Baker & McKenzie Chair : Social media matters for law firms

It wasn’t that long ago that I ran dog and pony shows for legal professionals explaining what a blog is and why they may be helpful for business development in a law firm.

“The word blog comes from the word ‘Weblog,’ which is something people use to annotate their activity on the web. Blogs, expanded to longer text, enable a lawyer to share their passion, insight and care.”

Most thought the whole thing was fairly amusing. Why would a good lawyer use something as silly sounding as a blog? It would be embarrassing and certainly unethical.

My approach in talking to law firms was to keep it low profile. You know, use a blog for delivery of your email newsletters on a medium offering a lot more features. No need to go upstairs for this decision, they’d stop blogs in a second for any number of reasons.

Twelve years later, we have the Chair of Baker & McKenzie telling us why blogs and social media matter for law firms.

In a piece in Bloomberg last week, Eduardo Leite (@eduardo_c_leite) shared why lawyers need to integrate these mediums and other technology into their practice and every aspect of their lives.

Much of the technology we use to communicate today did not exist when I began my law career more than 30 years ago. Gone are the days of pagers, faxes and pay phones, and forget about sharing files on floppy disks or presentations using slide projectors.

Today, smart technology and mobile devices feature in every aspect of our lives — work, family, entertainment, social activities and financial transactions, while social media platforms are helping us grow our networks and stay connected in ways we could never have imagined even a decade ago.

These innovations and platforms are transforming industries and ideas faster than ever before and creating new ways of doing business. Why should the legal sector be any different?

Look at the points Leite makes on the importance of blogging for him and other law firm leaders.

• Connects people from each and every office around the the world.
• Strengthens the firm’s culture of friendship and enables everyone to share in the excitement and ownership of the firm’s achievements.

Leite sees blogging and social media as equally important for client retention and business development.

• Clients expect their law firms to know their industries, products, cultures and technologies.
• Clients want law firms to be as innovative, efficient and forward-looking as they are.
• Social media allows lawyers to engage and connect with clients and their people in real time, and on a personal basis.
• Blogs and social media help firms see the world through a client’s eyes and gain more insight on how we can add more value for them.

Finally, Leite doesn’t see a law firm, including Baker & McKenzie, being able to recruit the talent it needs without using social media.

By 2020 more than 50 percent of the global workforce will be members of Generation Y and Generation Z. They have grown up connected, collaborative and mobile. They look for their news on Twitter, find jobs on LinkedIn, connect with family, colleagues, friends on Facebook, and capture life moments on Instagram.

Rather than my pushing a rock up a hill getting law firms to blog and, later on, use social media, we have the chair of a law firm employing over 11,500 people in 47 countries telling us he’ll continue to take this blog and social initiative “to follow our clients where they want us to be … in any new market or any social network.”

Thanks Eduardo.

Photo Credit: marcoderksen