Nalini Prasad:
I don't think people give you power. I think that you have to find that what makes you feel strong, what makes you feel alive and feel like you can be confident about accomplishing something.
Sonya Palmer:
Power doesn't wait to be handed over. For women in law, it's about finding the tools and the confidence to build it yourself. Today, women make up the majority of law students and associates, yet less than 30% of partners are women. What happens between entry and ownership and how can digital strategy help close that gap?
Nalini Prasad:
I think we are sometimes our own worst enemies, and I would say the first step to being able to leveraging anything to get into your own law firm is making sure that you feel empowered, feeling like you can bet on yourself. Taking that leap of faith and understanding that digital marketing and running a business is black and white.
Sonya Palmer:
Welcome to LawHer. I am Sonya Palmer, SVP of operations at Rankings. This season we're exploring how the boldest and brightest women in law own power faster and keep it longer. Over the past three years, we've interviewed more than 60 of the most extraordinary women in the legal profession, and what we've learned is this, power isn't something you're handed, it's something you build. That's especially true when you're building your own law firm and your own brand. Today we hear from someone who's helped hundreds of attorneys do exactly that. Nalini Prasad is the chief strategy officer at BluShark Digital, a legal marketing agency she helped build from scratch. Over the past decade, she's carved out a career helping law firms many women led, compete, grow and get loud online. I'm going to do that one again. Nalini Prasad is the chief strategy officer at BluShark Digital, a legal marketing agency she helped build from scratch. Over the past decade, she's carved out a career helping law firms, many women led, compete, grow, and get loud online.
Nalini Prasad:
A lot of times there is a guideline. There is step one, step two, step three, in the first year you do this and then third year you do this. And so once you have taken that step to say, I'm going to open my law firm, I think digital can be really helpful to build your brand first.
Sonya Palmer:
In a crowded industry of massive budgets and established firms, digital marketing offers women attorneys a way to level the playing field. Digital marketing has never been more crucial for women attorneys looking to build influence and power in the profession.
Nalini Prasad:
Digital helps with your brand, your website, being able to define who you are and how you want people to see you, how do you stand out amongst the crowd, and then obviously different layers that digital can help you bring in clients that you can help, right? With your special abilities as a lawyer.
Sonya Palmer:
Many of us struggle to vocalize the reality of our wins. We use language like, I just or I only when talking about accomplishments, but when you win, Nalini's advice is clear.
Nalini Prasad:
Women in law firms that don't get the mentorship, right? Maybe they've done something really awesome and someone else got the credit for it because they were second chair or they put in the hours and wrote the brief and then somebody else presented it and there's just not them getting any kind of reward or getting to feel like that team that they've won something too. And I think part of that is, like I said, empowering from within, raising your hand and saying, "Hey, I did that." Just so everybody knows, right?
If someone's not going to give you the credit, you should... And this is a do as I say, not as I do. Be bold enough, be audacious enough to stand up and say, "I did that," and take credit for the things that you did. Because I will tell you, any man would absolutely stand up and correct somebody in a room full of people to say, "Oh, that was my case. I did that, I won that." Right? So I think we need to advocate for ourselves more in these male dominated workspaces. Raise their hand and say, "Hey, I did that," and let other people know that you are capable too, because that's how you start building your brand.
Sonya Palmer:
Many women-owned firms rely heavily on referrals, but building an intentional brand lets you take control of your narrative and attract the cases and colleagues who align with your values.
Nalini Prasad:
I think that a lot goes to the branding, right? And I think you owning who you are and something that we heard today is surrounding yourself with the people that you want to be surrounded with. The people that are going to elevate your brand using digital, using social media to attract the type of people you want to work with, right? So it may not be you're throwing a wide net that says, anyone, any lawyer that I want to work with, but hey, I like this. This is the way that I run my cases. Find your tribe through your social media. Put out the type of content that you think will resonate with that crowd, right? And so you can not only get in front of people, but I think you have the ability to niche down to exactly who you want to attract. I think from very young, I've just always wanted to make a difference somewhere, and I actually was very driven to become a prosecutor in particular, so I would've been public interest.
Sonya Palmer:
For Nalini, her journey to leadership at the intersection of law and marketing was no accident.
Nalini Prasad:
So there was nothing I was going to do other than be a lawyer, right? That was from age of 10. So I did mock trial in high school. They had a program. We ended up winning districts, states and went to nationals. It was extremely fun. I found passion in it. I was like, okay, really this is where I belong. And then I was stalking college programs. And so back then it was Facebook is where you could see other kids with college accounts and I found out that they were going to be in Tampa for nationals, GW's team, and so I drove down to Tampa and watched them compete. I talked to the people and I was like, okay, I'm going to apply early admission. I'm getting out of Florida where there's more seasons other than hot and I'm going to go to GW and I want to be on the mock trial team, but what if I hadn't made it?
What if I hadn't made the team? I still had to try out, right? Turns out, I did make the team, fantastic. I had an awesome time on that team. I was the first freshman closer in GW history for being the attorney role, let alone a female. All of the attorneys were basically men at the time. Yeah, and the captains of the teams, it was very rare that you'd have females. I actually ended up having two female captains, which was cool, who are still best friends till today.
Sonya Palmer:
Oh, fun.
Nalini Prasad:
And so I get through that. I realize that at senior year that I would like to do something. I started working for a nonprofit in the DC area just for some bare money, right? And I helped this nonprofit create their first website and kind of their first digital piece, and I got a little into that. I was like, that's kind of cool. Graduated and was like, I'm burnt out. I don't think I want to go be a gunner in law school right now. I took the LSAT, I applied to law school. I got into American University in DC.
And I was like, I'm going to just put this off for a year. I'm going to take this job that's being offered to me full-time. I enjoyed everything about learning about Google and doing that piece for the nonprofit. One year turned into two years of saying I'll do it later, turned into me never going to law school. And then a couple years into working with a nonprofit, I get a call from a law firm that's like, "Hey, we're going to start a digital company and are you interested in doing digital for legal?" I was like, well, that sounds like the intersection of the two things that I love.
Went for the interview, seemed a little shady. I was in the basement of a law firm. The person who was running the team was in the closet as his office, and I was like, "You guys really going to start a company? Is this true?"
Went home, told my then boyfriend, his now husband, "Listen, if I take this job and it turns out it's a scam and in two weeks I don't have a job, is it okay? Are we okay?"
He's like, "Yeah, well, eventually you'll need to get a job, but take the chance, right? It sounds like a really cool opportunity."
Took the job and then obviously he scaled his firm two to 40 lawyers, and then he turned the marketing team into BluShark Digital, and I got to help build that and that's where the title came from.
Sonya Palmer:
Today, Nalini sees what's working in real time and she's clear branding will be foundational in the age of AI.
Nalini Prasad:
So some of the items that I feel are important, will become important, we as an industry, we as a community, as the world grows is this branding that we're talking about, right? And right now with all this AI coming out, Google, and maybe we'll talk about the AI overviews or the SGE, there's a lot of Google pulling information on its own from various places on the internet, not necessarily from your website, right? To give users an answer. So I think what is going to be important is all of that link building that has been such an important part, making sure that it is mentioned. Just having your brand mentioned on many different places across the internet, because as Google is being generative search and it's looking everywhere, not just your website, it gives you way more bites at the apple to become an answer, right? So making sure that you are building that brand far and wide involved in the community and other organizations and getting your name placed on all those sites.
Sonya Palmer:
For small or solo women-owned firms relying on referrals, Nalini has a playbook.
Nalini Prasad:
I think it's going to be foundational to have your mentions out there and your brand built on some level. What I think is kind of cool is that I do think that social media will start to affect those mentions, right? They're pulling from your Facebook, your Instagram, or whatever new platform is going to come out. But I do think... And this may just be the people I follow because I like strong women, but I find that women do a much better job with their social media when they run it themselves. They're looking at the trends, they're doing funny things. They're not afraid to look silly. And so women as a whole, I think have more social presence. And so that I think could be something that's a competitive advantage when we're talking about these mentions. The men are not doing that piece. If the women can do that, scale it and it can affect the brand digitally, then they might have more mentions, right? Even more than some of the smaller firms that are just a couple of two men lawyers.
People have put social law for a long time because it is not lead gen, right? It's branding, it's building your brand, it's getting in front of people for a while, and you're not going to get a case out of that for a long time until somebody does have a case and they remember it, right? So you were putting extra money and resources and time individually to do the videos for social, and you were like, well, I'm not getting leads right now. But I also think the world has changed to where SEO is foundational. You should have a company. People are onto the next thing where they're like, okay, we have our SEO, so we do have time now to work on social, right? And that's why I think that even though they know they're not going to get leads from it, they're more willing to do it at this point.
Sonya Palmer:
Many solo and women-owned firms, referrals are the lifeblood of business, but relying solely on word of mouth can stall growth. So how do you scale when your client base is built on relationships?
Nalini Prasad:
One, I think if you're a smaller firm, right? You probably don't have volume to get the reviews that you need necessarily to outdo your competition in your market. But if you can get out there and do boots on the ground marketing in terms of the community outreach, so getting involved with fundraisers or local festivals and getting your actual physical brand out there, that is so important to a brand new website and digital build out, right? So if our budget is smaller, which it's going to be, if you're starting out, then you need to couple those two things together. Because once your website's done, beautiful, wonderful, you start to maybe rank, right? But you don't have as many reviews as your competitors, so you're not going to get that click to call, right? You're not getting the conversion. You have to rely on the fact that you've done all this stuff offline, that someone may have seen your brand, and that is how you're leveraging.
I show on page one, I maybe don't have the reviews to compete, but I did sponsor all these big things and now the community knows my name and they will call me, right? I think those two have to go hand in hand when you're just starting out and especially in a big market, and that community events can be lower dollar. So when you think about the budget that you have to spend, that's a fantastic idea. Get a website. Don't try to do crazy things if you don't have the budget for it, right? And then lean into that. Understand it's a long-term goal and set your expectations that you're not about to get cases off of this digital build out at a lower dollar spend right now, but that you are moving in the right direction so that you will have foundation and you will be able to build in a year from then while you're building that offline brand. Those would be the three that I'd kind of focus on.
Sonya Palmer:
Today, more women are entering the legal profession than ever before, but power isn't just about arrival, it's about influence. Digital marketing is more than a tool. It's a way to define your story, shape perception, and claim space on your terms. For any women in law at any stage of growth, that's power. I'm Sonya Palmer. This is LawHer, powered by Rankings. Find us on Instagram and LinkedIn, I'd love to hear from you. Thank you for listening.
Nalini Prasad:
There are so many more women in professional schools, right? Postgraduate. There's so many that are coming up and seeing more and more organizations come out that are women focused. So when we talk about wits that you see grow and quadruple with attendance over the last four years, Society of Women Trial Lawyers-
Sonya Palmer:
The league.
Nalini Prasad:
Yeah, the league, there's all these different groups that just didn't exist five to 10 years ago and women are joining them. Women are taking time off of work. I heard someone yesterday say she fought so hard to get a case pushed, right? And to get moved so that she could come here and speak. And that was showing that the priority for women in this industry is focusing on themselves and their development, and that is incredible to me.
