See the possibility
How does a law firm that is almost 200 years old reinvent itself? Here’s Weightmans’ Sarah-Jane Howitt on its award-winning reevaluation.
Sarah-Jane Howitt,
Director of Business Development & Communications,
Weightmans
Weightmans is a firm with a long history, able to trace its roots back to Liverpool in 1827. Whilst we’re fiercely proud of that, times change. The world is not the same place now and neither is Weightmans. What our people and our clients want from a law firm is vastly different and, most importantly, continues to change and evolve.
So, how do we stay relevant and continue to thrive? That was the question we were asking ourselves at the beginning of 2020. Then, of course, the pandemic hit and we had other things we needed to focus on for a while. But that difficult period only reinforced our thinking. We knew becoming more purpose led was the right thing for our firm and we began to explore that in more detail.
As we worked to crystallise our purpose, the point we kept returning to was, whatever we did, it had to be authentic to us – our people and our clients. It had to be the beating heart of Weightmans and the golden thread that links everything we do and our culture into the outside world. After much discussion and consultation, many workshops (and an awful lot of post-it notes!), we settled on See the Possibility as a purpose that truly represents Weightmans.
The next challenge became ensuring we launched and embedded See the Possibility internally and externally in a way that delivered differentiation in a saturated legal market. This was our opportunity to do something different, make a splash and reposition ourselves as we are now.
We worked with an incredible local agency who helped deliver something bold and unexpected. Our creative strategy explored how to harness See the Possibility in a warm, playful way, focusing on transformation. Where others see life literally, Weightmans always sees the lateral.
We used illustration brought to life visually through stylised hero animations. The surprising transformations of everyday objects demonstrated Weightmans’ ethos. Where some saw eggs, Weightmans saw a new life. Where others saw bricks, Weightmans saw a hospital.
Our starting point for launch was within the firm with our people, Weightmans’ own army of advocates. We had involved people and kept them up to date during campaign development and then delivered a launch briefing for the entire organisation – nine offices, over 1500 people – as well as a social media training session for everyone.
Using the power of our people and culture to turbo charge the campaign was vital to its success. And our people didn’t disappoint. As we launched externally, every part of the firm joined in, delighting in the joy of words to imagine what they could see in those objects. Turns out we have some very creative and funny lawyers!
We deployed organic and paid activity across a year-long campaign including a range of employee engagement activity, e.g. launch events, LinkedIn campaigns, and a tone of voice session.
“We used illustration brought to life visually through stylised hero animations. The surprising transformations of everyday objects demonstrated Weightmans’ ethos. Where some saw eggs, Weightmans saw a new life. Where others saw bricks, Weightmans saw a hospital.”
We had four campaign bursts across the year focusing on See the Possibility and complemented those with an annual review campaign, an employee recruitment campaign and a community focused Christmas campaign in conjunction with an arts education charity partner where we asked children to See the Possibility in a Weightmans bauble.
The campaign’s creative content and engaging video formats resonated with our audience, driving high levels of interaction. The campaign notably outperformed all UK LinkedIn ad benchmarks:
- The view rate of 38.16% surpassed the high benchmark of 35%.
- The video completion rate of 3.61% exceeded the high benchmark of 2%.
The comprehensive engagement strategy, combined with targeted content delivery, ensured we not only reached our audience but also engaged them in a way we hadn’t achieved before, laying a strong foundation for future campaigns and solidifying our brand presence in the market.
The effectiveness of the campaign was a key lever attributed to the growth of the business – fueling 12.6% revenue growth in 2023/24 (the year of initial launch), enabling us to share a £4.5m bonus pot across the firm, with all our people sharing in the success of our brand building efforts.
The launch was just the start. We have continued the campaign, and it has evolved, generating evergreen content with a distinctive house style.
Our authentic but distinctive take on the world has resonated both in the legal sector and more widely and, at the time of writing, the campaign has won three awards since the end of 2024 – the Lexis Nexis Legal Award for Business Development (2025) and two Drum Gold Awards (2024) – and is shortlisted for others coming later in the year.
More importantly, See the Possibility is now a way of life at Weightmans. We live and breathe it every day in how we interact with each other and in the way in which we find solutions which help our clients achieve their goals.
As the world changes, it gives us a platform so we can change too. It gives our people the encouragement and licence to innovate and change – change their career path, change our business, change the way they deliver for our clients and what we deliver for our clients. It embraces the idea there are opportunities for all of us to achieve whatever we want.
At Weightmans, we believe thinking differently allows us to see the possibilities others don’t. We see the possibility for envisioning a better future, for better relationships and in people, whoever they are. We see the possibility in everything. And that is what will help us to continue to thrive in a changing world.