5 Reasons Why Every Lawyer Need a Professional Headshot

A headshot is one of the most important and vital pieces of your arsenal for connecting with potential clients. Gone are the days of meeting with people without first having a professional photo to represent you. In the current landscape, a headshot is a go-to-meeting strategy. After all, it’s the first line of defense to show potential clients that you are the real thing.

In the legal world, headshots are indispensable – especially for lawyers. In fact, it’s one of the key elements for creating a professional brand. Still, wondering why?

Here are five reasons why every lawyer needs professional headshots.

1. Convey Professionalism and Integrity to Potential Clients

Potential clients will judge you by how you look – because they have to. In their eyes, every detail of your appearance and attire tells another story about you. That means that you have to have an image that commands trust and unquestionable professionalism. After all, that’s what your headshots will be representing – your entire brand and image!

2. Easy and Quick Way to Communicate to Business Prospects

Headshots give you the upper hand when you want to introduce yourself and your services to business prospects. Upon first impressions, a potential client will tag you as either pleasant or not, trustworthy or not, and competent or not, based on your headshots. That’s why it’s just as important to have a professional and intriguing headshot to communicate your brand as it is to have a memorable name for your firm.

3. Remind Others Who You Are

Headshots can dissipate the foggy notion of who you are. It’s easy for people to remember you as the person with the pinky ring, or with the bird tattoo, or with the glasses. But how many people can recall the name of the person who they foolishly met just days before? Inconsistencies in your image will make it confusing for people to remember you. That’s why you need a headshot that stays consistent through every scenario.

4. Persuade Clients to Hire You

The way you look, and dress can be the deciding factor in whether or not someone hires you. Before they ever stick their neck on the chopping block, people want to see you in action and get to know you. An essential part of the equation is your headshot. Potential clients want to know who is going to represent them, whether you have a sense of humor, and how you look. In other words, whether or not you look trustworthy. Therefore, your headshots are a crucial component of building clientele.

5. Differentiate Yourself from The Crowd

With a professional headshot, you’ll be seen in your best light. People want to do business with the top of the pack, and they do everything they can to attain that level of success. If you look like you’re not a competitor, you’re not worth competing with. Put another way; you need to be the top-of-the-pack guy in order to make a point of differentiation.

Regardless of what profession you’re in, headshots are an awesome business tool. If you want to see what your headshots say about you, remember you’ve got to make a personal connection with your own image. Though you’re not really a model, you are your main brand ambassador, and that’s reason enough to get professional headshots. Imagine having a business card that not only looks like you but sends a message that’s clear and distinct. That’s what your headshot can do for you. Nothing else can effectively send out that winning message.

6 Winning Tips for Your LinkedIn Headshots

LinkedIn is a powerful tool for networking and connecting with professionals alike. Boasting 400 million or so users, LinkedIn is like a virtual resume that gets discovered by recruiters, entrepreneurs, and other professionals. However, with so many people on LinkedIn, making the right first impression can be difficult. That’s why it’s crucial that you have an updated profile that includes professional headshots for LinkedIn that accurately represent your professional style. With the right combination of your image and text, your profile will set you apart from the rest. But it’s not enough to just upload a photo and hope for the best. You need to have the right LinkedIn headshot to really take advantage of the professional network. To assist you in your endless struggle, we’ve put together some winning tips for your LinkedIn headshots! However, before we dive into the actual tips, here’s why it’s important you take this seriously.

We also wrote a guide about preparing for your headshot that will help too!

Why Professional LinkedIn Headshots So Important?

In today’s digital world, details matter. And from LinkedIn headshots to your email signature, your details need to be top-notch. To start, a bad LinkedIn headshot will do nothing but hurt you instead of helping you. Also, with the simple, free design tools available to us, putting together a professional LinkedIn profile shouldn’t be difficult. But if that’s the case, why are there so many bad LinkedIn profiles? Well, it comes down to simple laziness. A lot of professionals take approach these things as chores that they have to be done. But they shouldn’t be chores, and they don’t have to be.

Instead, they should be an opportunity to show off your brand with a charming, professional LinkedIn profile. And it all starts with getting serious with your LinkedIn headshots.

6 Proven Tips for Your LinkedIn Headshots

With your business networking starting online, unlike anything else before, it can seem overwhelming. But remember, there’s a reason why LinkedIn is one of the most popular business networking tools out there. And most of the reason is that it’s super easy to use. With updates to your profile, you can double as your online personal brand. Just imagine how much networking you can do online! However, with hundreds of millions of users, it’s hard to be yourself with your LinkedIn headshots. So how do you let your personality shine without leaving anything to chance? These recommended LinkedIn headshots tips will ensure you get noticed and make the best first impression!

1. Up Close and Personal:

Be who you are and be yourself. So often, this is the best tip for a headshot. The last thing you want is for someone to see your photo and be trying to figure out who you are. With your LinkedIn headshot, your goal is to make yourself a personable brand. If you’re naturally introverted, don’t try to be anything different. Just have an outgoing photo.

2. Eye Contact:

On LinkedIn, you are trying to connect with your audience. With only a photo to go off of, you want to be direct and look them right in the eye. If you can’t make direct eye contact, remember to at least direct your gaze somewhere in the middle of the camera lens. Eye contact is a crucial part of having direct engagement and is a must when it comes to your LinkedIn headshots.

3. Smile? Yes, You Can!

Smile or no, let your personality shine through in your LinkedIn face shots. If you know you have a great smile, give it a bit of a showing! But if you have a naturally stoic face and a half-smile just doesn’t do you justice, don’t stress! A friendly but serious look can have just as much effect as a big, ear-to-ear smile. While the latter is certainly more inviting, the former can make people take you seriously. What’s important to remember, though, is to be yourself. If you’re not naturally the kind of person that smiles a lot, don’t force it. You want your LinkedIn headshot photos to be true to what your brand is.

4. Business Attire:

While you don’t have to be super formal, you should be dressed professionally in your LinkedIn headshots. This is especially true if you’re a business professional. You want to be the first person to get noticed on LinkedIn. Even if you’re trying to go for a slightly edgy look, tone it down for your headshots. Only you and your photographer can make that decision. But before you decide, keep in mind the image that you’re trying to present. What kind of successful business skills are you trying to showcase? If you’ve got an incredible mind for business, you might want to think twice about the designer t-shirt you were planning to wear for your headshots. Also, remember to keep your colors consistent. I don’t have a blue shirt in one photo and a green shirt in another. It won’t make sense, and you’ll be taking attention away from your headshots at worst, and at best, it will confuse the user without meaning to. Just make sure to keep your colors simple, easy to read, and consistent.

5. Show Your Personality:

Let the clothes be a representation of your business, but the person be you! You want to be the best face for your business and not someone else’s. That means you don’t want to have the same face shots as everyone else. Use this as an opportunity to show off your unique personality. The interesting thing about personality is that it’s fluid and often changes as people develop. Reshoot photos as you develop your business brand. That way, you can show your full personality.

Conclusion:

Gone are the days where it’s just your resume that’s doing the talking. With all the professionals available, you need to be unique to stand out from the crowd. And that comes down to your business headshots. You don’t want to try to be like everyone else, especially on your own personal brand profile! If you want to connect with a new employer, reach out to a potential investor, or just network in general, you need to set yourself apart from the competition. You can accomplish this by doing a few simple things with your business headshots. Say your goodbyes to the cliche headshots of days past and hello to the business-smarter-you that’s even better than before.