Yes, Social Media is now being heartedly embraced by the legal industry which I say..Its about time!.

A number in the legal profession have come to me recently to translate what the so called ‘experts’ who are approaching them are telling them about social media.

Cautious is the term I would use to describe most in the legal field and rightfully they should be. It is good they are reaching out to find out ‘”what this Social Media thing is all about”.  I say they should use extreme caution when it comes to how they go about using social networking since it is very easy to use it incorrectly which would not help them understand the advantages Social Media offers.

Low Tolerance

As I look around La-La-Land to find what others are saying on the subject of Legal firms use of Social Media the one thing missing from all the great advice offered is nobody is painting the picture of the reality attorneys need to have before starting their drive down the information highway. 

As Rupert White of Law Gazette eloquently reported in his blog  How law firms can use social networking to stay ahead of the pack , professionalism is paramount for lawyers and LinkedIn is the place best fit for attorneys. 

I have to agree, image is a pressing issue lawyers and their firms will have with social networking.  LinkedIn is built for business professionals, but is LinkedIn interested in keeping the image the legal field requirements?

Unfortunately, the answer is NO.  LinkedIn, like most all of the business/social networking sites, is out to capture large numbers of members to boaster their marketing plan.  LinkedIn offers their members an excellent business networking platform to use, provides moderate levels of security to keep the spamming to just under a nauseating level and do put a happy face on how members are presented.  However, with the pressure the failed economy has created, hard times are drawing into LinkedIn businesses and individuals who see the entire internet as their Petri Dish for breeding deception through scammy business models.

One characteristic all attorneys have is low tolerance to deception and time wasting activities. The attorneys I have talked with ask for my advice on helping them with ‘Damage Control’ of their misguided efforts of joining LinkedIn.  Their complaint is the high volume of unwanted solicitations they receive from people trolling for customers to become part of a MLM business model or other less desirable business models.  This volume of worthless communication generated out of LinkedIn is pushing many lawyers to leave LinkedIn or the Internet as a whole. 

So LinkedIn maybe a location to be online but only as a validation of their position in the legal industry.  Until LinkedIn does a better job of screening the increasing deception festering within their social network the full body of the legal professionals will on the most part sit on the sidelines.  This does not help bring more businesses or business people online.

It is true, lawyers and the law firms will have to become a little calloused to these abnormalities inherent to the internet. Exercising extreme caution in social networking is part of the way of life in La-La-Land.

Biggest Issue

What most attorneys get hung up on when they look at how social media is used by other industries is ethics.  This is a real concern for them.  In some cases they are legally bound to certain parameters of content they can provide that other businesses are not.  Unfortunately, like in almost everything else in any other industry, there are those very few in the legal profession who run on the edge of unethical behavior for attorneys.  This makes the majority in the legal profession very leery of stepping into the social or business networking arenas since they do not want to be associated with that behavior.

What Works Best

The legal industry participation in the general public arena of social networking is very much needed.  I am asked frequently by peers and colleagues if I “know a good lawyer for…?”  Their questions comes to me not as an attempt to start idle conversation but as how Business/Social Networking works.  This question also is their search for validation of someone they may have found from other forms of traditional advertising the legal field uses. 

So how should attorney’s use Social Media?  Naturally, trust building is the biggest challenge attorneys face using social media to promote themselves.

Nicole L. Black blog on Five Things Lawyers Should Know About Social Media has some very good points on the need for lawyers who begin their online social networking to set goals.

I cannot agree more with that approach.  Too many attorneys who took the advice of someone not familiar with how lawyers work will just jump into using social media with the same goals used by many of the adrenalin driven entrepreneur opportunist that populate the internet.

The shouting and badgering used my other industries just will not work and cannot be used by the legal field.  Using one of the more descriptive colloquial phrases to describe how using popular methods of social media in the legal field work..’That Dog Won’t Hunt’ for attorneys. 

The Bottomline:

Private practice attorneys, as well as large law firms, need to use another form of straight forward social networking that is well placed online.  The use of social media in the legal field is just beginning and it will be those attorneys who ‘Get it’ who will be the opportunist who capitalize the most.  Search for someone who has experience in practical business operations to guide you in how social media can best be used.

I look forward to see more attorneys in the blogsphere and social networking arena..La-La-land sure could use them.  Let me know how I can help.