Cornerstone Barristers

2-3 Grays Inn Square was a highly respected barristers’ chambers based, as the name suggests, in the centre of London’s legal district. Members and staff within the set had various levels of experience since being called to the bar and take on cases principally related to matters between local authorities, organisation and individuals. The chambers leadership identified the need to review the positioning and branding of the teams in order to support marketing to boost awareness of their capabilities, experience and areas of focus. Thinkfarm was asked to develop strategic positioning, messaging and refresh the brand identity to ensure it supported the brand story.

Every member of the set was interviewed and Thinkfarm reviewed their feedback, identifying the common ground as well as some of the issues that had to be overcome in order to move the team forward as one. The very nature of the chambers is a collection of individual business interests sharing infrastructure and marketing but it became clear that determining why clients select them has much to do with the positioning of the chambers. It was critical to the success and acceptance of the work required the process from research from research, validation positioning to re-branding had to be highly inclusive.

There is a trend amongst Barristers’ chambers for the name to echo the address. However, with confusion among competitors already happening and no indication of specialisation or brand values in the existing name, it was agreed that a new name as well as identity change would be very helpful. Informed by the brand positioning, many candidate names were presented and considered before we arrived at Cornerstone. When this was agreed and positioning signed off, we set about creating the identity that you can see here. Importantly, when briefing the design team, we asked them to avoid the literal visualisation of a cornerstone as an architectural element but to consider a brand value that members identified as key to them – progressive. Our thoughts were also contextualising the word as in ‘the cornerstone of a case’. The result is modern and quite different from the norm in the industry but references tradition such as the pink accents, the colour of the ribbon in which barristers’ brief documents are contained.