Only 25% of companies offer social media training. Does your law firm?

According to a recent report by Altimeter, only 25% of companies offer social media business training to their employees.

Law firms may not even reach that level. While social media is a very personal relationship and personal reputation enhancing medium, the majority of law firms hold their lawyers and other professionals back when it comes to the personal use of social media.

Rather than educate and empower lawyers when it comes to social media, law firms often look to use social media to brand the firm or to circulate content. Some law firms, out of fear, even have policies limiting a lawyer’s use of social media.

The fact is there are many ways that companies and law firms can avoid jeopardizing their reputation while still allowing their employees to have an online presence.

Michael Brito (@Britopian), SVP of Social Business Planning at Edelman, shares a few reasons why companies need to empower their employees to engage externally in social media in his post, “Let’s Evolve the Conversation About Employee Advocacy.”

• They are trusted as external spokespersons
• It increases morale when employees feel empowered and trusted
• Using social tools can increase productivity

Brito continues:

I think it’s time to move beyond the “brands need to join the conversation” and that “they need to be transparent and open up the firewall for their employees” types of conversations. These are things that we all know intuitively and there are hundreds if not thousands of blog posts, articles, and infographics that convince us of this fact.

Law firms that do trust their lawyers need to give them the proper tools and training to make sure they are using social media properly. Of course it is important to draw the line between business and pleasure.

Brito gives 5 starters to get you on the right path, starters which I have adapted to law firms.

Start small: Bring someone into your law firm, preferably with both significant legal and social media experience, to give your lawyers a paradigm shift. Social media has a bad name in many lawyers’ minds, they often see it as a marketing gimmick for kids. The fact is social media is very traditional legal business development — relationships and word of mouth. Your lawyers will welcome the opportunity of learning this.

Training: After developing a social media strategy regarding the practice area(s) you are looking to grow and identifying your target audience, develop and execute training programs on the use of a RSS reader (listening), LinkedIn, and for those lawyers who are interested, blogging, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. Use face to face, online, and personal forums as appropriate, combined with written materials.

Implement Tools: Turn the lawyers loose. Really. Mayo Clinic has over 4,000 doctors using Twitter and other social media to engage the public and to collaborate with other physicians around the world to advance and offer better medical care.

Supervise (within reason) and support: Sure, check to see how your lawyers are doing on their blogging. Are they engaging their target audience. Are they using Twitter and social media sharing other’s relevant content so as to grow a network. Don’t police, that’ll prove counterproductive. Have resources where lawyers can go for answers, learning, and support. An outside provider may be stronger and more cost effective than this doing in-house.

Make it fun: Social media can be personally rewarding by allowing lawyers to grow connections, getting positive support for their passions, and growing relationships and a network that lead to being a better lawyer and growing one’s practice. Don’t stand in the way. Encourage lawyers who are having fun in their use of social media.

Your lawyers are the best spokespeople your law firm have. The leading way your law firm gets its work is by virtue of the relationships and the word of mouth reputation of its lawyers.

By inhibiting lawyers from using social media you are missing out on a powerful business tool and in the case of young lawyers perhaps the single best way for them to begin to make connections and nurture relationships that lead to face to face meetings.

With it being so important for a lawyer to have a strong online identity today, it is not only a law firm’s responsibility to train their lawyers and professionals on the appropriate ways to use social media, it’s a business imperative of a firm to do so.

Image courtesy of Flickr care of Claireatwaves.