Many partners in IP firms know they should communicate more visibly — yet the usual advice makes them want to communicate less.

They are encouraged to post regularly, share personal stories and become more active on professional platforms. For someone whose authority has been built through technical depth, legal precision and years of responsible client work, this can feel like being asked to adopt a role that does not fit. The problem is rarely a lack of ambition. It is the concern that communication will trivialise the expertise or make a respected professional sound self-promotional.

This hesitation is understandable. It also reveals why the conversation needs to move beyond the idea of partners as “content creators”.

A partner does not build authority by producing a constant stream of content. Authority develops when clients and prospective clients can recognise how that person interprets complex situations, what they consider important and where their experience allows them to see something others might miss.

Existing clients already experience this in meetings, negotiations and difficult decisions. They learn which questions a partner asks, how carefully risks are weighed and when that partner advises caution, action or a change of direction. Over time, these experiences create trust.

The business development challenge is that the wider market cannot observe these moments.

A website profile may list qualifications, technical fields and representative matters. An article may accurately describe a legal development. A conference biography may confirm many years of experience. These signals establish competence, but they often reveal little about the advisory logic behind it. Prospective clients can see what the partner has done without necessarily understanding what they could rely on that partner to help them decide.

In a market where information is abundant but distinction is scarce, the cost of this invisibility is concrete: partners become interchangeable, lose early-stage mandates to more visible peers, and cede category ownership to those who articulate their thinking first.

It’s at this point that strategic communication becomes important.

The first question should not be, “What should I post?” A more useful starting point is: “What should the market understand about the way I help clients navigate important decisions?”

The answer often lies in recurring situations. Perhaps the partner is particularly skilled at recognising when an apparently strong patent position offers less commercial protection than expected. Perhaps they help companies distinguish between an IP issue that requires immediate intervention and one that can be managed without distracting the business. Or perhaps their strength lies in bringing legal, technical and commercial perspectives together before a major investment, market entry or dispute.

These are more than service descriptions. They reveal how expertise becomes valuable in context.

Partners can make this visible by communicating around the questions they repeatedly help clients answer, the misconceptions they encounter and the trade-offs that shape difficult decisions. They might explain why a technically promising innovation does not automatically create a defensible market position, what leadership teams tend to underestimate before entering a new jurisdiction, or which early questions can prevent an IP conflict from becoming a strategic constraint.

The purpose is not to provide a complete legal analysis in public. It is to allow the market to recognise the quality and relevance of the thinking behind the advice. In my positioning work with IP partners, the breakthrough often comes when we map exactly these recurring client decisions to public narratives, translating private advisory logic into visible authority.

A common mistake is to equate authority with commentary on every relevant development. This often produces communication that is accurate and useful, but largely interchangeable. If several experts report the same decision or regulatory change in similar language, the reader may understand the development without learning why one particular advisor should be remembered.

Authority becomes stronger when the expert goes one step further: identifying what the development changes for a specific type of client, which assumption it challenges or which decision now deserves closer attention. That additional layer makes professional priorities visible without requiring exaggerated claims.

There is also a wider implication for the firm.

When individual partners communicate without a shared positioning logic, each contribution may demonstrate expertise while the collective communication still fails to create a recognisable market position. Mature firms therefore do more than encourage partners to become visible. They help them connect their individual perspectives with the firm’s strategic strengths, priority audiences and business ambitions.

This does not mean imposing identical messages on everyone. A firm gains authority when its partners bring distinct perspectives while reinforcing a coherent understanding of where the firm creates particular value. The individual voice gives the communication credibility. The shared direction gives it cumulative strength.

For busy partners, this approach is more realistic than treating communication as an additional marketing workload. Their most valuable material already exists in client conversations, recurring questions, difficult decisions and observations from practice. The strategic work lies in recognising these patterns, translating them without compromising professional rigour and developing a focused narrative around them.

In a market where information is becoming easier to produce and increasingly difficult to distinguish, authority will depend less on who publishes the most. It will depend on whose communication helps clients understand complexity, recognise relevance and develop confidence before the first mandate begins.

Partners do not need to perform like marketers. They do, however, need to make enough of their professional thinking visible for the market to understand what they stand for, and why that matters when an important decision arises.

Until then, a question to reflect on:

If a prospective client read your recent communication, would they understand only what you know — or also which decisions they should specifically trust you to help them make?

About the columnist

Giulia Donato
Brand & Communication Strategy Consultant | Executive Coach | Adjunct Professor
people & brand strategies
www.donatostrategies.com