A brand that truly reflects who we are.
As you know, at White & Black, we’ve always recognised that legal challenges are deeply intertwined with broader business objectives.
About 12 months ago, we decided to revisit our existing branding to make sure that it properly reflected who we are and how we work. Anyone who has ever worked on a rebranding project before will know that it’s not just a case of coming up with a new logo and visuals, but rather an examination of our whole business – our purpose, our culture and our values. We’ve worked hard to understand what drives us and what we offer to our clients.
Our purpose is clear: we provide strategic legal advice to help business leaders achieve growth, manage risk, and maximise value.
Although we’ve updated our website and logo, you can still expect the same great service and quality advice from White & Black that you know and love.
I wanted to take the time to explain a bit more about the ‘why’ behind this process, and show you just how we landed on our new look and feel.
Strategic Business Advisors
We recognise that in today’s business landscape, you need more than specific sector and practice area focuses. Legal questions don’t exist in a vacuum, they are driven by business plans, business objectives and what’s going on in the world. You need a strategic advisor, acting as an extension of your own team, proactively identifying opportunities, mitigating risks and driving to meet your commercial objectives. You need a service with a difference.
Our desire to provide a different service is deeply rooted in our own experiences as business owners. We have been in your shoes. We understand the journey – the challenges of starting a company, the complexities of running it, the strategic decisions around selling and even buying back.
This lived experience fuels our approach to providing a service with a difference, allowing us to anticipate and address the common frustrations many businesses face with their legal advisors:
• A lack of transparency: We believe in clear and honest communication, demystifying the legal process.
• Inconsistent quality of services: Our commitment is to consistent excellence across all our interactions.
• Bill shock: We strive for predictable and transparent fee structures.
• Being passed from pillar to post: We offer one central point of contact, ensuring seamless coordination and project management throughout.
• Confusing legal jargon: We communicate in plain, accessible language.
• A lack of commercial application: Our advice is always grounded in a deep understanding of your commercial realities.
We are determined to be different – to provide a service that offers genuine value and a true, long-term partnership. We realised that our branding didn’t reflect these values and principles, so we needed to do something to address this.
The Process
Our rebranding wasn’t a decision made in isolation. Our process has been informed by rigorous research and, most importantly, by listening intently to you, our clients, and to our dedicated team. Our process involved:
- Discovery Sessions: Articulating our firm’s identity, our history, and our future aspirations – working to fully understand, align and articulate our core purpose.
- Desk Research & Competitor Analysis: Grounding our strategy in market realities, understanding our position, our competitors, and how we can offer a distinct and compelling proposition.
- Stakeholder Feedback: This involved surveys, in-depth interviews and workshops with clients, team members and special advisors – ensuring that our evolution resonates with those who matter most.
What We Heard
Stakeholder feedback played an invaluable role in shaping our evolved approach. These insights reinforced our belief in the need for a more client-centric, commercially aware, and results-oriented approach. Here’s a glimpse of what you told us:
“It’s deeper than a transactional relationship. They’re [White & Black are] more like an extension of our team, replacing the need for in-house legal advice.”
And from our team:
“The emphasis is on the quality of output and the relevance to the client. Other firms generate a lot of documents and paperwork. We generate answers.”
Our Renewed Commitments in Action
Our rebrand solidifies our core commitments to you:
Being Transparent and Open: Clear, honest, and sincere communication is the bedrock of our relationships. We speak plainly, avoiding jargon and unnecessary complexity, building long-term trust with both our clients and our team.
Taking Ownership: We don’t just advise, we take responsibility. We become your central point of contact, proactively addressing challenges and ensuring seamless coordination across our firm and with trusted partners. We are about delivering solutions, not just identifying problems.
Adapting to Your Changing Needs: Agility is at our core. We foster a culture of proactivity, constantly evolving and adapting to the dynamic business landscape to mitigate risks and protect your interests. We invest time and energy in continuous professional development to stay ahead of the curve.
The Solution
This rebrand reflects our purpose and how we work so that we can deliver even greater value to your business:
- Your Strategic Advisor – An Extension of Your Team: We strive to understand your business inside out, acting with autonomy and project-managing the resources needed to achieve your specific goals. We provide more than just legal answers, we become a proactive extension of your team, anticipating challenges and identifying opportunities for your business. This may look like participating in strategic acquisition planning, helping you to develop communications and PR strategies in a crisis or identifying intangible assets that can be turned into tangible profits.
- Outcome-Focused Advice: Your success is our priority. Our advice is always aligned with your commercial objectives – we won’t undertake work unless it directly contributes to your growth, value maximisation, or risk management.
- Unlocking Collective Expertise: When you partner with White & Black, you gain access to the collective know-how, award-winning expertise, and decades of combined experience of our entire team and trusted network. You benefit from world-leading knowledge and expertise with a single point of contact handling everything.
- Seamless Collaboration: We excel at collaboration, providing a wraparound service and drawing upon the right expertise to achieve your objectives, all coordinated seamlessly from start to finish.
- Challenging the Status Quo: We’re not here to simply tell you what you can’t do. We ask the tough questions, listen intently, and challenge conventional thinking to deliver bigger impacts and better value.
- Clear and Open Communication: We prioritise building long-term relationships through transparent and concise communication, providing advice in plain language and responding rapidly in the format that works best for you.
- Blending Legal Expertise with Strategic Insight: Our award-winning lawyers bring diverse backgrounds and experiences, blending their technical expertise with a real-world understanding of your commercial context. We invest the time to become an extension of your team, allowing us to think and act like your business.
Leveraging Our Trusted Wider Team
To provide you with comprehensive support, we’ve cultivated a unique network of trusted professionals across all legal practice areas, international jurisdictions, and other professional services. This “wider team” allows us to offer complete versatility, addressing your legal, financial, commercial, strategic, and communication needs seamlessly. This network approach offers significant value:
Seamless Project Management: We take the lead in coordinating all necessary teams, saving you time and ensuring a smooth and efficient process. You won’t be passed around – we manage it all.
Comprehensive Solutions: Access to a broad range of expertise without the overhead of a traditional full-service firm.
Cost-Efficiency: We only engage our wider team when their specific expertise is required, ensuring you only pay for what you need.
A Fresh Look
Our new logo, colour palette, and typography are designed to reflect our modern approach, our clarity of thought, and our commitment to doing things differently. We believe our new visual identity embodies White & Black – approachable, professional, and focused on driving tangible business outcomes.
Ready to Experience the Difference?
We invite you to learn more about how our approach can benefit your business by exploring our new website. We are confident that this rebrand reflects our strengthened commitment to your success and look forward to continuing to work alongside you in this exciting new phase.
Do you have any questions about our rebrand? We’d love to hear from you!