Lawyers keen on LinkedIn
We always find the topics of lawyers and marketing interesting. Frankly, in general terms, subject of course to many exceptions, lawyers to date are simply miles behind on marketing. This is probably partly due to the fact that historically, law has been a profession, and professionals somehow think that it’s not befitting their status to actively promote their businesses, and we think the second issue is that lawyers generally are so risk averse that they are not prepared to invest money in marketing where there can be no guarantee of results.
The trouble is that law has become far more competitive, there are already a significantly excessive number of lawyers per general populace and this is without the entry into the market of external suppliers, some of whom are big big companies, which is now literally imminent. Lawyers need to wake up and very fast.
So, on the one hand, what follows below is encouraging, indicating a rapidly growing engagement by lawyers in social media. On the other hand, whilst LinkedIn and social media generally are great, they are not, in isolation, a form of integrated marketing strategy and we have to say, maybe the reason they are popular with lawyers is because they are free.
In any event, below are some findings about lawyers take up of LinkedIn, which is particularly useful for corporate lawyers, perhaps not so worthwhile for say, family lawyers.
- Nearly 50% of partners and staff in the top 50 law firms have LinkedIn accounts, a 100% rise in a year
- PR firm Kelso Consulting research suggests that the above equates to 40,000 plus accounts of legal staff employees from the top 50 firms.
