You’re not the only one who hates marketing yourself
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
At our recent FLC masterclass on marketing yourself as a female lawyer, "blowing your own trumpet", with Rachel Brushfield, founder of EnergiseLegal, she asked us a simple question partway through: what do you most dislike about marketing yourself? A few people answered in the chat box, and said much the same thing, just in different words.
Marketing yourself feels like bragging. It feels like selling. It makes you the centre of attention, and for a profession trained to spot risk, that takes some getting used to. Coming up with something original to say, particularly on LinkedIn, in a sea of other people also trying to say something, felt exhausting to more than one person who attended the session. Reading it back afterwards, I recognised every one of those feelings in myself.
If all of us are feeling the same way, maybe it's not us.
Marketing yourself, without the bragging
Rachel Brushfield has been coaching lawyers on self-promotion since founding EnergiseLegal in 1996, and has written on the subject for the Law Society and in Globe Law and Business' collections. Her research on the female brain and self-promotion offered a useful reframe. Confidence with marketing yourself is not something you wait to feel. It is a state you train, through small, repeated, low stakes action, the same way any habit gets built. Two LinkedIn posts a week, on her figures, does more for your confidence over time than one perfect campaign you never quite launch.
The other reframe that resonated most with people who attended was thinking about your audience rather than yourself. The Chartered Institute of Marketing's own definition backs this up: "marketing is the management process concerned with anticipating and surpassing client needs profitably." That puts the client's needs at the centre by definition. Several members said reframing marketing this way, as something done for a client's benefit rather than your own, was very helpful.
Here are a few of the tips you may find useful:
Market indirectly. Testimonials, case studies, and thought leadership tend to feel far more comfortable for women lawyers than direct self-promotion, and Rachel's research suggests they work just as well.
Get clear on your niche. Three words: who you help, and why you specifically.
Call your first attempt a "draft" or a "pilot." If you're nervous about starting something new; a LinkedIn series, a client newsletter, a new networking format, giving it a provisional label takes the pressure off. You can call it done, adjust it, or drop it, without it ever having to be right first time.
Chunk it down. Write one chapter, not the whole book.
Focus on the sizzle, not the sausage. People do not buy your years of experience or your technical process, they buy what it means for them: certainty, relief, a problem gone away. Take one example: instead of "years of experience advising on redundancy processes," it becomes "I help employers get through a redundancy without ending up in a tribunal." The sausage is the expertise. The sizzle is what the client feels once you have delivered it.
Catch your limiting beliefs and reframe them. "I hate networking" becomes "I like connecting with people." See if that changes how the next event feels.
A better use of five minutes than a blank page
One member mentioned in the chat that she’d used AI to generate a month's worth of LinkedIn posts. She didn’t use them all, and didn’t need to. The point was that it got her out of staring at a blank page and into a habit. Rachel had a similar tip of her own: even asking AI a simple question like "what does [your name/firm] specialise in?" gives you something to react to rather than a blank page to fear.
What this means for you
Focus on your client or audience rather than yourself.
Pick one or two of the tips above rather than trying to do all of them at once.
Build a small, repeatable habit. Diarise it, so it doesn’t rely on you finding the time.
Let a draft, a pilot, or an imperfect post be enough. Momentum beats waiting for the perfect version.
Taking this further
We’re taking this further. In the autumn, FLC will be hosting a members' roundtable dedicated entirely to marketing and branding, where we can build on exactly this kind of exchange: our own experience, tested by us, for us. If this session was anything to go by, that conversation is going to be worth having. You can come along to the session by becoming a member here.
Enjoy the rest of your week.
Rachel
P.S. If you’ve not yet completed our Female Lawyer Retention survey, it takes two minutes and is completely anonymous. Complete it and you’ll be able to download the free Partner Level Confidence Toolkit straight away, no email address required. You can get it here.