Death of social networking for lawyers is greatly exaggerated
Remember the late 90’s when many in the legal profession dismissed the Internet as some sort of fad?
A recent article article in Law Technology News (Is the Party Over for Social Networking?) and blog post by Martindale-Hubbell (‘social networking – does not draw lawyers‘) reminds me of the same. Both write off lawyers use of social networking.
This at a time when LinkedIn, the leading professional social networking site, lists 118,000 profiles from those describing themselves in the practice of law and is profiling each of the largest law firms based on social networking at LinkedIn by their lawyers.
Interesting that many quoted in the Law Technology News story see the advantages and significant growth in social networking for lawyers. Nonetheless, the headline was couched to create the opposite impression.
And the headline certainly worked. New York Magazine citing the Law Technology reported ‘News Attendees at the American Bar Association’s ABA Techshow in Chicago have declared social-networking sites over.’ No question the magazine put this in to laugh at our profession.
Martindale’s position that social networking for lawyers is dead? Probably based on a combination of not knowing what is taking place and protecting their territory.
Rather than create sensational headlines to generate discussion or misleading lawyers to sell your products, let’s give social networking time.
It’s new. Social networking sites are still being perfected. Lawyers and legal marketing professionals are still trying to figure it out.
But like the Internet, social networking for lawyers is not a fad.