It’s a tough brief — promoting the brand of solicitor — and one almost on a par with promoting estate agents or politicians (not to mention journalists).

Undaunted, the Law Society has launched a £400,000 campaign of posters and advertisements to appear on billboards, on such sites as Waterloo Station and Cannon Street, and taxis in all the big cities throughout England and Wales to highlight the services that solicitors can offer.

The Your Solicitor, Qualified to Answer adverts are not meant to be funny or clever — just straight — and in a new green and white branding. The campaign has been devised by the DML marketing group with DKA the media planners, under the auspices of Stephen Ward, communications director at the Law Society.

Why the campaign? “Promotion of the brand of solicitor has been identified as a priority for the national Law Society by the profession. This campaign focuses on services for individual clients and small businesses,” he says.

The campaign, he adds, complements other work to promote the solicitor brand both domestically and abroad: local law societies or firms can be provided with kits so that they can insert their own logos and run the same material.

The idea is to encourage consumers to use solicitors by highlighting the kind of problems they can help with and their “unique selling points”, directing people to where they can locate a solicitor through the society’s website and “find a solicitor service”.

The history of advertising lawyers’ services is littered with casualties. It’s a delicate line: solicitors don’t have a good public image — even though surveys have shown that most people are generally satisfied with the service they personally receive when they deal with a solicitor. But beyond that, how do you sell lawyers and avoid slurs of ambulance chasing, money grubbing and greed?

In 2004 the society launched a campaign, My Hero, My Solicitor — similarly to show the public the circumstances in which they might use a lawyer. In 1991 there was the WillPower campaign using a superman-style character to promote Make a Will Week.

Back in 1977 Mr Whatisname was deployed, with similar aims — but the campaign was sabotaged by a solicitor who took the name by deed poll. Far more successful was the campaign Justice Denied in 1999, which — rather than promote solicitors as a breed — targeted measures in the Access to Justice Bill; and similarly the What Price Justice? campaign in 2006 that focused on the difference legal aid solicitors have made to individuals’ lives.

It is too soon to measure the latest campaign’s impact. Solicitors who fund the Law Society will want to see results in terms of public image and — more importantly — clients through the door. Less tangibly, though, the campaign may achieve what is probably the real agenda: improving the Law Society in the eyes of its 100,000-strong membership.

The Law Society will soon have to prove its worth as a representative body to justify its funding — because under the Legal Services Act solicitors will no longer be required to pay for its services. Any PR exercise, therefore, is as much about its value as a professional body as the service solicitors give the public.

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