Risky for lawyers to express political views on social media

With the election 27 days away Americans have been widely sharing their political views via social media. However, it might be in the best interest of lawyers to keep their political views to themselves when it comes to the Internet.

Using politics as a business strategy is risky and often backfires. Just engaging in political discussions in what you believe a personal social network, ie, Facebook, can create problems. Lawyers can’t afford to alienate clients or potential clients.

Dena Kouremetis (@Communic8or) writes at Forbes how airing political views can cause businesses to lose hard-earned clientele. On a nation wide basis, Chick-Fil-A’s CEO expressing his views on gay marriage earlier this year brought a nation-wide boycott.

If you don’t already have millions of clients or customers, magnify the effect it might have on your business. Folks who agree with you might smile, nod, or even vocally endorse your views, while others will quietly look for your professional alternative. So the question you must ask yourself is:  how many customers or potential customers can I afford to lose?

No question lawyers have a right to free speech. However taking advantage of this freedom can have an effect on you and your law firm. It could even cost you your job. You have the right to speak out, but you don’t have the right to say where you work.

I got involved in local politics while practicing. Both at the campaign level as well as representing a group through our state’s trial and appelate courts.

I believed I was doing what I was brought up to do. To stand up for what I believed was right, and as a lawyer championing the cause of people who needed help. We won, but it cost my firm clients and alienated a lot of people. I can only impagine how bad it could have gotten had there been social media then.

If you’re on Facebook, you are going to see political discussions among your friends, relatives, and business associates. Some of the photo’s, posters, and quotes are pretty funny. Commenting on or ‘liking’ such items may seem pretty innocuous. Doing so though you risk broadcasting your political views, or worse yet as others may mistakenly view them, to all of your followers as well followers of others involved in the dicussion.

Sharing political views in a blog or on LinkedIn is even riskier. These are professional environments where lawyers are sharing insight and commentary on the law, business, or consumer affairs. Politics will stick out abruptly and is likely to alienate 50% of your audience.

Per Kouremtis,

Whether your audience agrees with you whole-heartedly, in concept, or not at all, even those who appear to shrug off your passionate comments and fail to engage you might begin to tread softly around you – not the way to appeal to the broadest number of people who might use your services or product.

Law firms may wish to cover politics in their social media policies. The Society for Human Resource Management reports that 25 percent of employers actually maintain written policies on political activities.

As lawyers, who ought to be championing free speech, you would like to think we could express our polical views where the discussion is most vibrant today — on the net. But doing so has practical business consequences, especially in this day where we’re so polarized as a society.