Why do lawyers and doctors tend to name their businesses after their names and nothing else?

Factual Questions
1

Law firms are usually “Name, Name, and Name” instead of something more memorable like “Always innocent law firm” or “Prosecutor’s Bane”

Doctors are a little more flashy, but they usually stick to either their name or their location (ie. Area Medical Center)

This doesn’t appear to be a professionalism thing. There are tons of industries which are professional and eschews flash in their work, but they have better names than simply listing their last names on a sign or naming themselves after the local town. Why are lawyer and doctor office names so boring?

2

Add accountants to that list. I do think it’s a professional thing, for the older and more formal definition of “professional”. Doctors and lawyers (I don’t really know about accountants) were bound by their professional rules to not advertise until pretty recently (last 10-15 years, IIRC), also, which I think is also related to the boring business name thing.

3

because they are the business.

4

I can’t be arsed to look it up at the moment, but there are professional rules that require lawyers to name their firms the way they do. I try to forget as many details as I can from my professional responsibility classes in law school, but if you need more information I would be happy to look it up for you.

Tomorrow, that is.

5

In my state, lawyers are not allowed to practice under a “trade name”. So no “Prosecutor’s Bane” or anything like that. Firms are allowed to retain the name of dead or retired former members, but that’s about it. Non-profits have a little bit of leeway…something like “Regional or State Name” Legal Services is acceptable.

6

Lawyers are traditionally (and, in many jurisdictions in the US, still are) required to operate as either sole proprietors or partnerships - both are business forms (as is corporation), but unlike Corporations, Limited Liability Partnerships, and other forms, neither Sole Proprietorships nor Partnerships afford shelter from personal liability.

If I sell stock to raise start-up capital, and my great business plan doesn’t work out, my shareholders can lose the money they paid for the stock - but the creditors cannot go after them for the business debts.

If I set up as eithe a sole prop or partnership, I /my partner(s) and I are personally liable for debts of the organization - if I screw up that contract and my client loses money as a result of that error, I am PERSONALLY responsible for those damages.
Accountants are, traditionally, treated the same.

This is why E&O insurance is a really, really good idea for those folks.

I suspect that the same thinking of holding them personally responsible is what requires them to use their personal names as business names.

Trivia:
Next time you see a letterhead of a law firm, you will (usually) see:

Able
Baker
Charles

Dominic
Edwards

If you wonder what the line is about: this is a partnership; the names above the line are the people who own the company; those below are employees.

How to get your name above the line?
Work hard and make lots of money/recognition for the firm - you may be offered the opportunity to “buy in” - cut a check for x% of the company’s worth, payable to the company and the partnership agreement will be amended to include you as a partner.

This level of ownership and liability is probably the most distinct definition of “professional”.

7

In England and Wales, Barristers operate from Chambers and the chambers are often known by the address of where they are. For example, the 6 Kings Bench Walk, a good criminal set. Some of them may use names, like Matrix Chambers, the workplace of Mrs Blair.

Barrister are however, self employed. Technically the Barrister are all just sharing office space and costs.

8

Such as which?

Not investment banks — with names like Lazard Freres, or Morgan Stanley, or Goldman Sachs, or Credit Suisse (local country, rather than town), or BNY Mellon (local town (“Bank of New York”) and last name).

Not management consultants — with names like McKinsey, or Deloitte, or Booz Allen Hamilton, or PricewaterhouseCoopers (although I guess this is now “PwC”).

Not advertising agencies or PR firms — Saatchi & Saatchi, or Edelman, or Burson Marstellar, or Leo Burnett.

9

Medicine and law are highly personal services. The individuals involved belong to a profession which has ethical requirements above the normal business eat or be eaten. A higher calling if you will.

People don’t go to a building for their medical or lawful worries, they go to find another human being whom they can trust with the intimacies of their lives. In complete confidence.

So the use of the name of a trusted partner draws clients in and reinforces the personal element.

During the late 1980s I watched accounting firms change to meaningless gobble such as KPMG, WHK etc and listened as my clients grumbled about their accountants becoming remote, then the clients moving to Joe Smith, Bruce Jones yadda because they wanted to deal with a person - not an organisation.

10

One reason so many businesses are named solely for the proprietor is that you are required to pay for a records search, when establishing your business, to insure it’s name does not conflict with another already established business. And it costs money for each search. And a lot of your cleverest ideas, you’ll find, are already taken

So, after paying for a couple of fruitless searches, people shift their thinking from something dead clever to that which will most likely be unique, so they don’t have to pay for yet another search.

And one of the easiest ways to do that is name the business after yourself. Y’know unless you’re John Smith, of course!

11

In Canada, at least, physicians’ businesses must be named after themselves in some form, if they decide to incorporate. So there’s not a lot of leeway.

12

Or McDonald. Then you get sued. (I mentioned this in another thread and got shot down for being anti-Capitalist. I am not now and never have been.)
ETA: Answer to elbows.

13

Historically in the US, law firms and investment firms and advertising firms and accounting firms were legally partnerships. That had consequences.

This is exactly what limited liability corporations - stocks - were invented to avoid. When you were in a partnership, you put everything on the line and you needed to convince people that you would play straight and be responsible. Your name wasn’t merely your reputation, it was your entire fortune.

Partnerships had huge incentive to declare their names in the title. Customers were investing in them personally and assuming that they would get attention from the people whose names were on top, even if they dealt with more junior staff.

This made a lot more sense 100 years ago, when firms were relatively small. But many of these firms grew just like the corporations they serviced. Merrill, Lynch etc. was nicknamed the Thundering Herd because they had a bull as a logo and they had over 100 partners. That was unwieldy, to say the least.

I’m not sure if laws had to be changed, but something did, and by the 1960s firms started moving into limited liability and going public by issuing stock. In Mad Men, all the firms have partners and a series of names on the door but by the end of the 60s, global conglomerates of advertising arose with names like Interpublic. It said public right there in the name.

Smaller outfits, like a doctor’s practice, can now incorporate as a PC, private corporation, and the majority of them have. My doctor is part of “Suburb” Family Medicine; my wife’s is in “Suburb” Internal Medicine. There are several doctors involved, but they have no incentive to put their names in the corporate title.

14

Besides state laws, professional ethics rules in the US prevent law firms from being misleading with their names or advertisements (ABA Rules 7.1 and 7.5, I think). “Always Innocent” or “Prosecutor’s Bane” wouldn’t be acceptable as names because they might be considered false or misleading, nor could a law firm’s TV ad state that “Prosecutors all know that they may as well give up when they hear that we represent the defendant.”

According to the gentleman who taught my professional responsibility review course, “misleading” can be read as akin to “potentially confusing to an idiot,” even if reasonably intelligent people would understand that no firm can guarantee that their clients will always be found innocent, for instance. Law firms find it wise to err on the side of caution and keep their names from being potentially confusing to anyone.

The main semi-exception I can think of is that firms can generally keep namesake partners in their firm name after those founders die or retire. For instance, Skadden (Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher, and Flom LLP, in full) can keep calling itself that even though the last name partner (Flom) died in 2011. If Mr. Flom had retired and become a Supreme Court Justice before his death, the firm would have promptly removed his name from their firm name…before someone retained the firm under the mistaken conclusion Supreme Court Justice Flom practiced with the firm and could guarantee them a favorable outcome.

15

Based on my personal experience this is the exact opposite of what I want. I hired a firm based on their great reputation, they gave my case to one of their partners then he left the firm. It was easy to see why they didn’t want him :mad:

To me it felt like if you brought your car to a reputable shop and when you went to pick it up they told you the mechanic who was working on it was fired and you would have to deal with him. Then you have to hunt him down to find your car in pieces in his back yard.

16

There are some states that allow lawyers flexibility to use other kinds of names, but whenever I see such a name – “Venture IP Law Services” – my first thought is “tacky.” We are habituated by tradition in some cases. I don’t want a law firm that has a “clever” name.

17

I imagine ‘Prosecutor’s Bane’ as the name for a famous pen that is handed down from father to son in a family of lawyers, much like a named sword would have been back in the dark ages/medieval times.

18

In a dramatic battle scene spanning several months and countless drafts, redrafts, and motions, it is wielded in a duel with Dilbert: http://dilbert.test.resultspage.com/comic/Excalibert