Djokic + Partners is considered one of the top law firms in the banking and financial sectors due to its profound understanding of business and the ability to recognise the needs and objectives of each client for whom it develops unique strategies
Instead of discussing Djordje Djokic’s long-standing career, the hundreds of cases successfully resolved, his participation in projects worth over 800 million euros, and his unique relationship with clients, we asked him to reveal the importance of recognisability and branding in the legal profession.
In a market increasingly saturated with legal professionals, the need for personal branding has never been more crucial. How important is recognisability for lawyers, and should they invest in their personal brand?
— When I established the firm, it was crucial for us to be authentic and recognisable in the market, ensuring that our quality of services was visible through our original branding.
I am pleased because the visual identity of our office is modern and aligned with the principles of the digital age, a result of extensive experience in collaboration with significant clients from the IT sector and innovative tech companies. Today, perhaps more than ever, it is important to make a true impression of the office’s values on clients from the first contact, meaning a good brand must fully reflect who we are. It must be supported by the quality work of an exceptional team, without which this tool will not achieve its intended purpose but, over time, will lose rather than gain meaning. Therefore, I believe it is important for every business to build a brand with all its values first and then display and maintain it over time in a relationship that will always ‘work for it’.
While lawyers are restricted from direct advertising, there are avenues to present the values and principles that guide their work. Can social media, with its wide reach and interactive nature, be a tool for this purpose?
— The use of social media is now very widespread in every business. We have recognised the need for our office to have its own business page on LinkedIn, through which we follow and support the advertising of news from the business world, and in professional texts and articles about completed business ventures of our clients, we are often marked as a significant factor in their realisation. Our clients have long recognised the importance of our office in achieving their business successes, including in the IT field. As lawyers, we cannot remain isolated from modern business development streams, including through social media, so we must have the knowledge and understanding for this type of business in today’s systems. Thanks to modern technologies and the great opportunity for individuals to self-advertise on social media, various news, such as information about well-done jobs, participation in successfully completed projects, etc., quickly spreads to a large number of people, which is good on the one hand, but challenging on the other since we must always be careful about which data we highlight and what we say about ourselves, as we all know that reputation is hard to build and easy to undermine.
In this part, I am particularly proud of our office team, comprised of people who, at every moment, invest effort in personal growth and development for the work of providing the best service to clients while understanding the client’s need for security and confidentiality of data about their business, which is very important to ensure as part of the services in the represented world of various “IT tools”. Thus, by preserving your clients’ brands, you maintain the image of your work and keep your business ID existing and valid.
What is the key that will determine if a client will turn to you rather than another lawyer?
— The image of oneself and choosing according to one’s business is something we often hear from our clients as a way of choosing an office due to a recognised similar way of looking at work. Recommendations are also very prevalent, I can say, as a way of thanking for a job well done and the client’s need to help other people who are in a similar situation so that they can quickly come to the best solution for their matter or the client’s need to connect the office with their business partners and other companies for the efficient conduct of joint work. They will always turn to us, without exception, those who need the solution we provide and those who recognise our values, which is perhaps the greatest confirmation of our efforts and investment in quality work of the office, which consequently leads to your corresponding visual identity.
It is important to be ‘heard’ in the right way because if no one knows the value of your work, you will always play in the ‘third league’, even though you have the quality for the first. Therefore, do not miss the opportunity to show your quality, which, I repeat, is what you must start from, without which nothing makes sense.