Attorneys undersell their expertise because courtroom training rewards restraint, not narration — and that same restraint reads as invisibility everywhere outside the courtroom.
Every year, attorneys sit through hours of CLE credits. Almost none of them ever get asked to give the talk. Not because they don’t know enough — half the time they know more than the person at the podium. It’s because they never signaled they wanted to be asked, and nobody outside their own case files has any idea what they actually think.
I sit across from partners with fifteen, twenty years of real, substantive expertise, and the moment I ask them to describe what makes them good at what they do, they freeze. Ask the same person to argue a motion and they’re fluent, precise, unshakeable. Ask them to narrate their own authority and they either go quiet or default to reciting credentials — bar admissions, law school, years of practice — like a resume read aloud. That’s not branding. That’s hiding in plain sight.
Why do lawyers struggle with personal branding?
The instinct isn’t a personality flaw. It’s training, and it’s good training — for the courtroom. Don’t overstate. Don’t speculate beyond the record. Don’t say more than you can prove, because opposing counsel and the judge are both listening for the overreach. That restraint protects a case and protects a career.
The problem is that restraint doesn’t know it’s supposed to switch off once the audience changes. A potential client scrolling LinkedIn, a conference organizer looking for a speaker, a reporter looking for a quote — none of them are cross-examining anyone. They’re looking for a signal that this person has a point of view. Restraint reads, in that context, as having nothing to say. So the credential list comes out instead, because credentials are provably true and therefore feel safe. They’re also completely forgettable.
The instinct that wins a deposition is the same instinct that keeps you off the podium.
What’s the difference between arguing a case and building authority?
These are two different jobs wearing the same suit, and conflating them is exactly what keeps talented attorneys invisible outside their own casework:
| Arguing a case | Building authority |
|---|---|
| Goal: win this specific dispute | Goal: become the default trusted source on this topic |
| Audience: one judge or jury, bound by rules of evidence | Audience: future clients, referral sources, media, peers |
| Tone: restrained, minimizes exposure, sticks to the record | Tone: specific, personal, reveals the reasoning behind the call |
| Success metric: verdict or settlement | Success metric: inbound requests, speaking invites, byline pickups |
| Risk if you overstate: sanctions, credibility loss with the court | Risk if you understate: invisibility — nobody thinks to call you |
Notice the last row. In court, the dangerous move is saying too much. In building authority, the dangerous move is saying too little — and that’s precisely the move attorneys are trained to make by default.
How should attorneys talk about their own expertise?
Talk about the judgment call, not the credential. A degree and a bar admission tell a stranger nothing about how you think. The specific moment you had to decide something that wasn’t obvious — what you noticed that others didn’t, what the safe move would have been, and why you didn’t take it — tells them everything. That’s the same precision courtroom training already built into you. It just needs to be pointed at your own reasoning instead of someone else’s case.
In practice, this is the entire premise behind a LinkedIn Brand Audit: most attorney profiles read like a resume because that’s the only register they’ve been trained to use in public. Rebuilding the profile isn’t about adding personality for its own sake — it’s about redirecting the same rigor toward answering “why did you make that call” instead of “where did you go to school.” Once that shift happens once, it repeats everywhere: a byline pitch, a CLE proposal, a podcast booking request. Making that repeatable is what a Content Strategy Sprint actually builds — a system, not a one-off post.
Lia Sarduy is the founder of The PR Plug, a Miami-based AI-native communications consultancy that specializes in legal industry marketing, where the same precision that wins a motion gets redirected into the story that gets an attorney booked, quoted, and remembered. Get the next essay by joining the list, or book a call if the last CLE talk you gave was actually a talk someone else booked instead of you.
Frequently asked questions
Why do lawyers struggle with personal branding?
Courtroom training rewards restraint — don’t overstate, don’t speculate beyond the record, don’t claim more than you can prove. That instinct wins motions and protects credibility with a judge, but the moment the audience shifts to a potential client, a conference organizer, or a reporter, the same restraint reads as having nothing to say. Attorneys default to listing credentials instead of narrating judgment, and credentials don’t make anyone remember you.
What’s the difference between arguing a case and building authority?
Arguing a case means persuading one judge or jury about one dispute, using only what’s in the record, with real professional risk if you overstate. Building authority means becoming the person a wider audience defaults to trust on a topic, which requires narrating the pattern and judgment behind your work out loud — not just the outcome. The first rewards restraint. The second rewards specificity.
How should attorneys talk about their own expertise?
Talk about the judgment call, not the credential. Instead of a bar admission and a degree list, describe the specific moment you had to decide something that wasn’t obvious — what you noticed, what the safe move would have been, and why you didn’t take it. That’s the same precision and specificity courtroom training already gave you, just pointed at your own reasoning instead of someone else’s case.