Legal professionals tend to be a conservative group. So when it comes to adopting social media into their practices, I have found that attorneys and other legal professionals gravitate more to LinkedIn than any other network. In fact, when I did a search on the keyword “attorney OR lawyer” back when I started using LinkedIn six years ago, there were barely over a hundred thousand members using the words attorney or lawyer in their profile. Now there are over a million.
In 2010, attorney Kendra Brodin and I wrote an ebook called Linked into Law. We recently refreshed some of the key content so that we could release the best parts in this section. (To order the new Linked Into Law ebook, you can email me at [email protected].)
Kendra (www.LinkedIn.com/in/KendraBrodin) is the Director of Career and Professional Development at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she helps students and alumni prepare for and build a meaningful career. She is also a law firm consultant and executive coach for lawyers on personal and professional development topics such as individual and organizational leadership, goal setting and achieving, and career and life success and satisfaction.
Here are the key benefits of being a lawyer on LinkedIn:
Lawyers are conservative for a reason. They have ethical issues that many other professions just don’t have to deal with. For that reason, we have added this section to make sure that legal professionals don’t inadvertently land in hot water using LinkedIn. Here are some mistakes to avoid.
In many states, attorneys may not “specialize” unless they are specifically licensed or registered to claim specialization in a certain area of the law. And yet many—hopefully most—attorneys have a specific area of focus. When you create your list of keywords for optimizing your profile, focus on the specific areas of law you practice.
Instead of a “specialty,” try something like “My practice focuses exclusively on bankruptcy” rather than “I specialize in bankruptcy.” If you don’t have a specialty in patent law, don’t say that you have one on your LinkedIn profile; you will always want to be mindful of your state’s rules on this and abide by them.
Here are some tips on avoiding breaking client confidentiality:
LinkedIn can be an absolutely amazing place to share your knowledge and experience. But as you begin to connect with potential clients online, that very thin line of perception may be crossed. What might have been an “off the cuff” answer for you becomes a client/attorney relationship to the person with whom you are communicating. Make very clear, with disclaimers if necessary, that the information you are sharing should not be taken as legal advice.
Normally, we recommend connecting with everyone on LinkedIn because the larger your network, the more visible you are. The more visible you are, the more likely you are to find the contacts you are looking for and be found by those looking for an attorney. In almost every case, this is a good thing. The exception is when a connection in your network disqualifies you from a case because of conflict of interest. Be selective when choosing to connect with someone.
The Legal Updates InApp enables lawyers to gain visibility on LinkedIn outside of their own networks by distributing their written work (blog posts, articles, clients alerts, etc.) to people who have opted to receive legal updates on whatever interests them or matters to their professional lives. When someone in financial services installs the app, they start getting all manner of legal content from JD Supra on banking and finance issues. People in the insurance field receive legal updates on insurance matters. Tech folks get IP, technology, and other such related updates. Anyone using the app can customize this feed with any other subjects that interest him or her. But more than that, the content always ties back to the person who wrote it, the lawyer. And if that lawyer has also installed the Legal Updates app, in a single click a reader outside of that lawyer’s network can connect to the lawyer directly on LinkedIn.
Also, lawyers who use this app can include a portfolio of their JD Supra publications directly on their LinkedIn profile—and they can upload content on either JD Supra or LinkedIn. With each upload, the legal update is also announced to their network (with a LinkedIn status update). So, you’re able to share content with your own network and grow your network by making sure your writing reaches targeted readers outside of your network.
One user of Legal Updates says, “This is networking at its best. LinkedIn users are eager to share articles of interest, recommend them to friends, and network with the authors. And Legal Updates is a nearly endless source of that sort of credentialing content.”
There is a lot of information available on the Web about ethical considerations, and I will try to pin down the most salient and important ones. Then I will leave it to you to do your own research and investigation of your state rules and their implications for your LinkedIn usage. Social media is unchartered territory for most state bar organizations, so this is fair warning to be thoughtful and above-board in all of your social media interactions.
Just as with anything else you do as an attorney, you are subject to your state ethics regulations and rules. Being online and communicating virtually may feel different than face-to-face interactions or print communications, but your online actions are just as subject to ethics rules and regulations as in-person interactions.
While you might refute the fact that social media sites like LinkedIn are intended to attract clients and should thus be exempt from these ethical considerations, that argument won’t get you too far. To try to simplify things a bit, let’s consider the three main categories that are governed by state ethics regulations:
I suggest these strategies to help legal professionals avoid ethical snags on LinkedIn:
LinkedIn can be an absolutely amazing place to share your knowledge and experience. Not only can you attract clients and clients’ referrals, but it’s also an excellent credentialing tool. As Adrian Lurssen of JD Supra said in a 2011 interview with me: “Potential clients and referring attorneys are looking to Google. When JD Supra members continuously show up in searches because of the content they are sharing across many online mediums like LinkedIn, they become more authoritative.”
For law firm administrators and managing partners reading this, don’t ban LinkedIn for your employees. Social media sites can be great legal advertising tools. Some helpful social media policy and guideline links are available with a quick Internet search. Make sure you are in compliance, and then use this tool for business development and client retention. Final words: