Hey, I Like Your Style (Guide)

Your audience likely expects accuracy and precision from your website, news content, and promotional materials, including a professional tone, and consistent formatting and branding from attorneys in all your offices.

To maintain a consistent written presence for your firm, create —and ensure everyone sticks to—a style guide.

What Is a Style Guide?

You are likely familiar with various editorial style guides like the Chicago Manual of Style, Associated Press (AP) Style, or the Modern Language Association (MLA) handbook. Your firm may rely on the basic editorial principles of one of these, which is great and a perfect place to start.

But your firm-specific style guide should be a customized, inclusive reference manual that is truly a communications playbook. Aside from grammar rules and formatting standards, it covers how the firm speaks and the tone it uses across various platforms.

Generally, your style guide should include:

• An introduction with your firm’s mission statement and a boilerplate “About” section describing what the firm does.
• The firm’s specific brand voice and tone.
• Terminology and word usage.
• Writing and formatting standards
• Some templates and examples.

Don’t worry, this need not be a voluminous document. Between five and twenty pages will likely suffice for most. Let’s break it down.

The Intro

Your style guide should begin with an introduction that includes the firm’s mission statement and the boilerplate “About” statement describing what the firm does and who it serves. The About statement often appears in press releases, the firm’s e-news and client alerts, and the website. Keep this section updated, as your attorneys, legal, and marketing teams will likely copy and paste it into their collateral documents.

Brand Voice and Tone

Articulating your firm’s voice and tone is an essential style guide component. Should the voice sound authoritative and formal? Innovative and forward-thinking? Warm and welcoming? A family law practice aimed at the general public may have a different voice and tone than an IP firm whose clients are tech businesses.

Give examples of right and wrong depictions of the firm’s desired voice and tone, and remember to mention how that tone might shift across different communication channels (such as a client alert versus a Facebook post).

Terminology and Word Usage

Because law firms may use technical terms and legal jargon, clarify which terms you prefer in your style guide. This section is also a good place to illustrate how the firm spells out internal references (“partner,” “of counsel,” and “practice group”), as well as firm-specific phrases. Outline whether abbreviations and acronyms should be spelled out on first reference, and the capitalization rules for titles and departments.

Writing and Formatting Standards

Your firm may generally follow one of the standard style manuals, but have some specific exceptions. At Rain, we follow AP Style but always use the Oxford comma—a style choice we made outside AP guidelines. Use this style guide section to outline your rules around punctuation, capitalization, headline styles, bullet points, and how to reference case citations and legal references. Include examples! These seemingly small details are noticeable and, when used firmwide, portray you as a professional, cohesive team.

Templates and Examples

Make it easier on your team to follow the style guidelines by including templates of common documents like client alerts, engagement letters, internal memos, and client-facing emails. Give examples of poorly written and well-written excerpts to illustrate what on-brand and off-brand looks like to your organization.

We’re Legal Professionals. Do We Really Need a Style Guide?

Your writing skills and those of your colleagues are not in question here. But you are individuals with varying styles. A style guide simply ensures everyone uses the same playbook to represent your firm. Here’s why that matters.

Consistency across practice areas and offices. In law firms with dozens of attorneys, client alerts might be formatted in many ways with varying voices, confusing clients with inconsistencies. A style guide ensures everyone in the firm communicates similarly with a cohesive identity.

Stronger Credibility and Professionalism. Copy editors aren’t the only ones who notice inconsistent formatting, terminology, and tone. Clients and prospects do, too. A style guide everyone follows leads to polished communications that build client confidence in the firm’s competence and professionalism.

Improved Operational Efficiency. Clear writing standards and templates give writers in your firm a clear roadmap, saving time during editing and revising. Also, sharing the style guide with new hires during onboarding can reduce their learning curve and give them a strong foundation about your firm’s preferences and expectations from day one.

Clearer Brand Identity. The legal marketplace is crowded. When your firm’s communications have a similar tone, structure, and visual feel, you become more recognizable and trusted as a brand. Using a style guide ensures everyone communicates similarly, whether you’re “high-tech and forward-focused” or “client-centric and personable.”

How To Begin

Begin where you are. Gather a small group, including attorneys and marketing staff, and collect opinions on tone, preferred terms, and basic formatting. You will build out from there. Try to avoid overly academic explanations; keep it user-friendly and practical.

After you develop a good draft, share it with colleagues and reference it during team meetings and training sessions. House a live version on the firm’s intranet and remember to revisit it at least once a year to ensure it reflects any changes in the firm’s positioning, writing standards, and new communication channels.

Go Forth and Conquer

Being an effective communicator requires clarity, consistency, and a bit of finesse. Creating and using a firm-specific style guide can ensure your team of legal professionals conveys your firm’s values and expertise similarly in every written interaction. Following a well-thought-out style guide calls out your professionalism and just makes your firm look good, while allowing an unstructured approach can make you look unorganized, inconsistent, and distrustful. I’d pick the firm using the style guide!