What They Say After You Leave the Room

1.1Personal brands in one paragraph

A personal brand is the sum of what people can say about you when you are not there. It is not what your LinkedIn page says, or what you would like them to say. It is what a client, a recruiter or a partner can say with your name attached and you out of the room. This workbook follows one junior solicitor through her first year after qualifying, as she builds hers on purpose.

1.2Tess, on her first day as a solicitor

In September 2026 Tess Okonjo qualifies as a solicitor and becomes an NQ (a newly qualified solicitor). She works in the corporate team at Fenwick Rowe LLP, a law firm in Manchester. The team works on company sales, investment rounds and shareholders' agreements for family businesses.

Tess has been at the firm since 2022, first as a paralegal and then as a trainee. Her training contract was two years of paid training, in four six-month “seats” in different teams. She is good at the work, but outside her team nobody could say what she does. That is the problem, and the year is what she does about it.

On her first day as a solicitor, her new email signature arrives. It says “Tess Okonjo, Solicitor”, and nothing else has changed. Her LinkedIn page still says “Trainee Solicitor at Fenwick Rowe LLP”, with no photo and no About section.

Her CV dates from 2023. It ends with her interests, which are reading, travel and keeping up with legal developments. That line comes back in Chapter 3.

By mid-morning she has said “just” four times: “just checking”, “just a quick one”, “just wanted to” and, to someone who asked what she does now, “just a lawyer”.

She shares a flat in Chorlton with a grey cat called Precedent. Tess is not you. She is the colleague whose year you get to watch, with the answers at the back.

1.3A brand written by accident

Ask the firm who Tess is once she has left the room. Clare can say she is reliable, which is true but says nothing about what she does. The rest of the firm can say one of these:

• nothing
• “the quiet one”
• “the trainee — sorry, the NQ”
• “which one is Tess?”

That is a brand, written by accident by colleagues who were busy with something else. It is accurate as far as it goes, which is to the end of the corridor.

Reputation is the part of your brand that other people hold. It is what they say after you leave the room, so it is the one part you cannot correct. You can rewrite a page tonight, but what a partner said about you at lunch has already been said. This workbook is about making the two match: the page you write, and the sentence they say.

One rule comes before all of it. A solicitor must act with integrity, and the SRA (the solicitors' regulator) puts that under everything. So a brand is built from what is true, and only from that.

1.4The four places a brand lives

Most people start with their LinkedIn page, and some stop there. But a brand lives in four places: the page, the paper, the room and the inbox.

Each place is read by someone who does not tell you they read it. Each reader leaves with one sentence to say about you later. The inbox has a longer memory than the room, and a search box.

So each place has to say the same thing in its own form. The page says it in a headline, and the paper in a number. The room says it in thirty seconds, and the inbox in one request at most.

1.5The year ahead, one document a month

Tess's year runs from her first day as a solicitor to the same day a year later. Each month leaves one document behind, such as a headline, a talk, an email or a CV.

At the end of the year Tess keeps every document in a binder, the Brand File. The File ends with one page of twenty lines, which she reads before anything that matters.

The year ends when a partner asks for Tess by name. The twelve months between are the workbook.

1.6What you want to be known for

In Tess's first week, Anjali takes her across the road for coffee. Her question is one line: “You're an NQ now. What do you want to be known for?” Tess says, “Being… fine?”, which is an answer in the way a shrug is a sentence.

Anjali pays, and says that “fine” is what people say when they have not decided. On the walk back, Tess argues with herself. Part of her says that brand is for partners, and for people who can say “thought leader” without flinching. She is afraid of selling something she has not yet got.

The other part of her knows that a client's finance director will describe her to someone tonight either way. The description will be true, and written by whoever bothered. By the office door Tess has decided: the brand exists, and she would rather write it herself.

Her doubt was right about one thing: a brand ahead of the work is noise. So she will build hers from work she has done, in words a stranger could check. That is why her year starts with a page, not a speech. The last line of the one page answers Anjali's question:

The first sentence is about everyone else. What they say happens after you go, so it is made of what you did while you were there. The second sentence is the instruction. Finish, say the thing and go, because nobody's reputation was ever improved by hovering in the doorway.

Another line does one job the night before anything that matters:

The room is busy, hungry and fairly well disposed. It will remember one clear thing if Tess says one.

1.7Your job

Your first job is Anjali's question, answered on paper, with “fine” struck out before you start. Write the three sentences you would want said about you after you leave the room. Each must pass three tests:

• Someone could say it to someone else in one breath.
• It is about work, not character. “Reliable” is a reference, not a brand.
• It carries something a stranger could check: a kind of document, a kind of client, a number.

Then set the three beside what people can say about you today. The gap between the two lists is your year.

The second job is the tally. Write “just” at the top of a sheet of paper, and for one working week mark every one you say or type. Do not stop saying it yet, because you cannot delete a word you have not counted. Chapter 10 gives Tess's count at the end of the year.

• Read your LinkedIn headline as a stranger would, and write down in one line what it says.
• Write what people in your firm can say about you today. “Nothing” is allowed.
• Write one line for each place, on what yours says now.
• Read the one page in Part 10 of the File once, then leave it until Chapter 10.

Change nothing on your page yet. Chapter 2 is the page: the headline, the About section and the photo.