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ABA Tech Review 2015: Lawyers and Social Media
RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers
Published: May 13, 2016
The ABA’s annual legal technology survey for 2015 dug deeply into numerous aspects of the topic, including lawyers’ relationship with blogging and social media. Here are some of the survey’s findings.
Any legal technology consultant will tell any law firm that it should maintain a blog. Who listens to experts? A little over a quarter of law firms who responded to the survey have a blog. That is an increase of 12 percent over 2011 for firms (the blog dates from the mid-1990’s). Less than 7 percent of individual lawyers blog.
But guess what? 100 percent of lawyers who have blogs reported that they got clients as a direct result of their blogs, or through a referral tied to their blogs. Yep.
On the other hand, fewer than a quarter of respondents said that their firms did not engage in social media—almost the direct opposite of the blogging stats.
Lawyers use social media platforms thusly:
LinkedIn: 57 percent
Facebook: 35 percent
Twitter: 20 percent
Google+: 10 percent
Avvo/LawLink: 3 percent
None: 24 percent
Don’t know: 15 percent
I’m guessing that the “don’t know” folks figure that their marketing departments handle social media.
Client attraction was also very different between blogging and social media. Only about a quarter of the attorneys reported getting new clients from social media.
At the same time, the majority of attorneys used social media for networking and business contacts, and not so much for client contact. This is further reflected in the fact that LinkedIn, which is primarily used to connect with other professionals, rather than with clients, is used by over 73 percent of individuals (not firms) who work in larger firms. That makes it look like everyone is out there looking for work.
Still, social media is just not yet recognized as a force in the market by the larger and stodgier firms. Fewer than half of the firms, apparently, have official policies in place regarding social media. And less than 15 percent of attorneys “regularly” both post and read on these platforms.
Ninety percent of respondents access social media tools from the desktop, three-quarters from a phone, and half form a tablet. These figures are the same as 2014.