What does your name say about you?

Imagine there is a firm called Fantastic Amazing Brilliant Quality New Dynamic Claims Wow! Wow! Wow! Law. It is unlikely that such a descriptive name represents the truth, or that it does anything except '¨alienate clients

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So

why do firms do it? Where has this barking mad and entirely counterproductive idea come from?

Certainly not from the United States, where not only are real names of real partners used, '¨but seemingly every name of every partner ever, resulting '¨in never-ending firm names.

"Good morning, Nick or Jane or whatever your first name is, even though I have never met you. Mudslinger, Dirgeswiller, Hank Williams the Fourth Junior and Senior, Helicopterblade, Unaccompanied Ostriches '¨Are Not Allowed On This Train and Wasn't Humphrey Bogart Brilliant in The African Queen here. How may I help you? And '¨I hope I can help you as giving my firm's name took so long that I am missing you already."

Yes, they know how to do it in the States. It is a historical fact that clients being charged for seven units of time while the law firm answered the phone led to the introduction of contingency fees there. It did not come from supermarkets. Marks and Spencer, John Lewis, Sainsbury's, Tesco, Morrisons, etc are all named after the founders. Maybe 'Food 'n' Suits R Us' would increase the turnover of Marks and Spencer, but I doubt it.

Ford, Rolls-Royce, Mercedes (a daughter of either Mr Daimler or Mr Benz), etc. You get the point. Even where a company is not named after its founder, the names are modest to the point of blandness - General Motors, Associated Dairies (Asda), etc.

No firm with a crassly self-promoting name succeeds. Ironically, Rolls-Royce became a byword for perfection. Does anyone think that had they called themselves Perfect Cars from the beginning they would have been anything special?
If you need to use names like that, you ain't whatever you say you are. If you are proud of your business then you will be proud to have it bear your name.
I can always picture a firm named after partners, whether 100 years' dead or not.
The generic names, often bearing some variant of '¨accident, injury, compensation, recompense or redress or claims are utterly unmemorable.

I must fess up here. Underwoods Solicitors is part of Law Abroad plc - the same two partners wholly own the plc's shares - and a few years ago in sunny Hemel Hempstead we switched to Law Abroad as '¨our trading name.

It was not popular. Clients '¨got exactly the same service from the same people, but when one said: "You were better when you '¨were Underwoods", we changed it back.

The best marketing advice that I received was to use 'solicitors' in everything, including when answering the phone.
That is our brand. If you are not proud of being a solicitor and not proud enough of your firm to use your own name in its title, you have a problem. The public are not stupid.

As for LLP, which many of '¨you tag on the end - don't get me started. It is an employment and tax law train wreck that is now coming home to roost. SJ