118,000 lawyer profiles at LinkedIn
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Best I can tell there are 118,000 lawyer profiles at LinkedIn. I found that by doing a search across the LinkedIn directory for those listing law practice as their profession via a Google search.
I cannot vouch for 100% accuracy, but in bouncing around the profiles displayed in the search results I didn't find any non-lawyers, ie, those employed in companies selling services or products to the legal profession. I found only practicing lawyers.
If there's 118,000 lawyer profiles at LinkedIn, or anything close to that number, that's extraordinary. LinkedIn is less than 5 years old. And it's only been the last year that I have seen lawyers adding profiles with any frequency.
In addition, unlike directories such as Martindale-Hubbell, Avvo, and Super Lawyers which may unilaterally include lawyers (in some cases with an abbreviated bio), lawyers had to create their own profile at LinkedIn. The lawyers chose to be listed in LinkedIn.
I'll be the first to concede that lawyers haven't totally figured out how to leverage LinkedIn as a networking and marketing tool. LinkedIn will also need to continue to ad features for effective networking.
However, 118,000 lawyers in LinkedIn certainly belies recent discussion here and here that lawyers are not using social networking sites.
Kevin, thanks for this; I hope you'll keep posting about ways to use LinkedIn. Even for those of us who feel pretty adept at other Internet connecting tools, it's hard to see useful ways to stay in touch and communicate on that platform. Perhaps I'm missing something.
We hope to be able to do an interview with one of the folks at LinkedIn to offer some advice in that regard.