To my own surprise, the development of a logo was an important and personal process. In December 2023, when I decided I wanted to start Justice Legal Strategies, creating a logo was important for me to make this concept in my head real. I spent about 45 minutes creating a logo using Microsoft Designer, an AI program. I knew I wanted the logo to say something about me, since my name is not in the firm’s name, so I came up with the idea of a green tree because “Greenbaum” is green tree in German. I typed in something like “Create a logo for Justice Legal Strategies featuring a green tree.” Microsoft Designer came up with a bunch of ideas. I played around with the program and came up with this.
The logo had the effect I wanted. It gave me forward momentum and when I started showing my two-page concept to people, they took the idea seriously.
That being said, I knew I wanted a professionally designed logo. So, a couple months later, after I told the Lawyers’ Committee staff and governing board I was leaving, I knew I had to get to work on a logo. I looked at DC-area designers and online options, like 99Designs, where you can have designers essentially compete for logo designs. I ended up taking the advice of a local designer who said on a blog that a new business owner should use Fiverr for their first logo.
I chose a designer, Bilal, who has done close to 20,000 logos with more than 10,000 reviews and with the reviews frequently showing his logos, which demonstrated his versatility. Right before I started, I had a second epiphany on the logo – I wanted it to feature a green bonsai tree, with the bonsai reflecting the Japanese part of my background.
I got back the first set of concepts from Bilal about two days after I placed my order and frankly, I was crestfallen – not at all what I wanted. I realized it was my fault and I had not given enough instruction. So, I gave more detailed instructions and got back seven concepts. I had about a dozen people from different stages of my life look at the concepts and I said they didn’t have to choose one. The first five people chose five different concepts. My brother and sister-in-law identified the most important thing – two of the concepts nailed the Bonsai tree and the green/blue colors I wanted.
But the font was not right. My chief logo advisor, Carlita Salazar, articulated exactly what I wanted: a classic, hand drawn image with a contemporary font for the words. I found a logo with a hand drawn image and a contemporary font that I liked, and I sent the font to Bilal. A couple rounds later and I ended up with this:
What does the logo symbolize to me? The green here symbolizes me – the tree and "Legal Strategies," what I do, help further justice through legal strategies. The blue “JUSTICE” and the accompanying box represent the overall goal of JLS, justice, and me pushing toward that goal. “Justice” is bigger than “Legal Strategies” because it is more important.
So far, the feedback on the logo has been almost uniformly positive. That has been a pleasant surprise. The most important thing is that I feel good about it. It took me outside of my comfort zone and gave me the confidence to tackle a more complex project, what became www.justicelegalstrategies.com. The logo makes me motivated and excited to start this business. Let’s see if I feel the same a year from now.