5 ways lawyers can get more out of LinkedIn in 2010

There’s no question that LinkedIn is the leading directory for professionals, including lawyers. But far too many lawyers mistakenly look at LinkedIn as a directory and nothing more.

CIO Magazine’s Kristin Burnham offers 5 ways you can get more from Linkedin in 2010 in an article this morning. Burnham may not have been addressing lawyers, but she may as well have been.

1. Groups. Participate in groups related to your area of practice or the industries you are looking to serve. Search for “Groups” on the LinkedIn navigation bar. Network with individuals in the group by adding them to your professional network on LinkedIn, adding your blog to news feeding the group via the news feature, or by asking or answering questions in the discussions feature. If there’s not a relevant group, start one of your own.
2. Recommendations. A recommendation from a client (assuming allowed in your state), coworkers, association leaders, publishers, people who have heard you present, bloggers, or others who can vouch for your expertise make your LinkedIn profile more dynamic and bring more credit and validity to your profile. Word of mouth and peer reviews are huge in the selection of a lawyer. Recommendations give you both.
3. Events. Find the Events module on the right side of your home page and click on ‘See events your connections are attending’ at the bottom of the module. You can view events (including webinars) that your connections are attending, search popular events and find ones to attend. Though I haven’t used Events and didn’t see much Events activity among my connections who are legal professionals, I could see Events growing in popularity among lawyers.
4. Advanced People Search. The “Advanced People Search” allows you to find contacts based on geographic area, company, keyword, industry and more. Advanced People Search also gives you the option to search based on when users joined LinkedIn, which you can use to you introduce yourself and welcome those new to LinkedIn.
5. Company Buzz. Under Applications on the right bottom of your LinkedIn page, click on Add an application and you’ll see a list of applications that you can add to your homepage and profile. Company Buzz is an application that allows you to see what people are saying about companies and topics you care about. Company Buzz uses information from your profile such as companies and schools to find relevant discussions on Twitter. Company Buzz also shows you how frequently your company or topic has been mentioned and the top words associated with your company and the topic. You may add new topics and customize existing topics with new search terms to get just the results you are interested in. Again, not a feature I use, but I’m going to start testing it tonight.

I’m experiencing great success using LinkedIn for client development at LexBlog. I also hear from lawyers they’re expanding their network and experiencing client development success through LinkedIn.

As with networking offline, using LinkedIn takes time and effort. We’re not talking about a directory where people look up a lawyer, their area of practice, their locale and dial the lawyer with largest ad and 800 phone number. We’re talking something much better, a place to build a reputation as a trusted and reliable authority.