Carolyn Mumby

Yesterday I wondered how many lawyers were using Linkedin. A quick search on Google provided some interesting answers.

10 percent of attorneys said the use of online social networking such as Linkedin resulted in new business according to the American Bar Association. This seemed quite low to me especially in light of the volume of lawyers actually using social media as a means of marketing for lawyers.

The American Bar Association survey on laywers using social media revealed the following trends:

1. In 2008, 15 percent of attorneys surveyed by the American Bar Association used social media as part of their practice.
2. By 2009 that grew to 43 percent.
3. In 2010, it jumped to 56 percent.

And according to the 2010 Corporate Counsel New Media Engagement Survey conducted by ALM Legal Intelligence (USA)

1. In-house corporate counsel, (an ideal market for a law firm) are also using social networking to learn more about the credentials of attorneys
2. In-house attorneys are now using new media platforms to deepen their professional networks; to obtain their legal, business and industry news and information; and to enrich their social and personal lives.
3. Most importantly, they expect that trend to accelerate in the future
4. While Facebook is gaining popularity with attorneys, it’s not as popular as LinkedIn.
5. Of the 50 million users on LinkedIn, 1.5 million are lawyers

 
So there is plenty of evidence to suggest that lawyers use social media for business reasons but it is crucial to measure the benefits of engaging in social media activity. If you can demonstrate that it is resulting in business either directly or indirectly then you can justify spending valuable time on it.

Marketing for lawyers is regarded as a pain because it can be very time consuming so you need to work out what you are doing right on social media so that you can do more of it and eliminate the waste wherever possible.  Columbus attorney Thomas Taneff provides examples of how he uses social media to build professional relationships plus more details on the surveys.

Tags: Social Media, Social Networking, Relationship Building, Statistics, Linkedin

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