return in mind. Trust accumulates over time and can be drawn on when it matters most. - Stagnation
Stagnation feels safe. The firm is respected, but not distinctive. Legacy carries disproportionate weight. Visibility exists, but it is not anchored to a clear reputation strategy. Reputation is stable—but it is not growing. - Erosion
Erosion begins quietly. Internal experience and external narrative fall out of alignment. Leadership credibility weakens. Culture, talent experience, and client perception drift apart. By the time erosion becomes visible, the reputational cost is already significant.
Burson’s framing makes this dynamic unavoidable:
“Reputation must be actively managed to deliver sustained reputational return.”
With law firms and other professional services, stagnation is often the most dangerous state—not because it feels risky, but because it doesn’t.
The Eight Levers That Shape Reputation
Burson also breaks Reputation Capital into eight drivers:
- Leadership
- Governance
- Innovation
- Workplace
- Financial performance
- Product and service delivery
- Creativity
- Citizenship
The companies with the strongest reputations aren’t perfect across all eight. But they are coherent. What leadership says aligns with how the company operates. What the company promises externally matches what clients and employees actually experience. That consistency builds trust over time.
As the report notes:
“Reputation leaders outperform laggards across every driver—not selectively, but systematically.”
The Three Reputation Stages
The research points to three common reputation stages. I made some small tweaks to apply Burson’s descriptions to law firms:
- Reputation by Legacy
Reputation is assumed—built on history, marquee matters, and long-standing relationships. There is little active management and a high risk of stagnation. - Reputation by Activity
The firm is visible—publishing, speaking, engaging—but without a clear reputation strategy. Messaging is fragmented. Leadership voices aren’t aligned. Cultivation is uneven, and erosion is a constant risk. - Reputation by Design
Reputation is treated as capital. Leadership understands how trust, culture, governance, and performance reinforce one another. Decisions are made with reputational return in mind.
Most law firms live somewhere between the first two—and many believe they’re further along than they are. That gap is where opportunity cost accumulates.
The Most Undervalued Reputation Lever: Workplace
One of the report’s most telling insights concerns workplace reputation—consistently undervalued by leadership despite being one of the strongest drivers of reputational return. As Burson notes:
“Organizations that underinvest in workplace reputation limit their long-term reputation capital.”
That observation may land uncomfortably in law firm land. Because, in many law firms, workplace reputation is a blind spot. Associates talk. Partners post. Clients complain. And we’ve all seen the resulting Above The Law stories, whose sting lingers far longer than a Vault ranking’s halo.
If the Report Had Studied Law Firms in 2025…
But what if Burson applied its theorem specifically to law firms rather than global brands? If it had drilled into law firms last year, it likely would have surfaced something most communications, BD, and marketing leaders already complain about—usually behind closed doors.
Law firms tend to confuse reputation signals with reputational strength.
Rankings, press mentions, speaking slots, lateral announcements—these become the scoreboard. And yes, they matter. But they’re often treated as proof that reputation is healthy, even when the underlying story is fractured. As a result law firms have:
- Reputation gaps between what firms say publicly and how people experience them internally
- Strong technical credibility undermined by inconsistent leadership visibility
- Firms competing on prestige while clients increasingly prioritize relationships, judgment, clarity, and trust
- Rankings and press as proxies
- Fragmented leadership narratives
So the firm looks visible. Active. Well-regarded on paper. But the story doesn’t quite hold together. Clients hear different messages from different partners. Internal teams struggle to explain what the firm is really known for now.
That gap—between reputation as it’s signaled and reputation as it’s experienced—is where opportunity cost accumulates. Not in dramatic failures, but in lost pricing power, weaker differentiation, and trust that doesn’t compound the way it should.
And it’s exactly the kind of gap Burson’s concept of reputational capital helps make visible.
How Strong Is Your Reputation Strategy?
Most firms have a sense of their reputation. However, not many have stepped back to consider how intentionally it’s being shaped.
If you’re curious about the strength of your firm’s reputation strategy, here are a few questions are worth exploring:
- How clearly can we describe the reputation we’re actively building today—not just the one we’ve inherited?
- How consistent is our leadership narrative across clients, media, and internal audiences?
- Where do we see signs that our reputation is being actively cultivated, and where might it simply be holding steady?
- How closely does our external story align with the lived experience of the firm internally?
- If a client, lateral candidate, or reporter asked what the firm is known for now, how similar would the answers be?
There are no right or wrong answers here. But the clarity of the answers often says a great deal about how deliberately reputation is being managed—and how much value it may be generating.
So, Where Is Your Firm’s Reputation Strategy—Really?
Burson’s work gives leaders language—and data—for something that has long been hard to pin down: reputation as strategy, not spin. Reputation isn’t just how you’re perceived. It’s how you’re chosen. And increasingly, it’s how firms perform.
So here’s the uncomfortable question worth asking:
Is your firm actively cultivating reputational capital—or quietly paying the opportunity cost of not doing so?
Because if you’re not managing your reputation, it’s managing you.