It is a tired cliché to say that lawyers are risk adverse, or that they are behind the learning curve for social media. A more constructive way to look at why lawyers are not mirroring businesses in using social media to market themselves is that there is an overabundance of how-to marketing materials on the Internet. Lawyers rarely have free time to filter through to the relevant information, and then figure out how to get started from there.
Where to start with social networking sites is very challenging, especially when many how-to guides are written for businesspeople and do not take into consideration the ethics rules that apply to lawyers. Even if an attorney finds an excellent blog on social media that is directed to lawyers, blog posts are usually no more than 500 words long and cover only one topic at a time.
Social Media for Lawyers, by Carolyn Elefant and Nicole Black, is a practical, how-to book that fills this niche very nicely. The authors are attorneys and blog writers who have used social media successfully to develop business. Their book reads well cover to cover, and it's logically organized so readers can skip around to focus on the sections that are most relevant to them.
The first few chapters are designed to sell lawyers on using social media to build their practice and can probably be skipped by readers who have already shown their willingness to use social media by buying this book. Some of the arguments in these chapters also reflect the authors' personal bias in favor of small firms.
There's a good discussion of LinkedIn, Facebook Fan Pages, and lawyer-specific community sites, with advice for first-timers and more advanced users. Screen shots are put to excellent use throughout the book so readers can see exactly what the book recommends. Even self-described Luddites will be hard pressed to say that this book did not give them what they need to create a social media business presence.
Social Media for Lawyers also includes great suggestions for using social media to interact with clients. One example is its 50-30-10-10 guideline for Twitter, where 50 percent of the use involves providing useful links to Twitter "followers," with smaller percentages for response and interaction, talking about your legal practice, and sharing personal interests, respectively.
Even attorneys who already use social media in their practices can learn something from this book. This is a book worth taking the time to read.
Michelle Sherman is special counsel at Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton in Los Angeles, where she is the editor of and contributing author to the law firm's Social Media Law Update
blog.
Kari Santos
Daily Journal Staff Writer
