Video file
Video file
How a law firm turned ten years of growth into a single idea
CMBG3 - rebranding and website
Three Steps
Ahead
Request
Turning practice into a clear identity
CMBG3 had grown for ten years, through real wins and real setbacks, but its brand hadn't caught up. We were brought in to turn that experience into a brand the firm could point to.
Image
True north
Learning before building
We began with a full culture assessment, built on the Barrett Values framework. It clarified which founding values were already embedded, which needed more emphasis next, and what made CMBG3's approach distinctive.
Real experience, turned into a clear set of beacons for what comes next.
Image
Ideation
A strength the firm already had, made visible
The culture work surfaced something CMBG3's clients already felt but the firm had never said out loud: this is counsel that sees risk before it escalates.
We shaped that strength into three words built to travel everywhere the firm shows up: Three Steps Ahead. It's now also a working method: anticipate, align, act.
Seeing the whole pattern, not one piece
CMBG3's expertise spans environmental law, general litigation, commercial disputes, product liability, trial counsel, national negotiation, and post-verdict crisis counsel. That breadth is a strength, but it could just as easily read as several different firms.
We saw something larger: solving it well means reading the business risk behind the legal one. We turned to the tangram, a seven-piece puzzle that forms endless configurations from one fixed set of parts, a way to talk about cross-practice work as one firm. CMBG3 made the idea its own, now how the firm describes its approach.
Creation
Told in the firm's own words
Rather than write CMBG3's story from the outside, we filmed its leadership and employees telling it themselves.
A suite of 3D animation gave Three Steps Ahead a visual world of its own. It became the foundation of the new website, opening on a single line: meet the firm you thought you knew.
Deliverables
Culture assessment
Brand strategy
Positioning
Visual identity
Brand guidelines
Leadership and employee film
3D animation
Website design
Website development
Video file
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Activation
An identity built to be felt, not just read
We built the new website so it would not read like a practice-area brochure, but so a prospective client feels what it's like to work with CMBG3 before they ever pick up the phone.
Feedback started coming in from CMBG3's own clients before anyone asked for it.
Our imagination at work
We didn't just give CMBG3 a new look. We gave the firm a story every partner could open a conversation with.
The launch wasn't the finish line. It was the midpoint of a process CMBG3 is still living out.
A stronger brand is easier to build once a firm first understands the culture it's asking the brand to represent.
Image
"Your team has summarized who we are in such a short period of time, something we were not able to do ourselves."
"We have received great positive feedback from clients, and they congratulated us on the new brand and how well we have articulated the firm."
— CMBG3 leadership